It’s 3:00 AM. I’ve been here since 5:00 PM yesterday and I’ll go home at 12:00 PM this afternoon. The pager has gone off six times, I’ve prayed with four families, and have joined in celebrating the lives of two remarkable women whose lives ended tonight at the hospital. It has actually been a relatively quiet night. I’ve gotten more than four hours of sleep and I’m only writing now because I can’t go back to sleep just yet.
I think I mentioned when I started blogging that it was going to be an experiment. So far, it has been. I’ve not been the most faithful at writing on it, but I never am. I’ve tried journaling at least a half-dozen times and it comes and goes in waves. Sometimes I write, sometimes I don’t. But tonight, I felt like writing. I won’t feel like this every night, I don’t expect, but tonight, writing is in order.
There is a prayer that I’ve loved for many years that reads, “Keep watch, dear Lord, with those who work or watch or weep this night, and give your angels charge over those who sleep. Tend the sick, Lord Christ, give rest to the weary, bless the dying, soothe the suffering, pity the afflicted, shield the joyous; and all for your Love’s sake. Amen.”
I’ve said that prayer countless times. For Episcopalians, it comes at the close of Evening Prayer, which should be a daily routine for me—but it isn’t, I’m afraid. Tonight, though, for the first time, I prayed that prayer. Sure, I’ve said it a bunch, I’ve even chanted it as a collect during Evensong, and I’ve written it more times than I care to remember. But tonight I prayed it.
Before tonight, I thought I was praying it. I thought I understood what those words really meant. And maybe I did. Maybe I had been praying it all this time and I’m now suddenly praying it a different way or with a different meaning in mind. But for tonight, those words pressed upon my heart when I uttered them. They held me closely; they gave me comfort. But they also frightened me because tonight, I am working and watching and weeping. Tonight, I am living into my baptism in a new way. And I’ve never been more afraid and more humbled and more aware of God’s presence than I am right now.
