There are patients I am repulsed by at a gut level. No matter what they're like or why they're here, we are supposed to take care of them and make them, get this, happy to have chosen our hospital. Some people don't want to be happy. At the end of a hard shift with said people, sometimes all that is left is simmering, empty, spite. However, something strange might also happen. Sometimes a family will visit and tell me about the patient- I mean really tell me about them- and spin amazing tales about who this person has been. I'm not always sure if the patients really are that much more wonderful inside, or if it's the persistent love that makes their dear ones see them that way. Either way, it presents them in a new light. I become disgusted with myself for being so terribly dull and blind to the hurting soul in front of me.
It is simpler to dislike a person than have your heart break for them. Dislike denotes a distance, so if you can find a reason to criticize, you can usually protect yourself. The offending being can be a patient, or or politician, or even a random person who cuts you off in traffic-- if you can dislike them, you can move on with your universe. Criticism turns them into an problem instead of a human, and problems... all they need is solving.
Many days all we see is the broken version of love, the selfish faux-gratifying pop song rubbish. True love is this: While we are still disgusting, Christ dies for us. (For us!) Oddly, it isn't the gems hidden in the disgusting, but the way we are loved which makes us worthwhile. Love does not salvage and rework us to be of value but more often it creates our worth from nothing. He says that you have value. You. Not because of who you are but because of who he is. We are because we are loved.
The truth is that love transforms my patients into what they are not on their own. It transforms me into what I am not on my own. And it has got to be a love from outside ourselves, because we can't create a love overwhelming enough inside that it can regenerate who we are or who we hate.We can't love enough on our own to transform those around us and when we try it boils down into anger and weariness. If I think that I can find a light spot in the lives in front of me that makes them "worthy", I am often sorely disappointed. They are worthy of care because of whose they are, not what they have done or will do.
Losing sight of this happens of course, and I become caught up in the inconvenience of people and a world which keeps me from putting neat check marks next to each item. Some nights when my car comes to a rest in the driveway I have to lay my head down on the steering wheel and groan over what an idiot I've been that particular day, how blind I've been to the flecks of immortality hovering in the halls and passages where I've tromped mindlessly. Christ's call to love as he has loved is such a vast command, partially because it calls me to care, and caring is not cool on TV, nor is it tidy.
It is easy to lose heart in a world constantly breaking with people who are insatiable for adoration (like me, for example). Yet Christ says says my dumb daily tasks are worthwhile, because they are works of love. They might go unappreciated, they might be faulty, but they are not for the flesh and bone I'm touching, but the soul and the one who created it. Do not let your days be simplified into meaningless tasks devoid because it keeps things from being complicated (I write that for you, Elizabeth-of-the-future).
Rumor has it that the peace He gives is worth all the break times in the world, put together.
It is simpler to dislike a person than have your heart break for them. Dislike denotes a distance, so if you can find a reason to criticize, you can usually protect yourself. The offending being can be a patient, or or politician, or even a random person who cuts you off in traffic-- if you can dislike them, you can move on with your universe. Criticism turns them into an problem instead of a human, and problems... all they need is solving.
Many days all we see is the broken version of love, the selfish faux-gratifying pop song rubbish. True love is this: While we are still disgusting, Christ dies for us. (For us!) Oddly, it isn't the gems hidden in the disgusting, but the way we are loved which makes us worthwhile. Love does not salvage and rework us to be of value but more often it creates our worth from nothing. He says that you have value. You. Not because of who you are but because of who he is. We are because we are loved.
The truth is that love transforms my patients into what they are not on their own. It transforms me into what I am not on my own. And it has got to be a love from outside ourselves, because we can't create a love overwhelming enough inside that it can regenerate who we are or who we hate.We can't love enough on our own to transform those around us and when we try it boils down into anger and weariness. If I think that I can find a light spot in the lives in front of me that makes them "worthy", I am often sorely disappointed. They are worthy of care because of whose they are, not what they have done or will do.
Losing sight of this happens of course, and I become caught up in the inconvenience of people and a world which keeps me from putting neat check marks next to each item. Some nights when my car comes to a rest in the driveway I have to lay my head down on the steering wheel and groan over what an idiot I've been that particular day, how blind I've been to the flecks of immortality hovering in the halls and passages where I've tromped mindlessly. Christ's call to love as he has loved is such a vast command, partially because it calls me to care, and caring is not cool on TV, nor is it tidy.
It is easy to lose heart in a world constantly breaking with people who are insatiable for adoration (like me, for example). Yet Christ says says my dumb daily tasks are worthwhile, because they are works of love. They might go unappreciated, they might be faulty, but they are not for the flesh and bone I'm touching, but the soul and the one who created it. Do not let your days be simplified into meaningless tasks devoid because it keeps things from being complicated (I write that for you, Elizabeth-of-the-future).
Rumor has it that the peace He gives is worth all the break times in the world, put together.
"Love is the expression of the one who loves, not of the one who is loved. Those who think they can love only the people they prefer do not love at all. Love discovers truths about individuals that others cannot
see”
-Søren Kierkegaard
People can be rotten...but take heart?