The Least of These

I've started this blog at least a dozen times (both in my head and sitting here in front of this screen) in the last few weeks. I deleted it all because it is not any easy one, and frankly, I'm a little rusty. But you, gentle blogger(s), have always leant a sympathetic ear, even when my rantings border on the hostile (see Jan.). Sooo, here goes......this will probably be longest blog ever....and without any pictures--turn back now if this offends you. :)

PART I

The past several months have been tough for me. Even as I say that it seems kinda egocentric. My health has been fine. My family is doing well. The Lord blessed my sister with beautiful twins in January without major complications. My residency will be over soon. (Good-bye being on call ALL THE TIME.) Everything has been "okay." I should have been/be on top of the world (to borrow a tired cliche). The struggle, though, when I really do a self-evaluation, has been spiritual. I, especially in Jan/Feb/March of this year, have been having an extremely difficult time (especially at work) with the concepts of being merciful and not so judgmental toward non-believers. Specifically, with loving the "least of these." You know (or at least have an idea) who I'm talking about: the alcoholic, the prostitute, the addict, the child abuser, the person who doesn't care and won't even try. I see these people every day at work; in fact, they comprise most of our patient population. This has never bothered me before--I have always considered it a privilege to help someone no matter their background and am a pretty compassionate person. Over the last few months, little by little, I became increasingly bitter and resentful of these patients. Indifferent, even.

I don't know where or when it started, but it did. A missed quiet time. A record-setting patient load without enough resident coverage. Missing the fellowship of God's people because of call. Being chief resident (or, as I like to call it, "Sha's Anatomy") and separating grown, supposedly smart individuals from a physical altercation. Trying to help someone (again) change and do better for themselves, telling them there is a better Way, and seeing them (again) do self-destructive, harmful, even unspeakable things. Being in an environment where it's acceptable to do your job, but not really care. The sleep deprivation. And in creeps little seed of bitterness here. A little thought of "at least I'm better than that" there. A little Pharisee Philosophy. The funny thing is that most people at work never noticed a difference. To them, I was still the same devoted, compassionate person. They even made fun of me for hoping and believing the best. One time I told a surgeon who was just going off on a patient...("f*%$# troll, what an idiot," etc., etc. ) that that person was still one of God's children and still had worth as a human being (this, obviously, was early in residency)...it became like a joke between the other residents that I would even say that.

So there I was....trying to balance what I had always been taught (and had previously put into practice) and the reality of what I saw every day. You hold a 16 week old fetus that you just delivered and watch a husband and wife grieve over that baby. You see that it was a boy, with perfectly formed fingers and toes and the reality of "in your mother's womb" comes to life (literally). You try not to cry in front of the parents, because they need someone to be strong. You pray with them if they will let you and for them whether they like it or not. And then you go into the next room and deliver baby #3 to a 17 year old self-admitted crack whore who is still using. You pray to God someone somewhere will get through to her if you can't. You go to the nursery at 2 am to rock and feed that baby because she doesn't want to because he's crying from withdrawls. You hold him and pray for him because this is the best his life may ever be. You put up walls for your own self-preservation, but with each new little brick you add your heart hardens just a little. You're taught to love, but with our own strength, sometimes putting this into practice falls a little short. In theory, it's easy. In reality, loving the one-armed prostitute with herpes who is propositioning the patient in the room next to hers for their percocet (or pudding cup) at 3 am is not. I would go home every day, exhausted, begging God to change my heart.

And then He sent me Amanda. She was a "classic LSU patient," as we like to say. Amanda was in the hospital because she got into a physical altercation with her husband while they were arguing about their prescription drug stash. She has been addicted for quite some time, and her 2 kids live with their grandparents secondary to this. Basically, she had a broken rib that caused a pulmonary contusion (bruise) which gave her a pneumonia. She was doing fairly well one Saturday morning when we made rounds, with the exception of being very unhappy with her pain medication (or lack thereof). "Darlin," she said, "I pee more medication than that."

That night she went into fulminant respiratory failure (ARDS), which can happen very suddenly. She coded. Cardiopulmonary arrest....she stopped breathing AND her heart stopped beating. It took 3 minutes of CPR and medications to get a pulse back. She was in the ICU for almost 3 weeks. We didn't think she was going to make it through that first weekend. We basically had to keep her in a coma at first to avoid her agitation from the ventilator and drug withdrawls. I saw her every day during that time. I talked to her family. I talked to her, even though she couldn't respond. I held her hand and wondered about her life. For some reason she was just different. She was 28 years old (younger than me) but she looked like she was in her 40's. Product of what my mother used to call "hard livin'," I guess. I thought about the people Jesus ministered to and could see her there. A down-and-out kinda gal looking for someone to take away all the pain. On the day we extubated her (removed her breathing tube to let her breathe on her own), she had been a little lethargic, but woke up when I went in to see her. I will never forget those brief few seconds when she felt my hand, opened her eyes, and they locked onto mine. World weary brown eyes met blue soul weary ones. Searching desperation met a hope. The patient and the doctor. The sinner and the saint. And as two huge tears rolled down each side of her face, I saw it all. Her misery, my swift judgment, her sins, mine. I felt like, without intentionally trying to sound dramatic, that I was staring into the very eyes of humanity. She smiled, and still too hoarse to talk, mouthed the words, "thank you." I felt two tears falling down my own face that mirrored hers, and I saw myself in her eyes. And, most importantly, I saw Jesus.



PART II

God used that to start changing my heart. Essentially, He convicted the snot out of me. (I can't think of another way to put it....that's how I felt and I am from Livingston Parish, after all.) An answered prayer, duh. I began to read the gospels again. I was drawn to Luke mostly because it is such a beautiful picuture of the humanity of Christ. I also think there is something amazing about the physician writing about the Great Physician. I saw facets of Christ's character that I've never seen before (that's an entirely different blog). I read Matthew 25:40 and 11:28, and I read Luke 5:31-32. Read them. Then read them again. Read Luke all the way through. Twice. I promise you won't come away from that unchanged. Jesus spent his time with thieves, liars, prostitutes, people who someone in your family may refer to as "not our kind." Does this mean we should go out and get trapped in all of these addictions and sins? Absolutely not. But it does mean that if we want to be like Jesus we cannot ignore them. It also means that we cannot superficially help meet their needs--physically (medically) or spiritually--all the while thinking that we are still better than them in some sense. Jesus said in Luke 5:31-32: "It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance." That includes us, my friend. As a matter of fact, our own righteousness is like filthy rags. Filthy. Rags. "Filthy" alone implies there is some redemptive value (like you could clean it up), but "filthy rags" (at least to me) says it's not even worth a passing shot. Undesirable. Discarded. Useless. Wrap your mind around that. Ouch. You want to know what the difference between "us" and "the least of these" is? They know they're not good enough for God, but we, even though intellectually (and in the deepest portion of our soul) we have read the scriptures and should know better, lull ourselves into this sense of spiritual snobbery....we cover up up our inadequacy with a good spit shine of respectability...of being "good." Hmmm.


At the same time as this was going on, I heard Todd Agnew's song "My Jesus" on the radio and really listened to it. It was kind of strange that the radio station in the greater LC area has aired it so much recently because it's at least 2 years old. (Seriously, have you heard it? It's not all sunshine and care bears, my friend. When you first hear it, it's actually unsettling.) Regardless of if you like his music or not, his songs are a gritty, no-holes-barred look at our Lord, our own sin, and the relationship between the two.

This, in turn, led me to be really excited about his (Todd...I don't think he would mind if we dispensed with the formalities) scheduled performance on the Music Boat (the most awesome vacation ever.) The first night we could see him, with my not-so-subtle insistence, we were there. Funny thing, though, he really didn't sing too much. 1 new song and maybe 2 old ones ("My Jesus" excluded). He mostly just talked about the new album and what it means to him. The album is titled "Better Questions," and is a sort of soul-searching about some tough questions. Included in this is, you guessed it, the whole concept of "the least of these." There are several songs about this on his album, and it seems yours truly isn't the only one all convicted about this. He said (my paraphrase) that we pass these people all the time, and we send a few dollars, or invite them to church....give them a meal...tell them Jesus loves them and think they should learn from us. But if you watch them, and he used the example of a homeless musician on a corner in Memphis (which is actually a song title), that there is something so desperate in their relationship with God and how they seek Him that maybe we should learn from them. Hmmm. Radical concept? Not really. Read Luke. :)

This was just an echoing of what I had been going through in my own life and had not yet had the wherewithall to put it into words. {Andy Stanley would call this process a "defining moment." (Embracing an uncomfortable truth from the Gospel.")} We had the chance to listen to him again later in the week, and by the end of the concert, I was in the back (crying) praising a merciful, glorious God who so readily forgives.


I wanted to tell Todd on the boat how much he blessed us (at least myself and Stacy), but wasn't quite ready to talk about it yet. (What would I say besides, "I sooo get it.", anyway?) I was going to tell him via "friends of Todd Agnew" but I have not been approved by the site administrator. (I'm still optomistic that my background check will come out clean, and I can be a friend.) This isn't about him, but if you haven't listened to his music, you should. Even if you don't like his style, his songs are the Word that just happens to be in musical form. The new album comes out in July.

This is what's been on my heart lately. Sorry it was so long and probably not as grammatically correct as it should be, but no less real. What do you think?