Monday, February 10, 2020

Seize the Day

Well I know a girl who was schooled in Manhattan.
She reads dusty books and learns phrases in Latin.
She is an author or maybe a poet,
A genius, but it’s just the world doesn’t know it.
She works on her novel most every day.
If you ask, she will say…

Seize the day.  Seize whatever you can,
‘Cause life slips away just like hourglass sand.
Seize the day.  Pray for grace from God’s hand,
And nothing will stand in your way.
Seize the day.  La di da di da, la di da di da di da

I know a doctor, a fine young physician,
left a six-figure job for a mission position.
He’s (She’s) healing the sick in an African clinic.
She works in the dirt and writes home to the cynics.
He says we work through the night almost everyday.
As we watch the sun rise we can say…

Seize the day…

I love this song.  I first heard it while vacationing in Tanzania as a student missionary.  A teenage missionary kid played it, and I was inspired by the song.  I wanted to become that young physician healing the sick in an African village.  

And through a series of miracles, God made it happen.  

Now we get to do just this.  And it’s the most rewarding thing.  Now as more and more colleagues join us, I get to help them do the same thing.  

One of them is a fine young physician, Staci.  She’s been here a little over a year already.  She’s taken over maternity and calls me with some of the harder cases. 

The other night, when she was getting called so frequently by maternity cases and not sleeping much, I thought of this song.  We had just been singing it with the SAME missionary kid.  Now Keith and his family have been living in Chad since July.  And we get to benefit from his fantastic guitar playing and praise song leading.  

This particular night, Staci was attempting to deliver a pregnant patient.  This is the patient’s fourth pregnancy.  She had two C-sections, one VBAC (vaginal birth after cesarean) in between the two cesareans, but only had one living child.  She opted to try delivering vaginally and had progressed normally.  

We’ve been having electric problems as our generators haven’t gotten the correct maintenance.  We have three, and they are all broken!  It seems you must micromanage everything or jobs don’t get done.  It’s so frustrating.  

So we had the patient in the operating room with nothing more than a cell phone light.  Even our headlamps were not charged.  Awesome.  

But you know what?  We were seizing the day!  Staci more than I, because she had been laboring with her most of the night, checking in on her.  It was 1am.  

I decided to do a trial of forceps.  It was not easy, but they worked!  

She then had a couple deep vaginal lacerations that weren’t bad, but it was difficult to see by cell phone light.  I might as well have been in a mud hut with dirt floor, because my OR wasn’t doing me much good without electricity.  We eventually got them repaired, and I packed her vagina.  

She did well, and her baby too.  


This job of ours always stays exciting.  But it’s fun to remember and look back at how God is allowing us to fulfill our dreams.  

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