Longing to Belong

Hospitals are the great equalizer aren't they? Specifically when you see patients in ICU. Rich, poor, president/CEO or homeless man down the street, it makes no difference. We're all issued the same hospital attire and we're all hooked up to the machines monitoring our hearts, checking our vitals, laying in the same standard hospital beds. So what's the difference for each of us?

Having had a friend go into the ER and subsequently the icu over the weekend, the difference is the people outside of the hospital. You see, at our very core, I believe to be human is to be relational.  We want to be among others. We want to care for others and have them care for us. We want to be in community. Our deepest longing is to belong, to know we matter. 

Consider your deepest wounds, it's probably at the loss of a loved one whether physically or by relationship. When we're kids, doesn't it hurt when we're picked last or not at all for a team? Aren't our greatest joys because of a person too? The birth of a child, falling in-love, being chosen. We all want to know we matter. We all want to know that at the end of the day, our lives meant something to someone. 

Being in that hospital, for the large part of the weekend, I saw so many lives that became numbers on a chart. Lives that became bodies slumped over in hospital beds, hooked up to machine after machine. Lives that had an opportunity once to be known.
I saw countless hours pass without any visitors coming to visit. I saw many people with loss of hope on their faces, faces that looked like they forgot how to use the muscles in their face to muster a smile.

I won't pretend to know why, the reality is everyone's story is different. Everyone's path is carved out through daily living, through our consumption of this world and what it has to offer, through the choices we make. But, don't we all get to matter? How will our lives be recorded? How will we be remembered? Who will care?

I only have 1 son. He is beautiful, he is fearless, he is courageous, he is driven and he is loved by this woman probably more than he can comprehend. My point is he knows that he is. He will never have to wonder what I thought of him, because I tell him as often as I get the chance. I write him letters, I buy him cards, I tell him when he calls from college. He knows his life matters to me. He knows he is loved and he knows he always will have a place to belong, to call home.

The reality is, we can get so consumed by our schedules, by our work, by our "crisis" at the moment that we overlook what truly living is. I spoke with a beautiful icu nurse while at the hospital. Truly an angel as she cared for my friend and others. She said she doesn't worry about the dishes in the sink or the toys on the floor anymore when she gets home. She doesn't freak out if the laundry isn't done, she's witnessed life or death, and she's come to realize what life is. 

For the patients in the hospital, when we receive very sobering news, when the tears flow in reflection of your swing at life, when you are faced with limited time…what do you do with it? Why wait? Jump--and don’t be afraid to fall, when you get the chance to love—do it with all you have and most of all, when you get the chance to be “someone” in another person’s life—be that someone they’ll never forget.