Sometimes I lay in the dark and I pray...."How God?" How do I go on in this race of "life?" As I prepare to go back to work tomorrow the smell of death still haunts me? Last week a 35 year old who must have been battling her own demons... a person who is a mom? a friend? a sister? a daughter? took a drug that is so harmful that it blew her heart out. Why? She was found on the floor by her drug-dealer friend not breathing? How long did this child lay there? Where was her 10 and 14 year old children? The 14 year that won't come and see her mom on life support...... Did they see? Do they know what happened? Life can be so messy at times. Sometimes I feel like I am only going through the motions, and at times even feeling numb with so much life and death all around me.. Our level one trauma hospital holds over 800 patients. and yet we have over 900 patients. Sometimes I want to run out and scream.....never returning to that place where Life gets messy.........where I know God has me.......While I am tending to this precious 10 year old the son of my patient...I hear the scream of a man at the top of his lungs: "GET A NURSE, SOMETHING IS WRONG WITH ME....."Then I hear the alarms that scream loudly onto the unit that something had gone terribly wrong, as I walk over to see if anyone needs any help I stop and see the man's son watching his dad take his last breath. As if I was moving in slow motion....seeing........10 people work frantically to save his life......(but God has other plans)...nurses who had cared for this man for days working on him with tears streaming down their faces screaming NO please NO not him......and this race called life comes to a STOP for another.
my mind races forward in a thousand pictures at once, quietly praying; father please stand up in this boat and calm these storms.......gaze down upon us; "humans," and please help us save him.....but He doesn't why?
Hebrews 2:9;
But we do see Jesus, who was made lower than the angels for a little while, now crowned with glory and honor because he suffered death, so that by the grace of God he might taste death for everyone.
I started a new book last night that has helped me with my messy life........it is called "Somewhere More Holy"...............it is a must read; author; Tony Woodlief... He says in the first part of his book; what is it about us "Christians?" that we think God should be devoted to our earthly happiness!!!!! Why is it so hard for us to understand that God is so much deeper than that...This is a man who has been broken... He had a perfectly healthy child who at a very young age was diagnosed with a brain tumor.
He even quotes at one point that "he was the dog that returned to his own vomit"...how many of us can relate to that harsh statement? But yet he so gently reminds us that there is grace after sin......................So how do we go through this race bearing the moments of silence from God? How do we continue to believe in miracles as we stand by screaming out in pain please God stop this? Even in the weeks before, at work, where a young man in his early 30's comes out of the OR from brain surgery...a tumor....the kind that wraps its tentacles deep, into your vessels...with a wife who is expecting and a baby at home....Why? God where are you? or the man who is driving , and a teenager hits him and his life is forever changed....as I stand in the doorway of the entrance into his room in the ICU...as the doctor tells this 50 year man, "you will never walk again, you are paralyzed." Where? Where are you God?
Grace does abound.....even in sorrow.......yet sometimes God is still even when we scream out please MOVE....now....he is quiet when we cry out "WHY?" Although God never fails us sometimes it can seem as though he does.
I guess it truly depends on where your cards fall in this "life," or how you see it, feel it, and live it.
So why is it that I crave the easy? Do you crave the easy? Maybe being in the dark soul of the night leads us to the light. Maybe it makes us run to the light...
Isaiah 61: 3;and provide for those who grieve in Zion—
to bestow on them a crown of beauty
instead of ashes,
the oil of joy
instead of mourning,
and a garment of praise
instead of a spirit of despair.
They will be called oaks of righteousness,
a planting of the LORD
for the display of his splendor.
Beauty for Ashes.
Out of our suffering just maybe, we can and will create beauty too......and maybe in the pain we can start to praise Him.....After all He did suffer greatly for us to be dead to ourselves and alive in him.
Genesis 50: 20-21;
20 You intended to harm me, but God intended it for good to accomplish what is now being done, the saving of many lives. 21 So then, don’t be afraid.
Eventually you and I will hear an answer.....maybe not the one we want but an answer.....sometimes it is as simple as: "it is not for us to understand"......When we are wounded, He is wounded. He who suffered so much for us His children also suffers with each and every one of us.
So I humbly open up my hands today and very shyly with my eyes squinted tight so maybe it won't hurt, ask: use me Lord, use me as you sit fit tomorrow. I do feel like I am walking into the Lion's Den, when I am walking into that Hospital (a different kind from Daniel's) but one that can devour me just the same... I commit myself to your hands...use me Lord.
humbly His,
Robbie
