Not to be ministered unto

Yeah, I know.  I know you think I have no right to complain. After all, I have decent quarters, great maintenance, and vegetables at prices that I’ll never get anywhere else. I know there are millions suffering.

I know that no one ordered him at gun point to join this course. (I know too that I married the man with my eyes wide open.)

The training is fantastic. Nowhere else in the world will you get to learn for such incredible fees.  Absolutely. When you leave this place, you will be made for life. You will be swooped up by the institution of your choice. You can earn big bucks. Granted.  All true.

But I sure hope that the majority will finish with some remnant of the excitement and hope with which they joined.
That they don’t turn into total cynics with permanent sneers on their faces. That they are still on talking terms with their spouses. That they feel that though their children suffered, there was no other way. That they won’t tell teenagers who come to them with dreams of ministry that it’s not worth it. That they have not completely lost all skill they had in the art of conversation. That they can recall their cousins’ spouses’ names.

That they can remember those everydays of mental, physical and emotional near-collapse with pride and not with feelings of having been exploited. That though they may have become immune to their patients’ pain, they are still compassionate.   

That they can look back at their time of training and make sense of it all and understand that it had to be the way it was.