Hard Days: The Choice

What do you do when someone you love falls on a string of bad days?

We can relate.  This seems to happen often in medical training.

What do you do when your husband hasn't slept more than 5 hours for the past 4 nights?

When he hasn't seen the kids in three days?

When co-workers ask in jest if his wife is jealous of them?

When he gets off work at 10:00pm, his car battery is dead in the 20 degree cold, and the car alarm won't stop alarming after AAA comes to jump the car?

When his alarm goes of at 4:05am the next morning and he still isn't home at midnight that night?

What happens?

Are you resentful when the dinner you made is cold on the stove?

Do you grow weary of parenting as the night grows long?

Do you resent the work, the schedule, the people who keep your loved one away?

Do you let questions creep in and doubt that you're loved?

Do you pity 'why me' and forget how you're blessed?

Or

Do you welcome your loved one and warm up a meal,

and make a safe haven for brief comfort and rest?

Do you speak to your children, when questions of absence arise, 

of daddy's great virtue,

 the great needs of others 

and how working late provides for both family and neighbors?

Do you remember how hard your loved one is working, 

and respect that Good Purpose can be found in the labor?

Do you banish all doubt and resolve to love deeply, 

past the depth of emotion, convenience, exhaustion?

Do you remember the suffering of others, far greater,

are you humbled by Sacrifice for your own failures?

Lord, help me, I will make the better choice.

Tonight, tomorrow,  

for him,  

for me,

  for us,
for them,

  for our witness.

Happily Ever,

Queen B