There was a woman with dementia, pretty bad dementia, and a bum knee. She couldn’t follow commands to get her sitting at the edge of her bed. It took about 10 minutes. It was one of the worst cases I’ve ever seen. Even though she was able to speak, her words made little sense, and she comprehended almost nothing. I handed her a deodorant, and she put it in her mouth and sucked it. She didn’t know what it was for. She wasn’t able to give me much information on her life, past or present.
Other than the knee, she had the cleanest medical history you’ve ever seen. No heart disease. No diabetes. No stroke. Not even high blood pressure.
I worked with her and she gradually started to make progress. After working a ton of extra hours for two weeks, I took a 3 days off. When I returned, I discovered (to my surprise) that she had passed away.
I was so surprised, and asked my boss (whose religious beliefs I don’t know) what had happened.
“It was really strange. Some of her friends visited the day after New Years. It turns out that her husband was a pastor and the visitors were church members at the church they pastored. After they left, she kept saying “I can’t wait to go and serve my Lord again! I can’t wait to serve my Lord.” She kept repeating it all afternoon.”
“She went to bed that night. They checked on her in the morning and she was sleeping. They checked on her an hour or two later and found that she had passed peacefully in her sleep.”
As I look back on my time in nursing homes, this stands out as one of the most powerful moments. God used that patient to testify to me (and my co-workers). “I am faithful to the very end. There is purpose in every life until the very end. I put her there to show you that. I still see and love every person that you care for with dementia, and my love is so strong that the person who can’t remember her own name remembers me. Her heart for serving is what pleased me. I can use the things and people most people don’t see any use for. All breathing things have purpose, and Ms. S was to show you that I am faithful even through circumstances that don’t make sense”
I can’t help but think sometimes about the way Ms. S served God in a nursing home. Christ in her shone through in a wonderful way, despite her suffering. I can’t help but imagine the utter joy she must be feeling now, restored and seated in the presence of God.
All because she chose (in that moment and her whole life) to let her suffering be an opportunity to serve.
During my first job as an OT, I went to work with the intention of loving my patients and pouring that out on them. For the most part, Christ was highly evident in my attitude.
Towards the end of that job, I did have one regret. While I loved my patients and was very gracious towards my co-workers, I didn’t really invest in my co-workers to the same degree. To some extent, I stayed a bit separate so I wouldn’t be tempted to complain etc. The reality that I realized at the end, however, was that they see me every day, and employment is an opportunity to show other employees God’s love, too. We spend more time together than with our families or patients. You end up hearing their lives and caring about them just as much. In short, I felt like I missed an opportunity.
I decided that as I entered this job, I would really be intentional about connecting with and investing in my co-workers. It turns out that the other registered therapists are my best friends. Some are moms, some are singles, some are married. All the full-time staff are unsaved, and most make drastically different life choices, but we all have so much fun with each other. I’m excited to see them after a vacation.
But y’all. I could tell you some stories that you wouldn’t believe. And some co-workers? Plain inconsiderate, incompetent, unreliable and lazy. I’m not sure how Jesus would do working with them, but I have struggled at times. Sometimes, I have done well with not complaining and/or gossiping, and other times, in order to not appear too “holier-than-thou” or just because I was plain fed up, I have joined right in.
The last two weeks, we’ve been down half our rehab staff, and I have been more stressed and reactive than usual. I do think my co-workers would use really kind and favorable words to describe me, but I don’t think ‘Christ-like’ would be something to come to mind.
I believe in ‘starting over’ within the job/situation we’re in. I know that God can help us change our hearts, behavior, actions, and love in the places we’re already in. I’ve stayed in situations not seeking change just so that I would learn how to not run, or always be running. But, sometimes life hands us natural breaks as opportunities.
I start a new job in just over a week. I’ve worked a bit separated from my co-workers and a bit too comfortable.
Going into this job, I want to be intentional about my attitude. I want to remember that I have a choice in how I handle stress. I want to be real and also gentle. I want to love my co-workers and make sure they feel that, while staying true to myself and my values. I want to be friends with those most-entrenched in sinful behaviors, but keep Christ right there with us. I want to live changed to the core, because I want others to wonder what’s different, just like I did because of my best friend Rheanna.
I think part of that will be routinely asking myself these questions:
Would I want someone to say this about me if I were a patient?
Does this (funny, witty, shrewd etc) comment glorify me or God?
Am I ‘living loved’ and sharing that with others?
Do I need to ask God to change or teach me in a certain area?
By grace, I can get up tomorrow and be better. Start a new job and pour out Godly love, not just my love.
P.S. The breakthrough has been real. It’s crazy how God just can work a way to a heart.
I started this blog on what turned out to be the tail end of a 7-month high after surrendering to God. God showed me how fun it could be to surrender to His plans, and also how fun it could be to work on a craft that He gave me passion for.
Working on writing and spoken word pieces demands the majority of my time and a boatload of emotional and spiritual energy. It is exhilarating, but it’s mostly exhausting. It’s difficult. It’s hard for me to sleep as lines shoot across the mind-sky. It’s hard for me to balance worship + writing nights with participating in life with other people. There are weeks I walk around work on 4-6 hours of sleep, with little more on the weekends.
Writing also requires a lot more battling for spiritual purity. On my second poem, I realized that the more I wrote, the more there would be a temptation to use God–to hear what He had to say to write it down to share, instead of just sitting in that moment of worship. That battle kind of terrified me, the girl used to worshipping for no other reason than God’s goodness and presence in my little water boiler room. I thought laying off writing for a while would help maintain spiritual purity and my mental health with rest. The funny thing is that this writing-free time has strained my relationship with God instead of deepening it.
Instead of filling up that time with more God, I filled it up with other more hypothetically restful things. And when it got late, I skipped things that I know work to keep me tied to God. I still didn’t feel rested. I was still exhausted. I wasn’t able to connect with God and His presence in the same way that I was able to pre-writing.
I don’t believe Jesus died so we could all pretend that we’re great and holy, so yeah, I opened up my brokenness here. You’ve seen and smelled and grasped it through the words, I’m sure, and I’m sure it didn’t feel like the breath of fresh faith you or I thought it would be when I first started the blog. There has been fruit from that, but a lingering sense of brokenness still persisted.
But this week, an unexpected revelation broke the dam. Joy broke through. It awes me how God can speak to us individually. That has been a hallmark of our relationship, of any relationship. No cookie cutter answers from this one.
It was quite simple. I just had to hear it. “Godlessness is worse than sleeplessness.” Not writing because it makes me tired/failing to live out the purpose God has for me is worse than sleeplessness, especially because true rest comes from God. If I know that God has a couple things marked out for me to do, and I choose not to do them because I’m afraid of a little less sleep, I’m forfeiting God. He’s worth staying up late for. He’s the only thing worth investing the bulk of my time in.
I’ve learned that God was in that time of just me and Him pre-writing, but He is also in writing time. He wants me to battle to live out my purpose with humility, consistency and strength. He wants me to rest, and yes, rest in Him. He wants me to have fun. But He also wants me to be unafraid of a little discomfort and sacrifice when it comes to the things He has called me for. He wants me to continue sharing what He has taught me in His grace and patience.
I wrote in my first entry how purpose is so tied to joy. I write this entry to re-affirm its truthfulness. I write to encourage you to not be afraid of your own fatigue in serving God. Reassess, but don’t stop. I write to encourage your patience as you wait on your own word from the Lord that ends the drought. His victory is assured. His love is personal. The devil has no power to prevent a breakthrough of God to an open heart.
You may get back from vacation and head back to work slightly angry. Or a lot angry.
Treating your caseload may bring a feeling of dread rather than joy as you walk from one rude and/or refusing patient’s room to another.
You work through those times. You learn how to love, that it depends on God and not them, but sometimes the thoughts still wreck you: I was made for more than this.I’m not using my full gifting. All the hard work didn’t really matter.
The overwhelming sense may haunt you. This isn’t what I thought my life would look like. After all, other times in your life, working hard and being dynamic had its rewards. You were chosen. You made the grade. You succeeded. But sometimes, you aren’t given the opportunity to succeed in the way you pictured right away.
You may gradually start to give up hope for anything different. You probably will not even realize that you had given up hope, until you regain a shred of it.
Because you, the academic high-performer who loves people and pursued a calling (not to mention completed kickass research and program development studies along the way) weren’t able to find an acute care job. Or a home health job. Or a pediatric job.
So yeah, you may eventually realize that sometimes you don’t get your dream job right out of school and start at the bottom. I don’t know how much lower it can get than a nursing home that the state almost shut down. That really only gets admissions that no one else will take. You only got that job because you went to a job fair. You work hard. You try to see the best, trust the best, do your best, and when all else fails, you read Ecclesiastes. If there’s a book of the Bible for a struggling employee, that’s it.
Thankfully, you have fun and hilarious rehab co-workers in the trenches with you.
Make no mistake, sometimes, working in certain places is like its own kind of war. It is a small kind of miracle that I have never dreaded going to work where I worked because of the other therapists there. Working with your best friends rocks.
You apply to a few jobs, but the phone never rings. One of the per diems who works at one place gets your application pulled. You interview, and it’s close, but you don’t get the job. You meet another person who likes you and worked for that hospital. She says she’ll talk to her boss when you apply next, but no jobs are posted. The false starts discourage you.
You start to trust that God did make you for more, but that it didn’t really involve your profession. You believe your purpose lies in other areas. You pursue those gifts. And you secretly doubt that God can overcome the reputation of That Facility in a hiring manager’s mind. Probably because you’ve seen recognition flit across faces.
You resign yourself to the fact that you may be a “skilled nursing facility OT” forever.
So you humbly serve. You change bedpans and bedsheets and briefs that the aides refuse to change. You learn how to see that severely impaired patient through God’s eyes. You are yelled at by aides. You learn how to function in a dysfunctional environment. You identify three strokes and one heart attack and run for the physician because the nurses tell you “they’re fine. It’s just a seizure” (just like that blood pressure you got of 70/35 was “really 110/70. You don’t know what you’re doing.” Thankfully the cardiologist and 2 nursing supervisors agree with you). You learn how to treat patients how Jesus would if he were an OT. Sometimes you fail. But you show up again Monday with grace and try again. You pray for and with patients. You see two healings as an immediate and direct result of prayer.
You get sucked into negativity. You learn how to not get sucked into negativity. You laugh with long-term care residents. You rejoice with the 60-70% of patients who go home. You ask Jesus to come with you through the halls. You snort beer up all over the bar with your boss. You love the therapists and are loved by them. And you wait. You learn that this life is so short in light of eternity. Suffering 80 years for a billion blissful ones in God’s presence is so worth it (-Jennie Allen). So you labor on in the place God put you, because He’s worth it, and you wait on the Lord.
Because God, He kind of likes waiting. He likes the fruits of it, which are surrender, trust, peace and thanksgiving. It’s knowing that your blessings and opportunities are not you, your decisions, or your personality. What you have, be it a main squeeze or a job or a child or a breakthrough, is because of God and His goodness. You learn to trust that what you don’t have, be it a main squeeze, a job you love, a child or a healing, are also because of God and His goodness.
Looking back now, I see the purpose of it all. Some of it I’ve known. Working in geriatrics was an unexpected blessing. I found out that I am much more patient than I ever thought possible. God humbled me. He taught me how to stay in the game, and how to make some of our most vulnerable laugh. And when I was transferred to the second SNF? I made best friends turned references. I could lean on co-workers in confidence as the fruit of 2.5 years of doing my best.
What the speech language pathologist had said used to sting me, as statements related to unfulfilled dreams often do. “Joyce, I’ve worked in pediatrics, geriatrics, acute care and private practice over 18 years. You are the best OT that I have ever worked with. Ever. You are just so functional and such a good teacher.” The feeling of untapped potential wasting away just ate at me. As did the desire for someone involved in hiring to see that someday. Why couldn’t they see that I was made for this?
But she put that and more on a reference, as did 5 other people eager to give reviews. And that dream of working at a small community hospital with a great boss and team was suddenly realized. The proximity was perfect, too.
If I had gotten those other jobs I wanted earlier, I wouldn’t have had this opportunity. This is a far better fit for me than either of those.
And now…I’m grateful for how God helped me embrace the everyday grace of being present where I was, finding joy in my toil, and pouring into people. And I’m giddy with excitement over how well He knows me and how carefully He orders my steps.
I will make my final decision on Tuesday based on the counter-offer. But, if they come up, which I expect they will…I think it will truly be a match made in heaven.
Wait on the Lord, because He has a plan. Wait on the Lord, because even if His plan is for you to remain where you are, He makes the journey more enjoyable and more fruitful. Wait on the Lord, because His name is written all over what’s in store for you. Wait on the Lord for the simple fact that He is worthy of nothing less than our best effort. That, combined with His Spirit, teaches us lessons we couldn’t have learned otherwise.
breathoffreshfaith 