I have written a letter about the wonderful spiritual experience I had with my night shift nurse, Alyssa, while I was receiving treatment for my heart and lung conditions. It was an experience I'll never forget because it is extremely rare to run into a young person like Alyssa so in tune with her spirit and willing to talk about life. God was what I needed to talk about at that moment in life and she accommodated me with love, understanding and no resistance whatsoever.
As I lay in the ER of St. Joseph Mercy Oakland Hospital waiting for the admissions process to be completed, so my frail 74-year-old body could be moved to a room, I began to realize and accept for the very first time the inevitableness of the path of old age. It was the 5th time in 18 months that I found myself in this position with, what I thought was, nothing much to look forward to in the hospital based on my current physical condition. As I began to pray about the situation, as I often did when I was in trouble physically, I found myself praying for a healing experience of a different kind. I realized suddenly that peace and mental comfort were my only goals now and that my body seemed as though it was becoming a little less significant to me. With the admission process completed, I was rolled into my new room and thought, "here I go again", expecting another tedious experience that will be the same as the other five. Much to my surprise, however, I was greeted with a smile by Alyssa M, the night shift nurse, who seemed to be peddling a new kind of medicine. She asked me a few medical questions but they changed quickly to questions about my life and she seemed to genuinely care about my answers. They weren't the usual questions about my life as a sick person like what ailed me physically and how could she mask over my symptoms to make me feel better. They were about my family, my state of mind, my wife and kids, grandchildren and my career before I retired. Even more important than the questions was that she actually seemed to pay attention to my answers, her mind wasn't a million miles away focused on her next task in another room with another patient. Wow what a surprise, she was actually listening to me.
I could feel the kindness and compassion that she exuded with every sentence she spoke and I realized then that I was receiving a different type of medicine from the hospital's standard pill and shot therapy. How odd it was in this day and age, a time when most people, and especially young people, don't even have time to focus on their own problems.
In the ensuing days, Alyssa and I talked often about our families and life and most important of all, about the role that God played in each of our lives and how the healing power of the mind that is focused on God and Jesus is the true healer. I have learned from my own life experiences that God's love can only be reflected through our Devine and spiritual nature and not through our human nature which is motivated primarily by selfish self-centeredness which dominates mankind and the decisions we make while existing and living in nature. Although I struggled constantly to operate from my spiritual nature I noticed that Alyssa easily slipped into it and God's love flowed from her almost constantly whether she even realized it or not.
I learned during that hospital stay that it's not the pills or shots that heal or the IVs or X-rays, the CT scans or even the doctors, it's the love of Christ that is reflected through people like her that heals. Don't get me wrong, we need those things also and they play an important role in healing but what humans need mostly for healing is God's love and when those things are administered through people like Alyssa it's the love behind them that provides a much stronger healing power to the patient.
All I could think about as I was leaving the hospital at the end of my stay was the vague remembrance, I had of a bible passage that went something like this: Be kind to strangers for some have entertained angels along their way—and for the first time ever I understood what it meant. I left the hospital that day knowing that the road ahead toward healing my body would be long and arduous and yet somehow I felt healed when I stood up from the wheelchair and walked out the door.