I’m reading the memoir of a lady doctor at the moment. It’s a great read and a humbling piece of work. You would have thought that our trusty medicos have got it all together, lead a charmed life with lashings of cash, a healthy marriage and 2.5 perfect children who never say naughty words and whose noses never run.
Not so with this GP. Crushed by an abusive relationship and deeply scarred, she tries to escape to a glamorous post overseas but COVID stops her at the airport.
She then asks an agency if any jobs are going in remote Australia (they must have thought all their Christmases had come at once) and she finds herself in a lot of red dust in the Pilbara region.
There was one phrase in the middle of it all that made me stop and reread it several times over. It’s ringing in my mind and at one level I hope that it never actually stops.
It's simply three words.
Stop. Listen. Heal.
That’s it. Nothing more… nothing less. It’s great advice for any GP, any priest and for all of us. We are at our finest and most effective when we just Stop. Listen. Heal.
Think about the last and most enjoyable conversation you had and I am pretty sure that you will find that both parties simply
Stopped
Listened
And were healed.
But this medicine of stopping, listening and healing occurs both ways in the consultation. In the book the GP herself goes through her own healing. She is forced to simply stop! Just stop. She has to listen… to lots of people, often the ones she doesn’t want to and in this confronting process finds her own healing.
A three-word mantra for our frenetic world.