It's like Dr. Peter Rhee was hand-picked to be the trauma doctor that tragic Saturday morning in Tuscon. Suddenly, University Medical Center Hospital was inundated with a flood of shooting victims. Most prominent among them - a United States Congresswoman with a severe bullet wound to the head.
But Dr. Rhee was ready. He'd been getting ready for many years. On the battlefield.
The trauma specialist has been on the medical front lines in Afghanistan and Iraq, fighting to save the lives of soldiers with horrific, life-threatening wounds. The lessons learned in combat situations helped save lives that day in Tucson. Possibly including Representative Gabby Giffords.
As ugly as war is, it inevitably leads to amazing advances in medical treatment. There's something about the screaming urgency of wartime crises that forces the medical world to find answers and treatments they never had before.
What was true of Dr. Rhee as he faced multiple critical care issues at one time is, in a way, true of many of us. It's what we've learned in the most brutal battles of our life that now qualifies us to help others win theirs.
When the war in our life is intense and the losses mounting, we want to ask that usually futile question, "Why?" Seldom is there much of a satisfying answer. But I've learned a better question to ask - one that has hope of a meaningful answer. "How can God use this?" Because of the kind of God we have, there is never pain without a point. So I figure, "Ron, if you're going to get the pain (what choice do I have?), then you might as well get the point."
God's great ambassador Paul knew pain and loss as his constant companions. But he saw something larger happening when life hurts: "God is our merciful Father and the source of all comfort. He comforts us in all our troubles so that we can comfort others. When they are troubled, we will be able to give them the same comfort God has given us" (2 Corinthians 1:3-4 - NLT).
If we run from God, turn from God in the pain, we forfeit any prospect of finding hope, comfort or meaning in it. If we run to Him in our desperation and grief, we open ourselves up to all the resources of heaven. Including the ways this battle can equip us with a compassion, an empathy, a perspective, a grace that only those who've felt life's deepest wounds can know.
We can choose. Let the pain make us a victim. Or a wounded healer for a wounded world.
Because there's nothing that prepares you to be God's angel in trauma like the fire of the front lines.