12/25/09  0315 hrs.

On this Christmas morning as I sit in the ICU I pray for a better year to come. I pray that never again will I  take care of someone whose heart is so distraught that they douse them self with gasoline an set them self on fire. I pray that I never bring another mother back into ICU to visit her two only sons that have gunshot wounds. I pray that I will find the words to help her grieving heart . And I hope I will not breakdown myself because it doesn't help her. How do you tell a weeping mother her son in room 4 was shot in the neck and is now a quardaplegic; then tell her the person who shot him is her other son, his brother in room 7? It's a rhetorical question and I don't want to know the answer. I pray that as I write this knowing that I am on the Code Team, no code will be called over the intercom tonight on Christmas. This year I have felt to many ribs break under my hands as I do compressions with CPR. I don't like that feeling. I pray that when I do go to a code I don't once again have do compressions on a womans chest that is so badly eaten with cancer that blood squishes up between my fingers. And I pray that her family will come to know when it's time to let her go and stop the madness. I pray that I always remember that I the greatest gift I have ever given a person, is a drink of cold water. I saw the gratitude in the face of a nameless poor homeless woman who wanted nothing more in this world than to just quench the thirst in her dry throat. And when I gave her that drink she immediately died in my arms.

And I pray that when these disturbing things creep out of the dark places in my mind where I lock them, that they don't come out again on Christmas Day.

And I pray this Christmas morning that as this new year progresses that I will read the Sermon on the Mount once a week. This reinforces in my mind, no matter what, it will be okay.  And I pray that when on Sunday mornings when I get off a shift like this, that I remember that no mater how tired I am, I need to go to church so God can remind me, it's going to be okay