Pushed

"But Lord," Gideon asked, "how can I save Israel? My clan is the weakest in Manasseh, and I am the least in my family."

The Lord answered, "I will be with you..."

When people ask me about work I find it difficult to describe. Most of the time I shrug it off and say I enjoy it and I'm thankful for a good job. If truly pressed by a willing ear I resort back to this, "Most days I go to work excited and thankful to do my job. Nearly every day I go home absolutely destroyed." 

There are certainly many jobs in the world much harder than mine and I have no desire to even insinuate that what I do has any comparison to those who work so faithfully at them. It is, however, uniquely challenging for me and I find it difficult to describe to others. Everyone loves a good ER story (heck, ultimately I probably got into this from watching too much Rescue 911 as a child) but I grow tired of telling them after a while because they never convey how much gets poured into each of those experiences. The truth of it, I am finding, is that my job is simply soul sucking. I find over and over again that to really care on a day-to-day basis about everything that we deal with in the ED is enough to crush most people's hearts, but the second you stop caring I think you loose the empathy that makes a good nurse. It's an untenable position that a year into working in this department I have been wrestling with more acutely than ever. There has been less spring in my step on my walk to work and my heart is heavier every time I leave. I've seen the same drunks and addicts over and over again. I'm on a first name basis with many of our regulars who come in writhing and moaning demanding pain meds and leave walking without trouble and cussing me out to their friends on their cell phone when we refuse to give them narcotics. I get swung at, yelled at, and threatened several times throughout any given week, and all I can think is "I got into this to help people."

While this is still a daily wrestling match for me, one of the things I have settled on is this: I am a much better tool for God's use when I am utterly and completely at my wit's end. My heart and desire each day is to serve and love every patient that I work with, meaning that I treat the drunk with as much compassion as the sweet elderly woman, remembering that both are desperately loved by God. For me, this is nearly impossible day after day without crawling to God in desperate prayer for his strength and love. I confess freely that I fail at this most days. Others I am so overwhelmed by the technical elements or shear busyness of what I need to accomplish in twelve hours that I barely give these thoughts a minutes consideration, but my heart is invested in this idea and it will be what sustains me through these rough patches. 

I look to Gideon and Moses, both of whom questioned God's grand calling because of their low stature or inabilities, but that is exactly why God chose them. "My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness." (2 Cor 12:9) I have no great calling. The fate of a nation does not rest on my shoulders, but for me it is a small but significant victory to get through a shift and say "In just the smallest ways I think I showed a hint of my saviors heart to each person I cared for today." May we all rejoice when we are pushed beyond our limits because it is only then that we find what should be the constant and true source or our strength.