Another early morning reflection...

I often get discouraged while working night shifts. Unfortunately, this has become a well known fact among my coworkers too.  Everyone knows I struggle with night duty.

I'm up all night and often, all too often, it seems I end up helping, serving no one.

Tim has encouraged me repeatedly. He has told me, "Erin, you are being a lifeline."

So I wait by the phone. I study until my brian feels ischemic. I stare at the wall or I indulge in thirty second dance parties...or I rest my head in defeat on my desk. And I try to remember, I'll even say it to myself a few times: "I am a lifeline." It is when I doubt this that I become angsty and frustrated. So, I may not have all the perfect answers to late night or early morning questions. I may be learning, and I may still be considered a novice nurse. But for those random injuries or midnight emergencies, I am awake, and I'm ready to help. My job is to be a ready lifeline for the people of the Copper River valley...even if all goes well and people just sleep .

Call it early morning delusions. Because there is such a thing... but in pondering this today...for the first time, I feel honored. Honored to serve God in this way. Because, really it is my heart's desire to reflect Him in my living. I fail to do so, so miserably, in so many ways. But, how beautiful that my job and my ministry right now is to be present and to be ready to respond--even if I'm not actually asked to respond in a given twelve hour window. And so God, in the truest sense is always present... and always eager and ready to meet with us, to aid us, to just be with us. Even if we don't take Him up on the offer. Even if He waits up ALL night, pining for us to ask. I feel His heartbreak tonight.

So here's to an attitude change. Here's to being thankful, perhaps for the very first time, that these nightshifts in some twisted way, might just reflect God's holy omnipresence. Cheers.

Lord, help me to be a more willing servant. Help me to know your joy even in the long, quiet mornings as I remember that you are here with me, and that you are a God who knows how to wait for your people in patience. And that you are a God who is not made less by the waiting. Lord, make me more, refine me yet, as I learn to surrender this job, often filled with stillness & difficult waiting, unto you.