Rest

for the light makes everything visible. This is why it is said, "Awake, O sleeper, rise up from the dead, and Christ will give you light." ~ Ephesians 5:14 (NLT)


“Oh, my God!” everyone exclaimed…

“That’s tiring!” added another nurse…

While I returned to my seat and slumped my back against the back rest. My muscles achy and so fatigued from a busy shift. But it was even worse to feel my mind being depleted of patience, understanding, and gathering the right interventions in which none worked.

Three of us were facing this loud wailing, toothless older female inmate. We just heard a combative was brought into the prison yard and the call was for the Intake Nurse to meet the officers out in the yard.

When all of a sudden, the Charge Nurse and I looked at each other as we heard loud wailing reverberating on the left side of the Clinic where the female inmates usually walked in and out.

“Why are they bringing the combative here?” we both asked in unison.

But it wasn’t the combative the deputies had called over the radio. It was another female deputy bringing in this crying inmate, having a tantrum like a little child. Bypassing the usual rule to call the Clinic ahead of time, the deputy applied the cuff on her wrinkled wrists and took her down to the Clinic after she saw her banging her head slightly in the glass window in her tiny cell to get her attention.

Her ears were deaf to advices. She kept saying she just couldn’t trust anyone. It was obvious she needed to be evaluated by the Mental Health doctor for whatever worries that plagued her. But it was difficult to make her calm down. Paired with her actions of banging her head, she then needed to be placed in Suicide Watch for closer monitoring. It would be a challenge for the Intake Nurse. As she couldn’t trust anyone in her cell…Yet…She wanted to be with another inmate.

“Do you realize what you are requesting?” I asked.

“That’s confusing…You don’t trust anyone but you want someone with you in a cell. Do you think that person will like the way you’re always crying, yelling as you speak? That person will get upset and others may want to hurt you if you don’t stop!” I tried explaining, my mind starting to run out of reasons to make her calm down even a bit.

She went on and on…Everyone in the Clinic stopped what they were doing and curiously came to where we were and heard her. The Charge Nurse gave the permission for the deputy to bring her to Intake. The air remained high-strung as everyone returned to their seats. But ears were relieved hearing those piercing cries and with our minds and bodies depleted of strength.

Oh how I longed for my warm bed that night…

And rest…

And sleep…

“But what is this sleep? The idea connected with sleep is "rest," and that is the thought which the Spirit of God would convey to us. Sleep makes each night a Sabbath for the day. Sleep shuts fast the door of the soul, and bids all intruders tarry for a while, that the life within may enter its summer garden of ease. The toil-worn believer quietly sleeps, as does the weary child when it slumbers on its mother's breast. Oh! happy they who die in the Lord; they rest from their labors, and their works do follow them. Their quiet repose shall never be broken until God shall rouse them to give them their full reward. Guarded by angel watchers, curtained by eternal mysteries, they sleep on, the inheritors of glory, till the fulness of time shall bring the fulness of redemption. What an awaking shall be theirs! They were laid in their last resting place, weary and worn, but such they shall not rise. They went to their rest with the furrowed brow, and the wasted features, but they wake up in beauty and glory. The shriveled seed, so destitute of form and comeliness, rises from the dust a beauteous flower. The winter of the grave gives way to the spring of redemption and the summer of glory. Blessed is death, since it, through the divine power, disrobes us of this work-day garment, to clothe us with the wedding garment of incorruption. Blessed are those who "sleep in Jesus." -  Charles Spurgeon