My daughter Jordan is a nursing student at Lipscomb University in Nashville. So, I was touched by this prayer of thanks for nurses by Brian Doyle in his book A Book of Uncommon Prayer. Perhaps it will lead you to give thanks for a nursing student or a nurse in the near future:
A Prayer of Awed Thanks for Nurses
“Witnesses, attendants, bringers of peace;
brilliant technical machinists;
selfless cleaners of all liquids no matter how horrifying;
deft finders of veins when no veins seem available;
soothers and calmers and amusers;
tireless and patient and tender souls;
brisk and efficient when those are the tools to keep despair at bay;
those with prayers in their mouths as their patients slide gently through the mysterious gate, never to return in a form like the shriveled still one in the bed;
feeders and teasers, mercies and singers;
they who miss nothing with their eyes and ears and fingers and hearts;
they who are not saluted and celebrated and worshipped as they ought to be;
they who are the true administrators of hospitals and clinics, for it is they who have their holy hands on the brows and bruises of the broken and frightened;
they who carry the new infants to their sobbing exhausted thrilled mothers;
they who must carry the news of damage and death to the family in the waiting room;
they whom You know, each and every one, glorious and lovely in their greens and blues and rainbow clothing;
they who are You in every tender touch and quiet friendly gentle murmured remark;
they who are the best of us;
bless them always and always, Mercy;
for they are the clan of calm and the tribe of tender, and I bow in thanks for them.
And so: amen.”
