A Night in the ER

I was sooo looking forward to it! It's the first chance I had in months to sleep until I can't sleep anymore, but it was not to be. I got the call at 1 a.m. that my niece had been in a pretty serious car accident. They took her by ambulance to Elkhart General where they did x-rays, but it appeared to be just some bruising (thank you Jesus for seatbelts and airbags) and a possible broken nose. They sent her home with prescriptions for muscle relaxers and pain. Unfortunately she passed out in the car on the way home after she and her dad stopped at CVS. It was off to Memorial. I met them there at 2 a.m. and the whole process took until noon. While it took forever, Memorial was good and thorough. Turns out she had elevated muscle enzymes (whatever that means), a pretty rapid heartbeat and a kidney infection she didn't know about. After a boatload of IV bags, she was good to go...sore, but good to go.

THE LESSON: I've talked forever about leaders breathing life into their students and the importance of making them feel comfortable. I haven't been on the other end of it in quite awhile though. The entire staff was great at Memorial and all were friendly...except one (she was great, just not friendly - more like ice). It reminded me that we can have an exceptional program, be really good at the stage stuff, but if we are sub-par when it comes to our "friendliness factor" the stage stuff really doesn't matter so much. I'm grateful for the work the Mark W., Shelly, Julie, Susan and the team do to make our church rank high on the "friendliness factor". I'm grateful for what our Oasis team does as well, but am on a mission to take it to a new level. While the saying is getting kind of old, it really is true that "people don't care how much you know until they know how much you care."