Faith

Every day I go to work, the city is lit with twinkling lights until the darkness yields to the sun.  On our unit, the sun rises during the changing- of-the-guards in the war against cancer.

We, the patients and staff, are lucky to see what we see on a crisp clear day:  a gold or red-purple horizon lining a beautiful, snowy mountain.  We know what’s coming: a beautiful sunrise.  Some days, it is foggy or cloudy and we can’t see it.  But we know it is there.  We’ve seen its beauty.  We can recall it in our minds if we try.

The sunset it not visible from our perch on the hill.  It is blocked by geography and trees.  But, like the sunrise, we’ve seen its beauty.  We know it’s there.

Faith is a strong belief in someone or something.  Humans have faith that the sun will rise and set each day.  It is something we can count on, something we absolutely believe…even though we don’t actually see the sun with our eyes.  Instead…we know, by the ability to see outside during the day, by the blooms on the trees, by the warm feeling we get on our skin.  These things tell us that the sun is there.

I think about this when treatments fail our patients.  It is easy to get discouraged because these people are with us…and then they are not.  They struggle. They fight. They claw their way over chemo and transplants and complications.  We nurture them, care for them, hug their families and allay their pain.  We stay strong and hold their hand.  We help them feel less alone and less afraid.

We count on the fact that our efforts are fruitful though we don’t know what happens to people when they leave our unit.  We assume they are spending time with their families, watching a baby being born, going on vacation, seeing their kids get married, graduating from high school or college, learning to fly, becoming closer to their family and friends, reconciling old resentments, or even saying goodbye.

Even though we cannot see these things with our own eyes, we know they are there.  Like the warmth of the sun on our skin on a cloudy day, it warms our hearts.

This is faith.  It gets us through the ones we lose.