About Face

Beware: this blog is full of nothing but Katie’s thoughts; a somewhat scary place to be. No pictures or fun stories to be had. You have been warned! 

Like usual, all has been quiet on the blog front. It’s not that there’s nothing going on—on the contrary, life has pretty much been going non-stop. I don’t bother feeling the Monday blues any more because if I just blink it will be Friday again. I just haven’t been too sure what to write about.

My office shares a wall with the gangway so I have a pretty good view of who comes and goes each day. Today, orthopedic surgeries started and so last week I got to see parades of adorable children making their slow way down to deck 3. Give those kids a few weeks though and they will be tearing around creation on straight legs. Today I went down to the hospital to get the serial number off of a refrigerator (yes, my job is really random sometimes) and a line of patients with tumors—some small, others bigger—walked by on their way back outside; they were getting screened and (hopefully) scheduled for surgery. As I peeked into the ward to see if I had permission to come in, a child that I’ve never laid on eyes on before saw me and started waving frantically at me with the biggest grin on her face.

Those moments are just incredible. When I come face-to-face with a patient’s life that is being drastically changed, the small difficulties of my day melt away. 

But while those patients are ultimately the reason that Jordan and I are here, and for which we feel incredibly privileged, they are not that ones that are in my primary circle of concern. It’s a blessing to get a glimpse into that healing but that’s not what most of my days are made of. I’m here to serve the crew and I feel specifically called to do so. (Aside from knowing that I’m not called to serve on the “front lines” in the hospital, I am perfectly happy up on deck 5, thank you very much. I’ve heard some nurse’s stories and I will take potatoes and mops over blood and guts any day!) 

Like most jobs, the days I tend to remember when it’s time to sit down and write aren’t the ones that did go perfectly but the ones that didn’t. The stressful days where I didn’t feel good enough, didn’t get even half of my to-do list done, had hard conversations and overall felt like a fool. For one reason or another though, it’s not entirely appropriate for me to share those days, both for the content and because it would be impossible to try to get my feelings across accurately. On the flip side though, it doesn’t seem fair to you to just post pictures of sun shine and Presidents visiting and making new friends from all over the world because that’s not an entirely accurate picture either. 

So I’ve been thinking about this long overdue post for several weeks completely stumped on what to write. I wanted to be honest and let you know how I’m really doing but I couldn’t figure out how. 

Then last week I had what I like to refer to as a “smack-down” moment with God. You know, a moment where you know that God said “uh-uh”, snapped his fingers in a z-formation and told you to where to get off? I did an about-face earlier this week and it hit me that I’ve had lots of those moments on this crazy ship! I have been changed just as much as some of those patients. I have no doubt that’s part of the reason God brought me here—to work on my heart. So why not share? 

Time for a little vulnerability.

This ship community life is intense. What often gets quoted is working, playing, and living literally right on top of each other and the challenges that brings. But did you know that it’s incredibly easy to judge in this environment? I can judge how healthy you eat just by the line that you hop into at lunch. I can judge where you go in the evenings just by walking out to the gangway and see where you signed out to. I can walk through the port and see who’s at the bar and make an automatic judgement. I can go to the crew bank to get some cash out and look at the list above me to see who was just in there and make a judgement. I can happen to be walking by the chaplaincy office, see someone duck in and make a judgement about why they’re there. I can get an email from someone and read it while completely missing the spirit in which it was sent—and make a snappy judgement. In my job, there’s a lot of public areas that I officially oversee and it’s hard to shut my judging mind off over the weekend (not that I really should anyways) when I go to do my laundry and I see someone breaking one of the 400 rules in there. Or when I go walk through a hallway and see a mug that someone left on a railing instead of returning it to the dining room. Those things technically do concern me but I’ve been dismayed at how easy it is for me to pass judgement on the action—without even knowing who was behind it. 

As I wrote those examples I could sense the awkwardness of hitting “publish” on this blog and letting those confessions out in the open. But I’m being honest—it’s really that easy for me.

Over the last several weeks, I have been exhausted as I dealt with people that I judged. Once I pass judgement on someone, it is so. very. hard. to give that person a clean slate. And from judgement it’s a slippery slope to gossip, which is even harder to get out of. 

Then last week, two things happened that made me step back. The first was when I was praying for a friend, which is generally a good thing, right? I was praying for something specific for this friend, and it was not a “bad thing” that I was praying for. In fact, I can guarantee that God would have no problem with me asking for this particular answer to prayer. But in the middle of my prayer, I was interrupted with the simple command: 

STOP. It is not your job to ask for that. It is your job to pray that your friend draws closer to Me. I will take care of the rest because I know best in that life. 

Yikes. 

Then later on in the week, I was involved in an activity where I was interacting with someone that I had formed my own private judgment about. During this activity I was really struggling to concentrate and couldn’t stop the nagging feeling that I was still judging. I prayed silently that God would take those judgements away—basically so I could have peace and enjoy myself—and He replied with: 

STOP.  This is bothering you so much and there is literally nothing you can do to fix it. You don’t have the influence over them that I do; after all, this is my child. It is your job to pray that this person would draw close to me—and then trust me to take care of the rest. Their journey will look different than yours and there is nothing wrong with that. You be confident in the journey that I called you on and leave their journey to me, the Map-maker. 

Again, this was someone that I felt righteously justified in judging, although as I type that sentence I realize how stupid it sounds. It blew my mind that God could take two separate incidents where no one would have begrudged me for the opinions I had and left me speechless at my own audacity.

As if I needed any more convincing, the sermon in church on Sunday (delivered by the amazing Nick Cash) was about shutting down gossip amongst ourselves.

Allllllrighty then. I get the picture. 

So speak and act as those who are to be judged under the law of liberty. For judgment is without mercy to one who has shown no mercy. Mercy triumphs over judgement. -James 2: 12-13

A positive bit of homework for myself that I’ve taken away this week: I realized that a lot of judgements that I make come out of seeing things that I don’t agree with because of personal convictions. What is the journey that God has called me on? What are my beliefs/standards and where do the values behind them come from? How can I shine my Light if I’m silent? Is it fair to judge someone who has no idea that I hold a different standard if I’ve never made that clear? Still mulling on what that one means for me … but for now, good night from this side of the International Date Line.