Happy Birthday...to us

Last week I was in taking care of a patient, sitting there in the Red Cross Conference room - weeding through the maze of health care resources and trying to help people connect with doctors when they have no money and many no prospect of money. Trying to get them onto meds that they can afford and yet still be safe - trying to help them.

I was feeling hurt and sad at how we as a society have let so many of our people go without adequate health care - hurting for their lack medicine when they need it so much, glad to be able to help, but concerned for their lack of help.

I often try to notice something about a patient when we first meet - it is one of the ways i have found to help people feel more relaxed and comfortable when we meet. So, in walked a patient with an unusual birthday - 12/24...Christmas Eve. "What a beautiful gift you must have been to your parents," is what I said - and wholeheartedly meant it - and there the tough doctor melted inside and looked deeply into their eyes and said, "Really, you must have been a wonderful gift." Here is this person - down and out, out of work, unable to pay for health care, seeing me because they need help and don't know where to turn. Shunned by society, many would think them beneath the rest of the town and world. Beaten down, mowed over, feelings not considered, many times it turns out, treated less than human. This person...was a beautiful gift.

Then it began to shake inside me, ringing back to the talk i give to my new parents, while they and their baby are still in the nursery at the hospital - "Don't forget that this baby is a beautiful gift from God - He chose one day that the world needed a Johnny, or Elizabeth or whatever the name might be - and He sent them to You. He made them just like they are, beautiful and perfect and soft and small - a gift to you and the world."

Then, as the 2 different types of visits began to come together in my head, it began to tear apart the fact that i was somehow doing the serving for this person who sat in front of me. It was not just me who was the gift to them to help them with their healthcare - I was - but they were too - they were a gift to me and to the world as a whole - that did not stop on Christmas Eve so many years ago. God made them especially for the world, in that moment and in the Red Cross Conference room - He has a wonderful painting to paint of their life.

Their value as a gift does not come from how much they make or how good their insurance is, not from their bank account or what trauma has happened to them in the course of their life not from the illnesses they have or have been treated or cured from. Their value rests in the fact that the creator of all that is, one day, decided the world needed them - He hand crafted them and gave them to us, all of us, on that day so long ago when they were born, Christmas Eve or any other day.

This was one of the gifts to me from Community Outreach 2009. Simple - a birthday. We all have one - and we are all fabulous gifts with value beyond measure -none with anymore value than the rest to the one who made us.

So, when I looked into the eyes of that person and all the rest i saw last week and told them that we were doing this because we wanted them to realize that we thought they were important - no matter what else anybody else may say about them - I meant it...

It was like the greatest birthday party ever!