Gratitude Project: This Week Part 1

I am trying, and many times failing, at trying to see the world as grace-filled. I am working on it, though, which is much better than I have done in the past. Sometimes, especially at work, I find it extremely difficult to look at life with grateful eyes. I see the tired, the weary, the broken each day I work in the emergency room and sometimes it just fills me with sadness. I see the medical staff under huge stressors, seemingly unable to keep up, and I wonder how any of this is helping anyone. Often, the weight of the world drops in the emergency room. Sometimes there are moments of death, other times moments of sheer exasperation, sometimes there are numerous people yelling at me - screaming to be heard in the midst of the craziness.



Sometimes I don't want to hear them. Sometimes I just want them to understand that people are dying - dying! - in the back and they might just have to wait while we sort that out. Sometimes I don't want to hear that someone 'donated to the hospital' or 'has been coming here for years' or 'is going to stand here until I do something' (when I can do nothing).



Sometimes the weight of the world in medical facilities just seems to be too much.

Sometimes I feel so frustrated that people are yelling at me because they have been waiting an hour and there is absolutely nothing I can do to speed things up. They get angry and their voices raise and rage and I know deep in my gut that I can't even help. Sometimes I want to scream back that it is not my fault, that I cannot fix what is broken, that I just sit here checking people in and that is all, it is all I can do. I can try to show compassion, but sometimes I don't have any compassion left to show.



Saturday was a day where it was difficult to feel any grace at the end of the day. I went home angry and filled with a deep well of frustration. It was a day where I wanted to throw in the towel, to just quit. I even proclaimed 'I am better than this!' to Kennan and he nodded in his deep well of understanding and listened to me while I let the anger spew out all over, the worlds spilling out into space and time.


Here is the truth of the matter, though, is anyone 'better than this'? Am I not called to love and care for the broken and down-trodden? Do I really think that I am 'too good' for anything? What does that say about me, about my soul, about my very self?



Today and since that day the world looks different, of course, as it usually does after major frustration. Sometimes I just don't know how to let go when I feel wounded and let down and broken. Sometimes I am weighed down low with the weight of the yelling and frustration and I hold it all in, I keep it all in, I try to let it go and it stays inside seeping itself into my veins.



Today is better, so far. This week is better, so far. Some days, like Saturday, it just seems impossible to see the grace in the world.



I'm working on it, though, and by the end of the night my frame of mind was better.

Slowly, I am becoming different.