hospital care

I don’t really like hospitals.

“But Heather, you’re a nursing student!”

Sure, but does anyone really enjoy hospitals? The smell, the food (and the smell that accompanies that), the drab colored walls, the lack of any kind of natural lighting, the germs…

I could go on forever.

But these things, silly things like smells and germs and a lack of color, I can look past that. Really, I can. But today, a few things about hospitals that I had never even noticed, hit me like a ton of bricks.

People here are breaking. Physically, mentally, they’re falling apart.

As I sat today by a warm window outside the cafeteria listening to Louis Armstrong on my way-too-big headphones, I noticed a man sitting next to me. He too was seated on a small couch by the window, but instead of the warmness I felt on my face, his face was colored with what I can only describe as brokenness. I felt as though I was watching this man slowly cave in as I sat in my little oblivious world sipping coffee and listening to ‘20s jazz. I had no idea who this man was or what was going on in his life, but I felt as though I should say something or do something.

But instead, I glanced at my watch, concluded that I hadn’t the time and headed on my way back upstairs.

It is not until now, as I am writing this, that I feel terribly convicted. I honestly justified the decision in my head as being inappropriate, that I might scare the man.

Okay, so why did I share this story with you? To scare you all into doing the right thing? Or to make myself feel better? To prove that I was convicted and am not a terrible person?

I pray that this would come off as anything but selfish, but rather me sharing my heart for the people as I saw God teach me a real-life parable in the story of that man.

At the hospital, that man outside the cafeteria and the kids in the cancer ward and the woman suffering from post-partum depression and the man who spends sleepless nights next to his wife as she lays in the hospital bed- they’re all hurting. They’re broken in need of fixing and here, at the hospital, it’s something you see everywhere. It’s easy to see as it usually presents as something quite obvious.

But what about in the real world? In our everyday lives? Isn’t the world filled with people just wandering around aimlessly, leaning on their IV poles, gasping for air, broken, caving in, and hurting trying to find something or someone to fix them? Out in the world, the man in the coffee shop reading the newspaper alone and the girl who sits next to you in your History class and the little boy at church- they’re all hurting. They’re broken in need of fixing.

But this brokenness is something much more severe than the physical, temporary ailments of the people in the hospital.

Ugh, but aren’t we all just too quick to plop on our giant headphones and blast the jazz music and sip coffee and pretend like everything is okay?

I know I am. I know it all too well.

It is time that I get out of my Christian “everything is okay” bubble and with the power of Christ in me, reach out to people who are sick and broken and hurting with the love of Jesus, the great physician.

And when Jesus heard it, he said to them, “Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick. I came not to call the righteous, but sinners.”

[Mark 2:17]

He heals the brokenhearted and binds up their wounds.

[Psalm 147:3]