Right now its time for the yearly back to school... My friends all over fb are posting pictures of their darling little munchkins all dressed in their sweetest new outfits, holding Pinterest worthy signs that state their age and grade and all other highly pertinent facts about the coming school year. They are so beautiful! Every single picture fills my heart with a joy that I can't quite explain. To know there are people in the world who are producing or adopting children and then giving them this amazing opportunity of education... It thrills my heart!
Life, this life, is a miracle. Each soft head of bouncing curls or bristling scalp of buzz cropped boyishness... Each set of sparkling blue eyes and every pair of ponderous brown ones. Every birth that is given to every baby in the world, it is a miracle that makes the angels sing and every mother heart soar... Undoubtedly to most it is the best miracle, but it is not the only one.
For some of us, this new life, this birthing, this creating, this bringing forth of a love so powerful it shakes the sky, this is not our reality. And we, no matter how difficult it is, must find another essence, another joy, another wealth of beauty and light and inspiration. We need a miracle too. For me, that miracle is death. It is the caring and the love and the incredible bond that forms between nurse and patient. It is the overwhelming honor of sitting at a bedside as the intense work of dying is being done. It is entering the fray of spiritual battle with all weapons drawn, begging the God of all creation to extend His love one more time. It is seeing the light in the eyes of a saint who knows she is bound for glory. For me, this miracle is in being the hands of Jesus at the most vulnerable time in a patients life.
This is what I want to tell people when they ask me why I work as a hospice nurse: Right now, life is not my miracle. Right now, God has given me the gift of a season with death. My job is not dark, or gloomy, or depressing. My job is not full of sorrow or angst or fury. It is, rather, beautiful. It is, for me, a constant reminder of man's need for Christ, of Christ's love for me, and of my responsibility to share His vast love and power with all that I meet and touch. Someday, I pray with all my heart that I can say "I have no greater joy than to know that my children walk in Truth..." but now, in this season of my life, I say instead "I have no greater joy than to know that my patient walks with God..."
This is so true Dayna! I love it, sometimes I miss the hospice world but that's not where I am right now and that's perfectly fine. True happiness is being happy wherever God puts us even though it may not make sense to those around us. Keep blessing your patients & families the world needs more nurses like you!
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