"It means that I can be weak but that I can still bravely stare all of my fears in the face. It means that when I feel the calling to go overseas and minister to the broken-hearted and downtrodden and leave the comforts of my first-world home, I do not have to be afraid. I hold the power of strength. Or when I can’t come up with the right words to say to tell someone just how much Jesus loves them, I do not have to panic. I hold the power of wisdom.
When I am faced with someone who sees no way out, who has lost someone, who has been broken, I do not have to search frantically to comfort them. I hold the power of hope. When I look at my husband-to-be and worry that I can never love him the way he deserves to be loved, I do not have to fear. I hold the power to love.
... I do not have to provide hope or wisdom or comfort. It is already there waiting...There is power in the blood."
"power in the blood", a.hancock (for relevant)
monday was another new start for me, the beginning of a new set of four weeks in a new place with new expectations and new hours and new new new everything. i've been taking it easy the past few months, so i should have anticipated the minor nightmare i had the night before i started, and the migraine that appeared around noon. if i had thought a little more, i would have brought some excedrine and not suffered through the day feeling nauseated and hoping i wouldn't keel over in the ungodly hot ICU.
i get migraines not infrequently now. i used to have them all the time in elementary school, but they tapered off in high school, nearly disappearing in college. now i get 2 or 3 a month. there are probably a dozen triggers, but there are only two i can pinpoint: certain red wines, and clenching my jaw. the former is easy to control (alas), but the latter is something i apparently did all morning yesterday until the migraine set in. i noticed it too late.
why the jaw clenching? my resident had said hello, smiled, mentioned that the service had 32 patients and that we had to see them all by lunch. oh, and that we (the neurology team) were being consulted on several patients that day, and could i please go take care of a patient on the 9th floor who is HIV+ and having headaches and trouble breathing, thanks. oh, and nice to meet you, page me when you're done. by the time i hit the elevator, you'd think i was in a race to eliminate all enamel from the surfaces of my molars. grind, grind, grind. clench, clench, clench.
it's just been 3 months since i've been in a hospital, that's all. it just takes a bit to get your mind back into shape, back into the place where it can take a complex human and break him down into organ systems, disease processes, probable solutions, and a plan to rule out everything it isn't. it could take a few minutes or a whole day to get back in the game, but that should be ok. i should expect this too. instead, i am panicked. i deal with too few HIV cases, i am thinking. he could have anything. anything. what do i do first? how do i put this all together? should this be so hard for me? i am about to graduate and i can't even think? my head starts to throb for a moment. the elevator door opens, and i can hear my own heart beat, the blood pounding in my ears.
there is power in the blood. not in mine, but in Christ's. Christ died for me, replacing my insufficiency with His Life. reading relevantmagazine today, i looked again at that moment of panic, a moment when i knew i was not enough. i fear i'll never know enough, but here is the truth: it will always be God who whispers diagnoses in my ear. it will always be Him that pauses me when something is not right. it will always be because of Him that i am being given this responsibility of being a physician, because He has been whispering answers in my ear all along. it has always been Him. it has never been me.
God knows how incompetant, how fearful, how selfish i am far better than i do. i can see those things in me, but they are the flesh of me. but then there is the blood, His blood in me too. so where i am weak, i am like steel, and where i am afraid, i am a lion. where i have panicked... i will refuse to forget the rest of me, the blood in me, which is calm and still and clear. i am His, and He is in me, and there is wonder-working power in that blood.
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