It was the day after my younger brother’s successful quintuple bypass surgery.
I was sitting in his ICU room. My back was to the window facing his bed and looking out the door to the nurse’s station in the circular ICU area.
He had tubes everywhere. Monitors were beeping. Various medical personnel were coming in every five minutes to check his vitals, look at iv bags, adjust his bed and do all the standard procedures in these medical situations.
He was fairly alert and could carry on simple, short conversations. He would doze off occasionally but, for the most part, he was doing very well.
I sat looking out at people in medical uniforms coming into his room as well as walking by his room and going into the rooms of the other patients in the ICU.
I wondered why the other patients were in their rooms. What medical issues were they facing and was their prognosis as positive as my brother’s was at this point in time?
As I watched the comers and goers and the parade of passers by a black man stopped at the desk in the middle of the ICU directly outside of my brother’s room. He looked at some things on the counter and conversed with the nurse at the desk.
By his attire you could tell he was some sort of medical person. He turned and walked into my brother’s room. As he entered the room I expected him to begin checking the monitors or asking to see if my brother might need more water.
My brother slowly and softly began to speak. “Dr. Harrison, this is my family.” He introduced us each by name and then said, “This is the man responsible for my scar.”
As I slowly stood up I was shocked, disappointed, and embarrassed by my thoughts about who this man was when I first saw him.
It never occurred to me that he might be the surgeon.
During my brother’s surgery, as I prayed for him and the doctors, I envisioned in my mind a white man. He was probably 55-65 years of age. He had white hair. He was lean and fit.
A black heart surgeon was never a consideration.
I was awakened to a level of bias I never knew was part of me.
While we are always told not to be judgmental, we all are whether we like it or not.
We all want to be right. When we are right there is no need to ask any questions.
It takes courage to set aside our judgments and wonder if there might be more.
When have you rushed to judgment and found the end result not what you thought it was?
Do you have the courage to step back from your judgments?
What questions do you need to ask right now in your life?
John 8:1-8
Have a STRONG and COURAGEOUS day!
