Be kind and compassionate to one another ... Eph 4:32
It had been a difficult week but finally it was Friday. Each day I had been overbooked and had events scheduled with family or church that compressed my evening work hours. Consequently I had rushed through each day and each patient like a Formula 1 driver. But I got it done.
As I was sitting at my workstation, cleaning up records on my computer, my favorite medical assistant, Gwyn, dropped off some papers to sign and then paused at the door as she was leaving.
“You know, Dr.___, you made me cry today.”
Time pressure for a doctor is inevitable. Hurting people within that pressure is not.
Most of us as Christian doctors see our mission as service and witness to patients. When I am at work, I focus on that mission and pour myself into it, even when my work some days seems more like survival school than ministry. When I am hard pressed and focused, I sometimes forget those who serve with me: my staff, my colleagues---my family. I sometimes, though unaware, use them for what they can accomplish rather than see them as partners in God’s ministry and persons who need God’s touch. I sometimes forget that my witness for Christ touches them every day, that my actions will bring them closer to or drive them farther from the Lord by the way I show them love, that my influence with them is far more pervasive than my influence with the patients I see every few weeks or months.
When we find ourselves caught in an overwhelming, time pressured day, we should stop, pray and deliberately tell ourselves to be kind to all of those who work with us and for us, especially to our families.
No one who wants to show Christ to the world should ever hear, “Dr___, you made me cry today.”
Dear Father,
When the pressure is on, please remind me of your love for those around me--- and make me be kind.
Amen
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