Familiarity.

I'm back at work for the night. Sitting at the little blue desk behind a fiberglass window, hello, what's your name, why is your child sick, sign here please, thank you.



I often think of the familiarity with which nurses treat the human body. And the utter trust that most people place in our hands, just because we have the letters "RN" behind our name on our badge. Complete strangers, trusting that we will do no harm, will work our best to bring their children back to complete health - or at least in a bit better shape than they were brought in.



I find myself holding hands, stroking forheads, patting backs, of children and anxious parents I was unaware existed minutes ago. Asking teenagers to allow me to ask them the most personal, embarrassing questions, to expose their awkward bodies to me, to divulge secrets even their best friends don't know. Listening and holding kleenex's out to parents as they pour out their stories to me, stories of abandonment and struggling as a single mom and the loss of trust between loved ones, even though I can't remember their first name, because I'm there and I ask and my vocation calls for compassion in all situations - and they understand that.



Some of favorite moments of work - those, "aha! this is why I'm a nurse" - come when I'm simply standing in a room next to a child, lying with eyes closed, lights darkened, or maybe even eyes open and staring up at me, those dark, lash-framed, slightly fearful yet trustful at the same time. I hold my stethescope up to their chest, or I slowly push a medicine through their IV that will relieve their pain or ease their breathing. Three or four minutes, nothing said between us, yet I can hear their raspy breaths, the hiccups of a child who's just finished a crying spell, the long tired sigh of a parent struggling to stay awake after sixteen or eighteen hours of caring for a sick child. Nursing opens the door for me to step into someone else's world, to accept that the relief of their pain and suffering is my responsibility - sometimes that responsibility can be heavy.

I also have decided, through my nursing work, that our culture is incredibly touch-deprived. Yes there is plenty of I'm-needy-touching of bodies, satisfy-my-needs-touching, make-me-feel-good-touching; an overload perhaps. But the focus of all of the above is me, me, me. That touch that says - I'm here, I care about you, I am present with you in your pain, in your good times, in your life - it is a rare person who knows how to employ that without any selfish ambition at all. With simply the desire to give hope and encouragement to that person. Just ask yourself - when was the last time that you were given a good, I-care-about-you-and-think-you're-great huge with anyone other than your significant other?

Being a nurse makes me think about all these things - about true compassion, the frailty of the human body, the need for empathetic touch. Nursing is an expression of Christ to the world, in a sense.

"Therefore, as God's chosen people, holy and dearly loved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience." "Finally, all of you, live in harmony with one another; be sympathetic, love as brothers, be compassionate and humble." "He heals the brokenhearted and binds up their wounds."

"Jesus went throughout Galilee, teaching in their synagogues, preaching the good news of the kingdom, and healing every disease and sickness among the people. 24News about him spread all over Syria, and people brought to him all who were ill with various diseases, those suffering severe pain, the demon-possessed, those having seizures, and the paralyzed, and he healed them."

It's easy for me, as a follower of Christ, to simply go to my job, do the motions, to reject the deeper meaning of my vocation. Yet then I have those quiet moments, almost like that moment in the movie Big Fish, where Ewan McGregor's character freezes the motion in the circus tent, brushes aside popcorn from in the air, and stares intently into the blue eyes of a fresh-faced girl, because he knows instinctively that this moment contains crucial meaning for his life. It's easy to let those moments flash past me.

Yet God is speaking to me through every person I care for - that meth-addicted mom screaming frustratedly at her toddler; the 16-year-old looking at me with empty eyes as she describes her rape; the chubby 5th-grader trying to catch his breath before the asthma catches him and ends him for good; they are all Jesus. He looks up at me with those empty eyes, walks past me in the hall, asks impatiently when he will be seen - asking me, Will you love me, in every shape, form, size, color, smell? Will you see me for who I really am?

Do you love Me?