Grace. We take this gift for granted.
Grace, it’s being given what one doesn’t deserve.
It’s a word, that relieves you of sentence.
I was on call again on Friday. An old man had a litre of urine dangerously trapped in his abdomen and I was called to catheterize him. No doubt a gruesome job but someone has to do it. I needed assistance as I usually do but the nurse in that particular ward was being difficult and didn’t want to help. Why can’t you do it yourself? She said to my face. My pride wounded, I felt bitter towards her. Something in me turned angrily. Exhausted after having worked about 20 hours by then and having a list of patients to see piling up on me, my tone took on a hard, unaffectionate hue. I wasn’t so nice anymore.
And that made me ashamed.
I was called to see another elderly patient to insert another tube to relieve the faecal matter which had accumulated in her tummy. She was very ill by then. When morning came, she collapsed and I ended up doing CPR on her. That night on call, I had been doing a number of things for her but in the morning as her face went white and her eyes closed, I realized how short life is, how fragile we are, and how inadequate we can sometimes be. Retrospectively, one can’t help but wonder, she would have survived had I tried harder. Maybe she would have lived if I had done this and this, that and that. Maybe she wouldn’t have left so soon in that way.
It went on and on in my head.
That night on call after I had attended to her and we had time to catch some sleep, I dreamt that I was carrying a pint of blood to a very sick patient for resusitation, but by the time I had reached the destination, all the blood had leaked out onto the floor. Worse, as I held the bag of drained life-giving blood in my hands, I forgot to whom I was supposed to deliver it and infuse it into.
In that dream, I know I was mortified.
After all, what does one do when one realizes one has feet of clay, too.
Sometimes, all it takes is one 30-hour call where one is tired, stretched and battered in all directions to speak to new patients, do the necessary investigations, attend to your existing sick ones and still remain sane, to realize (to one’s horror) how curt, unkindly, irritated and incompetent one can be. All at once, one doesn’t feel so high and mighty anymore. All that knowledge accumulated over the past 5 years seems to come to nothing.
But life goes on. Whether we think we’ve inadvertently harmed someone or not, caused someone more affliction than healing, more harm than good, life goes on. I still go to work every day with the privilege of having a new person place his trust in me, I still go to work with a joy and a sense of divine purpose in my heart, I still go to work to face patients who look to me for answers and with gratitude.
But I go with Grace.
I go, knowing deep down I don’t deserve this, knowing deep down that I’ve made mistakes and will continue to, that I’ve deep character flaws and issues to deal with, that I’ve so much to learn as a junior doctor about saving lives.
And that’s how I know how gracious God really is.
Because this everyday Grace I receive, is an undeserved Gift.
“For it is by grace you have been saved,
– Ephesians 2:8