My son-in-law, Jesse, is one of the nicest guys you’ll ever meet. He’s also strong and smart – which makes him good at his job. Jesse is a registered nurse and has received many commendations and expressions of appreciation for his service at the hospital where he works. If you’re ever hospitalized, you’ll want a nurse like Jesse.
But Jesse’s big heart and desire for excellence almost took him out of his profession a while back. One of his patients, a man who had surgery and seemed to be doing just fine afterwards, died on his watch. As a nurse, Jesse has experienced the death of many people through the years – it comes with the territory. But he had really connected with this particular man and his wonderful family. And all had seemed to be progressing normally in his recovery…then suddenly, he was gone.
Jesse agonized over the details and wondered if he might’ve missed something or could’ve done something else to prevent this man’s death. His medical colleagues, who did a thorough review, all assured him he had done everything correctly – that this was just one of those sad, unpredictable things that sometimes happens in the world of medicine. But in the days after this incident Jesse was inconsolable and thought about giving up his career. He might have followed through, too, if it weren’t for a pep talk from one of the doctors he knows and respects.
This doctor heard of Jesse’s discouragement and took him aside for a frank and surprisingly vulnerable talk. He told Jesse that when he was a young doctor he actually had made an error that cost a patient his life. He described his deep angst and how he had wanted so badly to give up medicine as he dealt with the repercussions that followed. Somehow he had found the courage and resilience to continue, though, and this is what he wanted Jesse to know from his years-later-down-the-road perspective: many more people are alive today, who otherwise wouldn’t be, because he didn’t quit when he felt like it. He had made a costly mistake, one that would always make him cringe with regret, yes. But he learned from it, never repeated it, and brought those valuable lessons forward with him in a way that benefited countless other patients.
You are not defined by your last big mistake. If it was sinful, repent and stop it. (Did you catch that? Stop. It.) If it was stupid, learn from it and figure out how to keep from repeating it. Here’s the thing…you will get a chance to choose between smart and stupid, between wise and unwise, between grabbing the bar or landing flat on your back again, as time goes on. To some degree, those situations that call us to do better arise almost daily, in one way or another. And many more people will experience life because you are resilient despite your regrets.
My sweet friend Jen Annan (now in her eighties and still a mentor to many) quoted Ralph Waldo Emerson in her “Jennuflections” devotional e-mail a while back and then added an important charge of her own:
“Finish every day and be done with it. You have done what you could. Some blunders and absurdities no doubt have crept in; forget them as soon as you can. Tomorrow is a new day; begin it well and serenely and with too high a spirit to be cumbered with your old nonsense. This day is all that is good and fair. It is too dear, with its hopes and invitations, to waste a moment on yesterdays.” -Ralph Waldo Emerson
All of you are loved and forgiven – and all of you love and forgive – so keep walking on in love. That is how we carry on a legacy.
That is how, indeed. And that is resilience.
This is an excerpt from The Jesus-Hearted Woman by Jodi Detrick. Copyright ©2013 by Jodi Detrick. Published by Influence Resources. Used by permission.
