Saturday, December 23, 2006

Christmas

Last night at around three o-clock or so I looked out the window from work and there was snow coming down, big flakes drifting softly in the pale orange light. I wanted to tell someone, but all my patients were asleep, except for one old man who couldn't talk back to me because he couldn't breathe. I sat next to his bed and told him about the snow, and how I'd been skiing the day before. I told him that I'd decided to try a double black diamond run and fallen down every time I tried to turn, all the way down the entire hill, and he laughed under his oxygen mask.
When he was drifting off to sleep I left him and sat in the nurses station and ate christmas candy that someone had left and thought about family and christmas and love, and God's gift of Jesus to us.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Those random moments at work are so precious. When you can take a step back from everything and just view the universe at large and marvel in the joy of knowing the Creator.

For me, it is being on watch at sea during the middle watch (0000-0400) on a clear night. Standing on the bridge wing and staring at the stars... Watching the interplay between the wind and the sea as spelled out by the waves... Seeing the stars on their march across the heavens...seeing the moon as it walks through its different phases from gibbous to crescent and waxing and waning... Seeing the ensign flapping in the wind... and enjoying it for the few seconds that you have before you have to get on with your work...