It’s 11:00pm. I am having a rare moment of peace in a patient’s room. A Con-solatio moment. A late night tv show with a laugh track plays in the background – I’m not paying attention to it. A change in tone catches my ear and I glance back to see the sitcom has been interrupted with breaking news: Putin has invaded Ukraine. My first thought is accepting that I’m not surprised. My first emotion is sadness. Sadness will stay with me for many hours and then many days. I will wake up with sadness for each day of this war. My first realization is that I have to do something – but I don’t know what. I am frozen for one very long second. I unfreeze. I have to do my work. This is what I am here for. There is some horror in my mind at the routine tasks that must be completed during my shift while a war is breaking out in a country that I love and have called home. But I have to go on. I have to be attentive to my patients. I have to place pillows under them every two hours so they won’t get bed sores. I have to help them bathe, and change their sheets to prevent infections. I have to be attentive to the potential emergencies that could and do occur in the next several hours. So I go forward.

My coworkers don’t know my background so they don’t understand what I’m experiencing. There are many hours of my shift left and no one to share with in the middle of the night so I have a lot of time for reflection. I think about the Ukrainian people and all they have taught me. I ponder how my time in Ukraine significantly helped form me into who I am today. It is because of this people that I am a nurse and that I am continuing to try to do God’s work, even in a war so far away but so personal. I think about how thankful I am to have friends in Ukraine who I love and for whom I am fearful. I know their strength and courage and fear and hopefulness and their faith in themselves and in God. I am grateful that I can share their fear and their tears because I know them and because I love them. I am grateful for the many messages that have since been sent and received with words of consolation, sorrow, and most importantly moments of deep grace that have come from this war. And this all gives me the grace to turn back to my patient in front of me and continue the care I had begun for him.

Pray for Ukraine.