Continue On

 Good afternoon.

 The wife and I like to watch old TV.  Ed Sullivan, Carol Burnett, Hogan’s Heroes, and M.A.S.H. are some of our favorites.  We enjoy these old shows for a couple of reasons.  First, because we won’t see anything on any of these shows that is beyond a PG rating.  Second, these shows remind us of times past and gone when we would watch them with our parents and family.  And third, there were some unique and truly professional people on these shows…people of the caliber that is difficult to replicate in today’s world.  Buddy Ebson, Dick VanDyke, Tim Conway and others were fun to watch and demonstrated great (dare I say “one of a kind”) talent and ability in their field.

One of the shows I most like to watch, and which affects me the most is M.A.S.H.  We’re on, oh, I don’t know…the seventh or eighth (at least) repeat of the shows.  There were a total of 256 shows produced, and we’ve seen them all multiple times.  Yet the show continues to touch my heart in ways few other things do.  Why?

I think there are a couple of things at work here.  First, I was in EMS and health care for a number of years, so I have some familiarity with the scenes in the show.  Not only was I an ambulance attendant, but at the small hospitals where I worked, I also was frequently called on to help in the emergency room, in patient rooms, X Ray, or some other patient-related area.  I’ve seen a lot in my health care career.  I’ve seen, I’m guessing, about 30 people take their last breath…many of them people I knew.  I’ve worked accidents and other scenes where the victim was already deceased.  I’ve done suction, CPR, oxygen therapy, and other procedures as directed by a provider in the emergency room, patient room, or ambulance.

However, in all of this, one thing stood out.  I wasn’t alone.  We worked together, the other staff and me, as a team to do the best we could for the patient.  In those times, it didn’t matter if I particularly liked another staffer or not.  We did what we needed to do; we did it the best we could; and we often had good outcomes.

Second, there is the continual storyline in the M.A.S.H. show that the work never really ends.  People die.  Nurses and doctors go home.  Others ship out to some other part of the war.  Some new people move into the life of the 4077.  Yet the patients continue to come.  They just keep on showing up.

Finish one 30 hour O/R session…another one comes around in a day or two.  Save this soldier; lose the next one.  Patch them up so they can go back to the front and the fighting.  It all seems so pointless.  Yet, they do it anyway.

They do their jobs and do them well.  Each one…each one from colonel to private can be relied upon to carry out their particular mission at the M.A.S.H.  They do the hard things.  They do them well.  And they do them one. Patient. At. A. time.

 

There’s a lesson there…a lesson for us all, and particularly for me.  Sometimes it’s hard to even get up in the morning, let alone come in to work knowing that the day is largely an unknown quantity.  Yes, I have some idea what I’d like to accomplish this day, but I don’t know from moment to moment who may show up at the office door.  I don’t know what the next phone call may be about.  The emails come all day, without advance notice.  A member suffers a medical emergency.  Maybe a member comes to my office door with bad news of some kind.  The office visitors to our entrance door usually have some kind of need that requires some kind of immediate attention.  And just as is portrayed on some M.A.S.H. episodes, the need expressed is often a felt need when the real need lies hidden behind eyes that have seen entirely too much suffering and pain.

I get inspiration to continue the work we do at RiverWalk from many of the M.A.S.H. episodes.  I also am inspired by those I know in the greater Wichita community who, along with thousands of others, get up each day, knowing that the things they’ve planned for the day often will be supplanted by some kind of emergent situation that becomes the priority of the moment.

They will see the parts of society that most will never see.  They will interact with and work with people whose full time job is figuring out how to survive the day.  They will be doing the hard things…and doing them with compassion, kindness, and competence.

None of us will see the full picture.  We will only see what has been presented to us, and we may occasionally glimpse the story of another co-worker.  But somehow, it all seems to fit together and work together toward the goal of renewal…renewal of body and renewal of spirit.  The things my friends Suzie, Jennifer, Ryan, Julie, Tim, Mike, Kristen, Alaina, and a host of others do every day are all geared, whether they always realize it or not, toward renewal and new creation.

The work can be difficult.  It can be intense.  More often than it should be, the client we are working with will not follow up or help their situation in any meaningful ways, and we may have to disengage from that situation.

The work tends to drain us of both physical and emotional strength.  It often seems, just like in the M.A.S.H. episodes, to be a never-ending battle.  And it often seems like we’re all stuck in the mud, never moving forward, and sometimes getting stuck even deeper in the mire and muck.

Yet we continue…churches and faith communities, non-profits, government, and most of all individual people…we all continue to, as the Apostle Paul said, “press on toward the goal.”  That same apostle also admonished us to “Always excel in the work of the Lord, because you know that your labor in the Lord is not in vain.”  Good words.

Continue on…

 

Blessings…