I’ve worked in healthcare for 30 years. Well over half my life…closer to 60% of my entire life.

My love for my work created a tangible picture  that inspired my husband to go back to school to get a nursing degree in his early 30’s. He actually told me I was the only person he knew who loved her job; so there must be something rewarding in it. And I do! I love my job. It’s more than a job. It’s my lifework and ministry. A high and holy calling, a privilege.

Then perhaps as a combination of her parents’ example and natural God-given gifting and wiring, my daughter went to nursing school and now works in a busy, high-acuity critical care unit. She eventually hopes to be a Life Flight nurse. #proudmom

My son-in-law…medical. My son…not so much. He said he would consider it…if he didn’t have to touch people.  I guess that’s a 19 year old young man for you.

Have you hugged your health care provider today?

King Solomon said it well:

To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven: A time to be born, and a time to die…

Some seasons are harder than others. Seasons of struggle, sickness, sadness, lack, and loss. Some seasons are bountiful with God’s greatest blessings and overflow with love and laughter and life to the full. Some seasons are unpredictable but you still can’t help but be thankful for every warm ray of sunshine, hard spatter of rain, and even threatening wind.

A time to plant, and a time to pluck up that which is planted;

A time to kill, and a time to heal; a time to break down, and a time to build up;

A time to weep, and a time to laugh; a time to mourn, and a time to dance;

It has been a great year. I have laughed and danced more than I have deserved. I have felt more alive and have lived life to the full, perhaps more than any season past. But nestled in the shadows of my year-of-plenty, like everyone else I know, have been pockets of grief, struggle, and loss.

I love my job; which means I love the people I see and touch and talk with. I know their stories, their families, their health concerns, and many of their personal struggles. I have followed many through multiple, evolving seasons in their own lives and families. Springs of new life and celebration.  Summers of fun and victory and living life to the full. Autumns of peace and calm, sometimes stagnation. Winters of lack and loss and loneliness. Sometimes in the midst of such intimacy, whether you do it intentionally or not, you become a burden bearer. You sense others’ pain, grief, and heaviness so intuitively and personally that it becomes your own.

Have you hugged your health care provider today?

David was one of my first patients at my current practice. A farmer, strong, hardy, rugged…but kind, simple, gentle. Friendly, fatherly, grandfatherly. I first met David after he had fallen off a roof. 70 years old and still climbing and working. His injuries were extensive but he didn’t complain. He just wanted to get better and get back to work! That was ten years ago. This year I watched David’s body slowly ravaged by three different cancers. He left life a fraction of the giant size man I first met.

David is one of hundreds I’ve watched wither away over the past 30 years but for some reason his death hit me a little harder. At one point I told David and his wife that he was like a Timex watch because he “kept on tickin.”  That was in the first few years of his series of accidents and bad diagnoses. The last time I saw David I didn’t even recognize him. I walked into his hospital room and had to double check the name on the wall. The sickness had made him a shell of the tough old farmer he had been. I miss David.

It’s not just David. Time and our human mortality have taken so many names and faces and stories. Our bodies are fragile. They age, they break, they die. It’s a hard reality; yet it is both a privilege and sacred responsibility to be an eye witness to the sanctity of life and loss.

A mom who lost her son in a tragic accident. A woman whose young husband died unexpectedly. A child diagnosed with aggressive cancer. A man whose wife abandoned the family. Heroin overdose. Victims of violent crime and every imaginable abuse. Sometimes it weighs very heavy.

Have you hugged your health care provider today?

The next time your doctor is late coming in the room and you’ve been sentenced to play Candy Crush on your phone or scroll Facebook for an hour in a lonely exam room, consider not huffing, rolling your eyes, and complaining when he or she finally makes it in. They know your time is valuable. They don’t enjoy seeing the schedule get farther and farther behind. They probably won’t get lunch and will definitely be late getting home; but after they have just left a room with a terrible diagnosis, signed a death certificate, filed abuse charges, made phone calls, opened up lab results and x-rays with poor prognosis… They will still smile, apologize for being late, and be thankful that you’re safe and have the time that others do not…other chances at life.

Have you hugged your health care provider today?

In an ICU, death and suffering are common realities. Sometimes I feel a great  burden for my daughter: 23, full of life, innocent…but now thrown into a world of IVs, ventilators, cancer, addiction, overdose, and split-second life and death decisions. She’s a strong young woman. She sees and she cares. Many people do not. She learns her patients’ names and needs, She feels their pain, their fears, their frustrations.

Jesus told us to bear one another’s burdens. That includes holding a dying man’s hand so he doesn’t die alone. Hugging a family member who is exhausted and at a breaking point from grief. Learning sign language just to be able to comfort that one deaf patient. But does loving and caring and turning the other cheek include being cursed, scratched, manipulated, disrespected, and demeaned? Sadly, it’s a reality.

 A time to cast away stones, and a time to gather stones together; a time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing;

My husband works in psychiatry and drug rehab. They like him there because he is big and can protect other nurses. People withdrawing from drugs like to throw things at their nurses. They like to curse them, throw urine on them, hit them, scratch them. My husband and daughter have both come home with soiled clothes and scratch marks. I’ve never understood how people lash out at those trying to help or comfort them. Actually, I’ve never understood how people can wound anyone so carelessly.

Jesus had compassion on the crowds “because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd,” (Mt 9:36) but sometimes it’s hard.

Have you hugged your health care provider today?

Sometimes I think thirty years is too long. People have become too difficult, insurance companies too devious, red tape too thick. I’ve considered the feasibility of retirement…

A time to search and a time to give up, a time to keep and a time to throw away;

But every hard day, every painful experience, every grief and loss, is somehow always overshadowed by love and passion and purpose and a glimmer of hope that one life will be touched, helped, changed, or offered hope.

Therefore I will echo King Solomon’s words:

What do workers gain from their toil? I have seen the burden God has laid on the human race. He has made everything beautiful in its time. He has also set eternity in the human heart; yet no one can fathom what God has done from beginning to end. I know that there is nothing better for people than to be happy and to do good while they live. That each of them may eat and drink, and find satisfaction in all their toil—this is the gift of God.  (Ecc 3)

For today, I will continue to find satisfaction in my toil because it is indeed a gift from God.

But…Have you hugged your health care provider today?