Just days before, I was both a bystander and a participant to another defining moment. On Thursday morning I was called completely unexpectedly out of my clinic to the emergency room. The only thing I was told was that one of my pregnant patients was crashing, currently being intubated, and that I needed to come immediately. What I saw when I walked through the door will be a memory I will probably never forget. By the time I arrived, my patient who was 29 weeks pregnant, was being coded. The visual of multiple people around her, a man adminstering chest compressions, and monitors blaring was overshadowed by the site of her very pregnant belly and the two lives that were hanging in the balance. Even for seasoned medical personnel, this is not something we often nor ever want to witness. As a doctor who usually brings life into the world, it rattled my core. The one thing that kept flooding my mind was another moment just two weeks earlier.
Two weeks prior to this my choir went to a local nursing home and sang Christmas carols for the residents. It was touching and emotional. We were probably ministered to more than they were. As we were finishing up, a young pregnant woman was coming in the building to start her shift at work. One of the ladies in the choir struck up a conversation with her. The lady shared this would be her seventh child. What transpired next, was that our entire choir laid hands on this young woman asked God for blessings for both her and her unborn child. That woman was my patient. The same one who was at that moment barely hanging on to life with a young daughter inside her. God knew each of these moments before we did. I don't know what was released supernaturally with our prayers, but I firmly believe something was.
Why? Because there is nothing more powerful than grace. My patient and her unborn child died that day. I had to wait for her husband to come to the emergency room and be there as we broke the news to him....another defining moment. As I held his hand, I felt the Holy Spirit tell me to reassure him over and over that he was not alone. God was with him. What he does with that knowledge and circumstances of losing his wife are in his hands. Ultimately I think this is what we all need to know as we navigate through those defining moments in life. We are not alone. God shows us that time and time again through grace and the relationships that he weaves like tapestry into our lives. It's how he works.
At the end of the movie, Fantine reappears as her redeemer is dying. As she sang in the closing scene, she tells us that "if you show a person kindness, then you've seen the face of God." You never know when you might be in a defining moment. Something that you might not think is eternally significant, such as praying for a stranger, might turn out to be more important that you ever realized. It's those moments in life that cause us to examine our choices, our priorities, and namely grace. Will we accept it or not? Salvation from God is the best example of grace there is. Kindness to people makes God alive and present in any situation, even difficult ones. "They suddenly recognize that God is a living, personal presence, not a piece of chiseled stone. And when God is personally present, a living Spirit, that old, constricting legislation is recognized as obsolete. We’re free of it! All of us! Nothing between us and God, our faces shining with the brightness of his face. And so we are transfigured much like the Messiah, our lives gradually becoming brighter and more beautiful as God enters our lives and we become like him." 2Corinth 3:17-18 MSG
The bottom line is we are all "Le Miserables", the poor, the wretched ones. This week made that more clear than ever.
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