Confessions of a human nurse
When you stand up and hold out your hand/In the face of what I don't understand/My reason to be brave ("Brave," Josh Groban) Growing up shy, I came to dislike certain Bible verses/phrases such as "God has not given us a spirit of fear" (2 Tim 1:17) and was frustrated by others such as "perfect love casts out fear" (1 John 4:18). It frustrated me as a perfectionist that I struggled with fear. I didn't want to be afraid. I wanted to talk as easily as friends and family could. But fear always found a way. People "felt lead" to share the above verses with me a remarkable number of times. I was good at being properly ashamed at my lack of faith and abundance of fear, but nothing changed. Growing up didn't help. The monsters in the shadows turned into bills, loss, change, bullying, and culture shock. God may not give a spirit of fear, but I managed to find a few along the way and they were gregarious little creatures. Nothing like a fear to attract more fears. Fear turned to anger, anger turned to… oops, wrong story. And then I got it. Fear is a natural human feeling, a survival instinct (don't believe me? Check the stats on male to female longevity. Bravado is not for the mortal). Love comes in and gives you something to look at besides fear. Fear is a part of human nature, but love can keep it in check. Love says trust. Fear says control. Love says protect. Fear says hide and fortify. Love says you are worth it. Fear says you don't deserve a chance. Love walks into a crowded room and sees someone to care for. Fear can't see farther than the crowd. Love sees reality and works with it. Fear is blind and delusional. Love makes a difference. Fear won't even try.
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I will stumble/I will fall down/But I will not be moved/I will make mistakes/I will face heartache/But I will not be moved ("I Will Not Be Moved," Natalie Grant) "I could never do what you do." Or so I've been told more times then I can count when people find out I'm a nurse. Especially if they ask for specifics of what I do. The details tend to make people a little…squeamish. What gets lost in the grossness is my weakness. I can coax an intestine back into an abdominal cavity, deal with a hemorrhaging head wound or uncontrolled vomiting, seizures, psychotic breakdowns, screaming patients, angry family members and even equipment failures. If that's the "never do" I can do it. But nursing is not just the blood and guts, trauma and heroic rescues. It's death and destruction, abuse and failure. It's watching a self-created human train wreck and being helpless to stop it. It's losing your mind in a back room before smiling through a shift because you can't explain to patient B that patient A just broke your heart by her choices. It's crying yourself to sleep at night and praying to what seems like silence after a day of death. It's hating death with every ounce of your being so that you can get back up the next day and go to work when your eyes are swollen from crying. It's turning grief and fear into fire and determination and an iron will. It's spending hours training, researching and learning to become better, stronger, faster. It's learning to flip a switch in your brain between work and the rest of life so that, ironically, you don't lose your sanity. It's learning to fight. Every day. Over and over again until one day you win. Even if just for that day. Yoda told young Anakin, "Fear leads to anger, anger leads to hate, hate leads to the dark side." Nurses can follow the same path, only our dark side is bitterness, cynicism and burn out. Or we can convert that anger into an iron will that lets us do what others could "never do." We're not special, but by God's grace we can be as stubborn as the gates of Hell we stare down every day. I will not live in this cage anymore/I only want to be free/I'll give my life everyday just to know/One day I'm gonna be free ("I Want to be Free," Massari) Trust is earned, not given. Or so I used to believe. Reality is, that's only half true. Trust needs to be earned, but once earned it's a choice. To give or not to give. Some who earn trust never receive it. Others who never earned it receive and break it. No one can keep it perfectly. No one can give it completely. But it is still a choice. It is sometimes viewed as maturity not to fully trust anyone. That is a realistic way to live as long as you don't plan on getting close to anyone. Ever. We were made for trust. Yes, we fell and the sin nature prevents anything from working the way it was supposed to, but that doesn't make good any less good. Trust once earned needs to be given. Refusing to give earned trust is not maturity, it's cynicism. Trusting when it is earned does not mean expecting perfection or denying reality, but accepting reality and dealing with imperfection openly. No one gets through life without being hurt and for some of us it's more like being hit by a bulldozer followed by a zamboni for good measure. It HURTS and we don't want to trust. Anyone. Ever. And give a 10 point presentation on why we are totally justified in doing so. As a believer, I convinced myself I could trust God and keep humans in a permanent probationary period. After all, everyone fails at some point, so why set the expectations any higher? Because God says so. We don't get to devalue humans and expect to be okay with their Creator. We don't get to call what He has made clean, unclean and get away with it. So, I choose trust. Not blindly, not naively, not perfectly. But when it is earned, for His sake I need to give it. Because choosing to trust is ten thousand times better than living in alone with fear. Because I can't reject those for whom Christ saw fit to die. Please don't make any sudden moves/ You don't know the half of the abuse ("Heathens"- 21 Pilots) It doesn't looks like you expect. It's not melodramatic like on TV shows. It's not always hidden. Sometimes the bruises are obvious and the stories are not. Like Dr House said, "Everyone lies" (for Biblical support look up any reference to the human heart and sin). Real hurt doesn't get understood. Either you've felt it and know what it's like or you haven't. For those who haven't lived a given nightmare, the closest we come is living it in our own nightmares as we try to sleep after hearing horror stories come to life and seeing justice and human bodies twisted and perverted. Horror is waking yourself up running to the door to save someone whose already dead. Horror is listening to histories of rape, sex slavery, forced abortion, voluntary abortion, betrayal and murdered loved ones and then seeing it all over again in your sleep. If you sleep. Horror is looking someone in the eyes and having to tell them their child is dead. Horror is listening to the pain and desperation in a voice over the phone and having no way to stop the bleeding, knowing it's too late. Horror is lying awake at night, playing a conversation over and over in your head and seeing all the things you could have said but didn't. Horror is realizing God alone can fix something and you're not Him and that He chose not to stop death and torture when He could have. Horror is realizing there's another person waiting with the same story or worse. Horror is finding yourself hoping this one ends differently then the last. And it doesn't. Hope is when you take the case anyway. Faith is when you take the one after that and after that and after that… no matter the outcome. No matter the cost. Love is when you care because God is worthy of such love, even when people choose to be unloveable. Even horrible. |
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August 2018
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