Friday, July 3, 2009

Grace

Today I feel tired after a stretch of working, but a quick trip to the beach including a nap that just fell upon me there seemed to solve many of my issues. I pray for grace... I'm going briefly discuss work since that's what I've been up to lately, so bear with me.... I love working on plastic surgery, but as soon as summer hits, it's like people lose their brains. I get all sorts of interesting things and I see all kinds of variety in my work, but this week was about enough. Over the holidays, men like to get drunk and fight with each other, and so ensued 3 broken jaws, 1 fractured zygoma (the eye socket), a homeless drug used with an infection in his hand he has no idea how he got, and another VERY young man with a child and a pregnant wife who in a drunken rage put his fist through a fish tank damaging nerves, tendons, and an artery. And they complain, that nothing is fast enough, the care isn't quick enough, they can't get out of there when they want and that they have to WAIT for surgery. Well next time you decide to do these things... let us know a couple weeks ahead of time and we will book you a time slot. And then the other side of me thinks... these people need as much grace as the woman who has come in for the 3rd time with cancer in her breast that is being reconstructed, or the woman whose appendix needs to be removed and in routine blood work finds out she's unexpectedly pregnant.

I have a friend who came to know Jesus in her 20s, and she once told me a story. She used to be young and wild and crazy, had tried it all, and in her 3rd car accident, she and a girlfriend put their car into a tree. The ambulance came and rushed them to the hospital, where she needed to be stitched up because the back of her head behind her ear was ripped open. She describes how she was drunk and rude to the staff, and the word that rings in my ears, is how she described herself as a "pig woman". Beligerent and foul mouthed to everyone, the staff did not use freezing when they stitched her up (maybe they thought she had enough other things in her system, or maybe they just couldn't be bothered). And now her life is a miracle of God turning things around. And so it has saved my nursing care to people like that. I don't know where I am injecting into their journey, and what plans God has for them down the road, but is makes it a little easier to show them compassion.

Isn't this a beautiful moment?
I would like to be back in it right now, but I'll just remember.

3 comments:

bigcanadiangirl said...

Are you off for a while now? Put your feet up.

Randi~Dukes and Duchesses said...

The people that are hardest to extend grace to are probably the people that need it the most. Good post.

Sandra said...

Looking beyond the surliness, the belligerance, the irrational sense of entitlement into the treasure of that created one. The one that's right in front of you, me right now. I think you do one of the most heroic jobs in the world, and after all of these years you still lean toward mercy. Heroic.