Directions are what get you to your desired destination…follow them.
(Picture by Lisa R.)

Right now, I am a captive audience (sitting under a dryer at my hairdresser). I am pondering my day so far. Many things have happened since my morning prayer (see Day 41). My prayer: “Lord help me learn the lesson the first time”. As the day has progressed, I have had many opportunities to put recently learned lesson into action (seems like God takes prayer seriously). This made me think about the importance of not just hearing a lesson, but actually understanding it. I was reminded of a recent incident with a patient. As I have stated before, I work for a cancer center. In the health care profession, we are constantly being graded against other entities that provide the same service. The goal is to be the BEST. This suits my nature just fine, as I tend to be very competitive. How are we graded? Patient Satisfaction Surveys. They are sent out (randomly) to patients. The range is between one and five, where one is the worst and five is outstanding. We strive for five. One such survey was sent to one of our patients (to call her a patient feels awkward…she’s more like family). In her survey she names us one by one (from doctor to registration person) and not one staff member was missed. She raves about how awesome the center is. How the staff has made even chemotherapy fun. She talks about our efficiency, our compassion, and our friendliness. After this amazing praise…she proceeds to rate us ones all the way down the survey. WHAT!!!!? I can’t help but laugh out loud when I think about this. The lesson? Our patient got the point of the survey. She knew what needed to be done. She understood the importance of a good score…but she didn’t understand the directions. That’s how we often are in life…we get the goal, understand the mission, but don’t follow or understand the DIRECTIONS. The result? The goal is not met. In the case of the cancer center, our quarterly scores drop. Our percentage falls and we have to wait for next quarter to rebound. In life, understanding the directions is equally as (if not more) important as getting the point. There is “no point” in getting the POINT, if you can’t follow the directions that will get you there.

So what am I thankful for today? That today I understood the directions (here’s hoping tomorrow will be equally as successful).