Clean vs. Unclean: What I learned in pediatric neurosurgery

In the last 6 weeks I have been in a pediatric neurosurgery rotation. It was an amazing opportunity and I loved it, but it definitely is a job that requires some emotional strength. You see patients who were healthy, and then got in a car accident resulting in a traumatic brain injury, physical devastation, and a lifetime of pain. You see children with tumors, you see babies that have been abused resulting in bleeding in and on the brain. You see patients who are born with chromosomal and anatomical abnormalities. And in seeing all this you grow one way or another.

My first week and a half I found myself overwhelmed with sadness. My first patient was a non accidental trauma child and I just couldn't understand how someone could take a baby home from the hospital and a short time later hurt them. To me that was obvious sin. To me I was overwhelmed with how helpless these children were and how no matter what the neurosurgery team did many of the children would never get to go run around a playground, go to disney world, play with a puppy. I started praying for my patients one by one that God would help them, encourage them, and that God would make himself known to them so that one day they would see the beauty of heaven. I began to see that what I was seeing is not how God created the world. He created us whole, and sin entered the world and results in the devastation. I became keenly aware that it is because of sin that I have a career that I'm about to start. In the garden there was no illness, no heartbreak.

Genesis 1:27 says "So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them." In God's image. In the perfect and holy image of God we were created. The first thing God does after creation in verse 28 "And God blessed them." He goes on to give them responsibility and gifts and in verse 31 He said "And God saw everything that he had made and behold it was very good." -- It was very good. I can't say that the things I was seeing I would call "very good." What I can say is that despite what I was seeing God was doing very good things. What I came to see is that sin has so impermeated our society that we no longer call it sin we call it sickness. Now I want to be clear I do not believe that when a child is sick that its because of the parents sin. I also don't' believe that God makes people sick, He is perfect, but He does allow sin to be apart of our world and does allow the consequences of the garden to still exist here on earth. That being said- I'm saying that because of the sin that has entered our world we do have illness, and heartbreak and the like.  The bible promises that in this world we will have trouble but we are to take heart Jesus has overcome the world. That being said- illness is not a result of not believing enough. Even Jesus who was perfect died on the cross. He believed more than anyone so if sin and death can devastate a perfect man's body then we are not exempt. It is by the grace of God we have any health at all.

In the Operating Room I found that there are distinct lines between "clean" and "unclean." Jesus lived in a world like that, only the clean and unclean weren't marked with blue drapes.  In the operating room there are a lot of precautions taken to lessen infection. Hair is to be covered, jewelry is to be removed, drapes are used, a long hand washing process, and a requirement to keep your hands above your waste but below your shoulders. Your first time it's a lot to think about. But what was amazing to me is in the OR we only cover the unclean to make it clean temporarily. Everytime I was in the OR I was thinking about this paradox, between the clean and unclean. How our world was clean and now it's unclean and we are only seen as clean in Christ.

But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus his Son cleanses us from all sin.- 1 John 1:7 It is by the blood of Christ that we are MADE clean. Not covered with drapes but cleansed. and that cleansing is a gift that we didn't earn. I came to a place where I learned more about grace. It is by grace I am in this program, by grace I am mostly healthy, by grace I have a husband, by grace I have today on this earth. None of these things are earned by me. It is by grace I have been saved. It was when I started to really put all this together that I still prayed for my patients, but I prayed also that God would just shine through me. Friends it is exhausting to try and live a life for Christ, but when you let Christ live a life through you it takes you places you never thought, to conversations you didn't plan, to a compassion you couldn't know without Him and a heart for those you don't know.

Friends, in all this I want you to see that anything we have is a blessing from God through Christ.  While God can bless us when we aren't christians, the true blessing comes from Christ. Thats when salvation happens, thats when a new heart is given, thats when the spirit that died in us in the garden is replaced with the holy spirit. That's when we can see blessing in the world that is muddled with sin. That's when we can see promise in the faces of the patients I was seeing. Without Christ there is no hope for an end. There is nothing to bridge the unclean and make it clean.

Let me know how I can pray for you. Know that in Christ we are made clean, and in heaven we will be made whole. What a blessing !