I have been working a ton lately, I just finished an 8 day stretch of night shifts in a row. I was also responsible for training one of the new EST's as well. He is a great guy, Andrew, and I think that he will do very well in the ER so I really enjoyed getting to know him and working with him. On Sunday night, we had a trauma come in that was very nasty. I don't need to go into details here, but suffice it to say, it was a 17 year old kid who broke up with his girlfriend, got drunk, rolled his car and ended up dead. My streak is still alive, no one has died in my ER while I am on shift, this young man passed up in the ICU later the next day. His family was obviously very upset and distraught. I got to interact with them a little bit, but what can you say to people in this situation? I am called to be a pastor, but in times like that all you can do is pray, there are not words appropriate for that depth of sorrow and pain. In the past, I would have just let the emotions bury themselves and rationalized it by saying that is what you have to do in my line of work. There is a lot of things that I see that are sad and hard, but I am paid to be there for the people in those situations, so I have to function. This one bugged me though... I have some processing to do.
Ok, so I don't get much sleep and I go to work Monday night. We had a mother come in and deliver her baby in one of our triage rooms. This would have been a cool thing, intense, but cool if the baby had been full term. It was only 23 weeks, 3 months premature. Again to spare all the details, the baby did not survive this, despite valiant efforts from the NICU nurses and doctors. So, I haven't processed the night before and now I have this mind searing incident to process through. I will never forget the scene I walked into, never. This happened about 4:30 am and I still had 2 1/2 hours left of work. Again, I had to delay the processing of this tragedy until later.
You may be thinking, "Wow, Samuel should quit his job, that is too much!" If I leave this business, who will shine the light of Jesus in the way I am supposed to in my ER? Jesus has called me specifically to this job and provided a way for me to thrive here, despite all the hardship. So, join me in praying for the two families that experienced horrible tragedy this last weekend.
Jesus, I pray that You would bring Your peace and a strong sense of Your love to these two families. Cover them in Your Spirit and minster to them in the way only You can.
Now, most of you know that I stay up after work usually. I go to the YMCA and swim, get coffee, spend time with Jesus etc... This morning, I had arranged to hang out with Justin Wirtz (my favorite skinny 16 year old punk who hurts my back) and get coffee. We had a great time together sharing life and growing... still haven't had a lot of opportunity to process the emotional overload from the last few nights. On my way home, I am beginning to think about all this hoping to begin the process of healing, when I get a phone call that could change my life...
It was the Tacoma Fire Department asking me to continue in the hiring process. Brief overview, TFD hires every two years, if at all. 1300 people applied, 900 took a written test, 400 took a physical test that only 240 people passed. From those 240 people who passed all the elements of the testing process, I heard that 75 people got invited to interview for the job, and I think that they will hire somewhere between 20-40. You can read some of my past blogs and my thoughts from other steps in the testing process. I was asked to interview, and I have the Oral Board, as it is called, on December 19th at 9:30 am. The Oral Board consists of 4-5 ranking people within TFD and is basically you proving yourself to them in an intense fashion. They have difficult questions designed to trick you and see how much you have prepared for the interview. My job in this Oral Board is to communicate to these people, in spite of the difficulties presented to me, how well I will do in their department. This phone call is a big deal and the pendulum has now swung emotionally once again.
I now get to process 2 separate spectrums of emotions, pain & suffering : joy & anticipation.
The pendulum of life swings as the Lord wills it. In the past, I would have not thought to spend time processing all this. Now, as the Lord challenges me to be honest with myself, in every way and to do away with the facade that I put up, even to myself, I need to process this. I recognize this as a huge step in my maturity as a man, but that doesn't make it much easier.
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