I've been working in the ER for about a month now. This morning I woke up and realized I need to document these moments so that I don't forget them some where along the way.
What a unbelievably life altering experience if I would only let it be. It's amazing to me how hard it is to LET IT BE. To let life be the growth that it should, especially when it hurts, when it doesn't feel right. I could go into detail about every broken life, mangled body I've seen but I don't know if that's the point. It's this feeling I get when I'm there. This overwhelming sense of helplessness mixed with gratitude. People continue to tell me that I need to learn healthy detachment. Granted I know where they are coming from. They want me to be able to do this job and not lose my sanity. They are coming from a place of love for me but I can't help but wonder if we've all done a little too much detaching? Look at the world around us. Others suffer while we eat three meals a day, have shelter, health, family, and yet we are so unaware of their pain. So detached. I'm beginning to wonder if the meaning of life is learning to attach and grow. To find balance between the suffering around us and the joy within.
The mourning, the elderly, the poor, my neighbors.
These are the people my Father has called me to love and yet it takes everything within me to do so.
Furthermore, I've learned through this job that modern healthcare is NOT the field I am to work in. People walk through the door with Taco Bell, complaining of chest pain. Go out to smoke while they wait to be seen for respiratory problems. Is no one seeing a pattern here? Others come to the ER for dental pain, heart burn? The uninsured, the uneducated, we have lost the ability to know and take care of our own bodies. I hear time and again of people expressing the idea that their current issues just happened to them. Are we really just victims of our health? We take no responsibility for the current state of our bodies.
I want to farm. I want to cook. I want to feed people.
I want to learn. I want to educate others.
I am so thankful for health, for my family, for my friends.
Good food, education, opportunities, a cup of coffee on a cold morning.
So many things we have been blessed with.
I am thankful for the scales removed for me to see them.
May we be the hope, the change, the light among the wreckage.
