“My surgery is next week,” I told the nurse as she checked me in for bloodwork. “I don’t feel ready in the least.”

I half-laughed nervously, hoping she wouldn’t think I was silly. “But is there any way to be ready for a mastectomy?”

She shook her head as she gathered the vials from the shelf and turned back to face me.

“Honey,” she declared, bright eyes flashing. “You’re having a major surgery. There’s no way to feel ready. That’s completely normal. But can I tell you something?”

My whole body exhaled with relief. For the first time in months, someone in the cold, sterile clinic was treating me like a human being.

She pulled her stool close to my chair and took both of my cold hands in her warm, soft palms. She looked me full in the face.

“You are going to be ok. But this is incredibly hard. No one talks about the emotional side. A mastectomy is an amputation. And you need to give yourself all the grace to get through.”

I nodded, ready to weep, knowing this wasn’t the time or place. But I was bone-weary after months of chemo, weeks of nausea, endless days and nights sick in bed, trying to believe all this suffering would bring healing. I just wanted to be ok — for myself, for my husband, for my kids, for my family and friends, for my church community and every blessed stranger on the internet praying for my recovery.

“Listen, darling,” the nurse continued. “Before I started working downtown, I worked in labor and delivery for twenty years, at a hospital up north. I loved every minute of that work, helping mamas and their babies. But on the same floor, we also had the post-op ward for the women who’d had mastectomies. So I got to take care of them, too. I know how all of it is so hard on women and our bodies. We don’t talk about the emotional side or spiritual side of this surgery, how it changes everything about your identity.”

From the other side of the curtain, an impatient intern interrupted: “Labs ready?”

“Not yet,” she hollered, winking at me.

She went on, holding my hands, talking me through the process of mastectomy, giving me recommendations for recovery, reminding me to say yes to every offer of help, making me promise to take it slow. I surrendered to every emotion and started to cry. She cried, too. We both laughed. She grabbed Kleenex for both of us and kept going.

“Labs ready?” Impatience kept rising in the intern’s voice, waiting to run the routine labs to the university hospital for analysis.

“Not. Yet.” Her reply was steady and unwavering. Here was a woman who knew her calling.

For half an hour, the nurse kept talking with me, coaching me through “what to expect” like I was a new mom terrified of birth. Every few minutes, the annoyed question would come from the hallway: “Labs ready?”

Without skipping a beat, she’d respond with a smile only I could see: “Not yet!”

Eventually, we did get down to business, finished the blood draw, and sent the vials off to the lab — with apologies for the delay and gratitude for their patience. But how could I begin to explain that this was the real work of healing? Seeing the hurting human in front of you, reaching out with all the compassion and courage you could muster, and setting aside the day’s schedule to make time for what matters most.

Whenever I read the healing stories from the gospels, this is the part that catches the lump in my throat: how Jesus saw straight into each person in front of Him. The bleeding woman, the sick child, the feverish mother-in-law, the blind man, the dying servant, the paralyzed friend. He always let His agenda for the day — whatever teaching or preaching He had planned — be interrupted to care for the beloved, broken child of God right in front of Him.

Ironically, this truth is hardest for me to remember on the ordinary days, when one more kid has interrupted one more conversation, when my inbox is overflowing, when the house is a mess and the to-do list is a mile long. How am I supposed to get this all done, Lord? Why don’t You just let me focus and finish what I need to do?

That’s when I hear the gentle reminder of Jesus’ words to His friend Martha when she was worked up at her own overwhelm: “There is need of only one thing” (Luke 10:42 NABRE). And that one thing is always and everywhere to see the face of Christ in the person before me, the sacred image-bearer of the divine that has shown up at my door.

Like the kind nurse who set her schedule aside when I needed her comfort, like the exasperated intern in the hall who saw my tear-stained face and realized there was a reason for our delay, I try to remember that our most important, loving actions on any given day are often when we let ourselves get interrupted by God.

We might never feel ready, but Jesus shows up anyway. What a gift when we remember that we can show up with compassion for each other, too.

 

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