Charge!

I've been spending more of my ER shifts lately in the role of charge nurse.  I'm not really sure who came up with that label, it kind of conjures an image of someone charging into battle at the head of a cavalry, war cry ringing loud, blade held high.  So maybe the term isn't too far off. Minus the war cry. And blade.  There are days however, I could use both.

It isn't really a role I sought out.  Someone somewhere got the crazy idea that I was an acceptable pick, and I started showing up to work to the surprise of seeing my name at the top of the dang white board.  At least one or two people were as surprised as I was - I saw a least one good eyebrow lift from across the room.  But there's this one skill I've learned to pick up the last few years of nursing- that is to pretend to be confident while working like crazy to become competent.  In other words, sometimes you have to pretend to know what you're doing, even when you don't, but make sure you know who to ask questions behind the scenes.

As time has gone on it's actually become a position I enjoy, mostly.  Being a charge nurse is kind of like a high stakes game of Tetras.  You're watching the screen and doing your best to get the right shapes in the right spots in the right timing before all the little pieces start piling up and something explodes. Or you end up with three ambulances pulling in with no where to put their patients or someone starts a riot  (or tries to die) in the waiting room.  I like puzzles and I like that part of the job.

But there's other parts I'm not wild about.  It turns out I lack a certain quality called "assertiveness".  I can smell confrontation a mile away and know how to dive for the nearest fox hole.  The problem is the ER seems to attract a lot of type A personalities, particularly in the doctor area, and they all want to tell you how to run the show. And they can smell weakness a mile away. Oh yes they can. No fox hole is safe.  I've had to learn to stand my ground and make statements that don't go up like a question at the end. I've had to make phone calls to different departments on behalf of my staff to confront issues or inappropriate interactions.  I've had to say "sorry, I can't do that" to the looming form of an opinionated MD. Through it all, I can feel my backbone hardening a little bit, but I've still got a ways to go on that front.

All that said, sometimes it's good to find ourselves in roles we aren't quite ready for. It puts pressure on us to grow, and forces us into situations that confront our weaknesses.  And Lord knows I've got plenty of those.

Holding Dynamite

We do things in life sometimes that are a little like holding lighted dynamite.  We know if we hold on too long it'll explode and destroy us. But we are pretty confident we can let it go just in time, before the damage can be done.  Something about watching that fuse shrink.... something about that thrill of destructive potential. Tempting fate and all that.  But take care lest you hold on too long.

From the Ashes

The world is such a beautiful, broken place.  I've been thinking a lot lately about pain and loss.  A month ago I watched my aunt grieve the death of her son, and presently I'm grieving the loss of my own unborn child.  But through this lens of my own present sadness, I feel humbled. Loss is all around, not always in the form of death. Besides the loss of loved ones, many suffer the loss of dreams and expectations.  The dream of having children. The dream of being happily  married.  The expectation of health.  Some people have to grieve and struggle with maybe not having the life they thought they would when they were young and dreams seemed only certain to come true.

Infertility is a death. Divorce is a death. Never finding that right someone is a death. Living with chronic illness is a death. Death of what we have deeply hoped and desired, death of our expectations for our lives. And each death brings it's own special form of grief.

A sweet friend of mine sent me a little silver necklace after my miscarriage with a little pendant with the word hope engraved on it.  A card accompanying this gift was filled with Bible verses about hope. Hope in the face of suffering, hope as an anchor for the soul, hope that does not disappoint.  And what is our hope in the midst of this world of loss and sadness?

Redemption. That is our hope.  That sadness and grief will be bought back from death and transformed into something new.  That beauty will spring from the ashes of loss, the proceeding devastation fertilizing the soil in which new life will grow.   And this hope is truly  my anchor.  It keeps me still when the waves of fear and depression threaten to overwhelm me. It sets my eyes before me on the Author of my faith, the One who endured loss, suffering, and death to identify with our own, and then overcame them.

Little Eyes

Little eyes, you never opened,

Little voice, you never cried.

Would your eyes been blue like Daddy's?

Or would they have been green like mine?

Little hand, I never grasped you,

Never held your little body tight.

But in my heart I hold the hope that

You rest in my Father's arms tonight.

Little life,

 Not mine to save.

My womb your home

And too your grave.

Little eyes, you never opened,

Little voice, you never cried.

Would your eyes been blue like Daddy's?

Or would they have been green like mine?

Death's Shadow

We live in a world that is constantly under the shadow of death.  It's so easy to forget this sentence hanging over us, which I suppose is a grace.  I go about my life, worrying about silly things and desiring silly things as though this startling and awe inspiring existence I have as a rational creature will stretch on forever.  But every now and then it catches me. The brevity of it all. The fragility.

I spent the weekend intimately acquainted with this reality, as I flew home to spend the weekend with my family and mourn the untimely and unexpected death of a cousin who was just shy of 30.  The afternoon that my plane took off from Seattle was as gloomy and foggy as ever a January day in Seattle. As my plane lifted however, we broke out of the clouds to reveal a glorious sun kissed landscape of mountain ranges and volcano peaks, snow caps glistening in the sunlight. A glory that was hard to believe existed when I was below. Not many hours later I would stand in the viewing room at the funeral home, holding my sister's hand and looking down at a familiar face - a face that was somehow no longer so familiar.  

Death feels so wrong.  It doesn't fit.  It's like credits running in the middle of a film that obviously had more story to tell.  It rarely seems to come when it should or in a manner that people find comforting.  And yet this shadow hangs over all of existence.  I have no way to be sure that I won't myself be a grieving mother someday, or a grieving wife.  Even if all life runs a predictable course the day will come when I have to say goodbye to people I love deeply - my grandparents. My parents.  The only way to avoid it is to leave early myself. An option I don't favor.

But into these dark thoughts come words spoken thousands of years ago, and echoed by my grandmother at my cousin's memorial. "O death, where is your victory? O death, where is your sting?" My grandma could speak these words with emotion and conviction in the face of the deep loss of her grandson, almost as a taunt to that which hovers ever over us, because death - like a shadow - doesn't end the light. It only obscures it for a time.  And above the shadow of death the Light of life shines unobstructed.

My non religious friends may roll their eyes at the idea of resurrection, but resurrection is all around us.  Every time you admire a tree you see life that came from death. Hold some seeds in your hand and you'll see that they are dead. And yet from these dead seeds comes abundant life.  And so I believe that the Author of life can call from the dead seeds of our bodies new and abundant life. So maybe the credits didn't roll early on my cousin's story after all. Maybe Act I just finished and we'll have to wait until our own intermission comes to see what Act II holds.  For the family it will feel a long wait indeed - but we're waiting with hearts full of hope.

In the words of a wise man (or hobbit):

"Though here at jouney's end I lie

In darkness buried deep

Beyond all towers strong and high

Beyond all mountains steep...

Above all shadows rides the sun

And stars forever dwell.

I will not say the day is done

Nor bid the stars farewell."

Breaking Bad and Human Longing

 

I have to admit that one of my very favorite hobbies is pondering the human condition.  I've never found that as an option on a drop down list of interests and it certainly doesn't help make me the life of a party, but it is all the same.  Because humans are simply fascinating.  I therefore have a very high appreciation for books, movies, or television series where the writer(s) has a unique insight into human nature and does an excellent job revealing these aspects in their theme or characters.  

One of my favorite books is the old classic, 'How to win friends and influence people'.  And it's a favorite not so much for it's good advice regarding human interactions, but because while reading it I learned something I hadn't realized about human nature.  To quote a paragraph, "There is one longing- almost as deep, almost as imperious, as the desire for food or sleep- which is seldom gratified. It is what Freud calls 'the desire to be great.' It is what Dewey calls the 'desire to be important'."  Basically, every human being desperately wants to feel like they are important, that in the grand scheme of things, somehow they matter.

Which brings us to Breaking Bad.  Besides being filmed in my kickin home town of Albuquerque, NM this series offers an incredible picture of this aspect of humanity in the character of frustrated genius, Walter White.  The series begins with Walter as an extremely over qualified high school chemistry teacher, wallowing in a slow and unsatisfying life of wasted genius.  He discovers he has terminal lung cancer and through a series of events has an epiphany that he could use his chemistry genius in the meth business to save his family from financial ruin upon his death.   As the seasons progress we witness Walter's downward moral slide as he becomes the meth industry's most talented and savvy new boss.  He picks up the trade to provide for and protect his family, but eventually despite more money than he can launder and the destruction it begins to rain on the family he set out to protect, Walt is unwilling to walk away.  Suddenly he's found the thing he had always desired.  Suddenly he's no longer some obscure and unimportant little man doing nothing of consequence.  Now he's the best at something, now he has a name people fear, now he feels powerful.  And the perceptive watcher will see that what this man always wanted most was not the best for his wife and kids - what he always wanted was to matter.  And if the only way to be someone important was through something destructive like the meth industry - so be it.

The average person might not resort to being a drug lord, but this law is at work in all of us.  We are all desperately trying to matter.  Why do we love talking about ourselves?  Why is one of the most satisfying experiences talking to a truly interested listener? Why do we have a tendency to make the things we do sound more noble than they are?  I talked to a salesperson from the Buckle once and they described their work as almost nothing less than saving humanity one low self esteem at a time by helping people pick better clothes.   I'm guilty of this in talking about my job as an ER nurse - I want people to be impressed by what I'm doing. I want to feel important.

People all pursue this elusive longing in different ways.  Some people throw themselves into philanthropy,  others will take getting a sense of importance from crime over a life that seemingly goes unnoticed.  Being known for something bad is better than not being known at all.  At least you mattered. Why do some people go for a massacre before killing themselves?  Maybe because if they kill only themselves, no one will care - but if they kill a bunch of other people first, no one will forget. I believe that a lot of suicides and suicide attempts are tied to this. The deepest despair I think we can feel is the despair in believing that we don't matter.  I also believe some people take extreme measures like suicide attempts to prove to themselves that they do.  So that the people that come clamoring to their bedside and to their aid can reassure them somehow that their life means something.

Why are we like this?  Why do we need to feel like we matter so desperately?  If we look to Naturalism, we have no answers, because if you journey through the philosophical ramifications of the atheistic and naturalist world view you can only logically arrive at the conclusion that we don't in fact matter.  Not really. Of course you can find things that feel meaningful, particularly if you are born in the upper crust of civilization and don't have to deal with hunger, war, and disease, and if people you love don't die prematurely, and you don't suffer a debilitating illness and the people you love don't betray you and leave you.  Our existence having meaning is a longing that none of us can deny.  And besides, it is just fascinating to me that we need it to matter. Even when we are healthy and enjoying family and good weather, we wonder what it means. How much more the majority of the world that suffers.  If ever there were an internal hint - directing us to look outward and upward, and whispering to our souls that there's something more, surely the longing to matter is it.

Love and Pain

 

I know not everyone desires to be nor is cut out to be a parent.  But being a parent gives you this whole new view of life that's almost impossible otherwise and I can't help but mourn the loss of that incredible perspective for those who choose otherwise.

As the old cliche goes, after the birth of your first child you realize you never before understood love.  With that tiny little life that has overnight made your life more complicated and difficult and restricted you find love bursting in - protective and doting and hopeful. It changes you slowly and immediately, and you never again view the world the same.

As my children have gotten older I can suddenly start to empathize with my own parents, and to an extent I think I can better understand God.  Parenthood, I've come to believe, is an amazing object lesson.  In loving my own kids (imperfectly) I find myself hoping for them.  I hope for them to be healthy and strong and balanced and happy - and most of all I hope for them to be good. To be kind and compassionate and to use their lives to make a difference. I want the world to be better because my kids existed.  As I picture them growing up I can imagine no greater joy than to see my kids become these kinds of adults.

But what if they don't?  What if as they grow up my children act selfishly and unkindly, what if they make foolish choices and do things that will hurt them and people around them?  Would I stop loving them?  Not in the least.  I can't imagine anything that could make me not love my children.  But the difference is between a love that's full of joy and freedom and a love that's full of sorrow and pain.  I see parents whose children have grown up to do well light up with joy and pride as they talk about their kids.  And I've seen parents whose children are struggling - sometimes in an ER room as they question mental illness and behavioral problems or substance abuse - and you can feel the weight of their sorrow.  Do these parents love their children less?  I don't think so.  But theirs is a love that never stops hurting.

As always this makes me think about God and us.  No one loves like God loves.  My love for my kids is often filled with my own brokenness and confusion, but God's is pure and sees clearly.  I can understand from a parent's perspective God's fierce desire for us to listen to Him.  If my love for my kids desires the best for them, God's love can only desire that more - and He actually understands what's best.  I don't believe that our sin and brokenness ever lessens God's love for us, but the difference is between a love full of joy and a love full of sorrow.  Thinking about how deeply blessed I would be to see my kids become those loving, compassionate, creative and strong adults makes me want to likewise bless God with my life.  He who has loved me more than words can capture - how I hope my life fills his love for me with joy and not sorrow.