Life preservers are extremely useful sometimes. However most of their lives are spent resting casually against the hull of a ship or beside the pool, bleached by the sun, corroded by too much salt, suffering under inflation or foam deterioration.  Just as in defibrillators they are kept around in the event they are needed, for important purpose of course, but then quietly tucked away in the hall drawer or hung on a plastic cradle. They don’t take it personally when people use them and then forget they are there because that is their purpose to be called on in emergency as needed.

What a joy to save lives.  What an extreme blessing to intervene for the sick and dying.  What a grand investment in mankind to love them, sit with them and nurse them to health.  Experiencing the excitement at watching someone walk again, learn again, live again is something only those caregivers know intimately.  What then when they go back to that position on the wall, in the drawer or tucked neatly on a shelf until called?

I saw their burden today.  The shadow pain of having cared for someone so long and then having them die and the unnoticed, unanticipated weight or absence of the requirements, establishing a void of volunteered love and kindness.  The tears were real, the problem invisible, the answer given in deliberate prayer and much needed silence.  How is this possible that purpose can be a burden or boomerang to sadness, having accomplished such honorable intention?  Isn’t there only joy in fulfillment of one’s gifted tasking?

Some things are natural but still hurt.  People die, it is natural but it still hurts.  Nurses and doctors prolong life but when people die, even as the result of expected and natural occurrences it still hurts?  Why?  And the doctor is soon forgotten to go back to the drawing board, another patient, likely with the same outcome as death faces each of us.  What then of the life preserver?  Should it be carried or put to other use so that it does not diminish in its ineffectual time?  I mean it certainly makes a decent seat cushion of perhaps could be hung from the ceiling in the garage to indicate proper parking position?  What of the down time.  Are we to forget the tools which save our lives, nurse us back to health from injury and sickness or just simply encourage us back to feeling better when we’ve been emotionally wounded or blue?

There will be associative costs within your divine gifts.  One of which is the, “they only need you when they need you” clause.  When you are a healer they will remember you and desperately need you when they require healing, but then they will naturally lose the need for you and put you back on the shelf with the other emergency only objects.  Is that acceptable?  Are you okay with that?  If you can’t stand being viewed as an on/off switch it is best to stay out of the healing arena.

The joy is that it quickly establishes those around you who truly are authentically yours.  For they will remain well after the healing occurs, to pester, to bother, to befriend, counsel and love the real you.  They will see your gifts and talents and take advantage of them as needed but will see much more in you then just a caregiver.  They will see you and for whatever reason determine that they see value in a long term relationship with a life preserver.  Isn’t God wonderful.  Isn’t serving Him glorious.  All the benefits of this job are greater than the pay.  In Jesus’ Name.