His Grace, My Weakness

It was a perfect storm at the hospital last night. A full moon which filled the ER over maximum capacity coupled with a hurricane across the country wreaking havoc on the base for our hospital's computer charting/information system. Winning combo. The shift began with 85+ in the ER lobby, waiting to be seen, and the whole hospital struggling to pull out the old paper charting methods, with fax machines down, backup systems overloaded with spotty service at times, calls flooding the floors in an attempt to maintain communication between lab, pharmacy, cardiology, ER, administration, doctors and family members, and patients coming up to the floor with sometimes no more information than a last name and diagnosis. Patient transfers. Chest pain. Phone call for a missing bed in room 26. The testing of patience, flexibility, and perseverance of all began and didn't let up. Expletives flowed through the phone calls between the floor and administration. Frustration was building and turned into bold-faced back-talking and back-biting. Deep breaths. Inpatient beds began to fill up right around the time that the system partially came back up. Some patients on electronic charts, some not. Admitting so back-logged that they were often unreachable. The awkward in-between time where paper charting was finished but patients were not up in electronic charts. More confusion and phone calls. One nurse was lost to ER in an attempt to help reconcile the paper and electronic charts. Labs started coming back, with one patient needing to be transferred to an inpatient bed because of an MI. Soon after, got a call that inpatient beds were full with our floor becoming an emergency inpatient overflow unit. More admissions, sicker patients, and another phone call for the bed still missing in room 26. A patient was scheduled to arrive at 0500 for a procedure with no sign of them at 0545. Answering machine was reached and message left. More patients coming up from ER. Silent treatment from coworkers. Everyone admitting. 0605 and patient kindly showed up for procedure with a scramble to get them admitted and ready to be picked up at 0645, the time agreed upon between departments. Call received at 0630 saying that an orderly was coming to pick the patient up early. Day shift nurses began trickling in with chaos in full swing... At 0703 find out that the day charge nurse was sick and was not coming in today or for the rest of the week. Somehow the communication was lost between management, administration and our floor. Day shift was now understaffed with patients needing to be reassigned to accommodate a backup charge nurse taking over last minute. More expletives received over the phone with management. Report given. Narcotic count done. Charting finished. Final checks completed. Third and final call made for the bed missing in room 26. Clocked out 30 minutes late. Good wishes given to day shift staff. Commenced speed walk to my car. Drive begun. Green light out of the hospital, and immediately a car unnecessarily stopped in the middle of the road, blocking my lane. Stopped. Car moved. GO. Red light. Stopped. Green light. GO. Stuck behind school bus. STOPPED. Looked to my left as a truck darted through the median, around cars stopped behind the bus, and sped ahead like stopping was not the law or important for the safety of our children... Quickly realizing that this truck was doing exactly what I WANTED to do, I was immediately struck with gratitude for grace. And the funny thing was it wasn't even the grace that got me through one of the most challenging nights of my nursing career that I was most grateful for in that moment. It was the grace of the Spirit alive in me, producing fruit including peace, patience, goodness, gentleness, and self-control. The fruit that kept me from shouting out the same expletives that I'd heard all night at the car who was unnecessarily stopped in the road. The fruit that kept me from running the red lights that kept interrupting my straight path home. The fruit that gave me perspective to wait behind the bus instead of zooming on ahead. I am often overwhelmed at how far I am from holiness, how much work is ahead of me on this road of sanctification, how far short I fall from Christ-likeness. But today, rather than being overwhelmed in that sense, I was overwhelmed with the grace which enables this proud, impatient, selfish, hard headed, pathetically weak, comfort-seeking rebel to wait patiently, to control anger, to give gracious responses, to hold my tongue, to rest in peace in a world which threatens to undo all the work which Christ died to begin. Thankful that Christ is sufficient in my weakness and that I can boast gladly in my weakness because of his strength.