Parallel Worlds, Tethered by the Same Cord
Michelle Montes – Team Blogger and Daniel Montes – Team Photographer
There’s a thought I keep returning to as this week closes, and it’s the significance of being grounded. I believe that everyone needs a tether. Something fixed to hold onto when the day is long, life is heavy, and the work gets hard. Something that keeps things from coming apart.
A surgeon knows this in the most literal way. Every suture is a small act of trust – a knot tied and relied upon to hold tissue together long after the surgeon’s hands have moved on. Healing depends on that hold. If the tether fails, the wound reopens. So, the surgeon ties carefully, and then trusts the knot to do what it was made to do.
This week reminded me that the team together here are tethered in the same way — not by thread, but by faith. Our knot is Jesus. He is the hold that keeps us from coming apart when the day is long and the work is heavy. And like a surgeon trusting a suture, the trust only works if you actually lean your weight on it. You don’t tie the knot and then hold the wound closed yourself. You rely on it. You let it bear the load.
Our individual tethers, or grounding, enabled the reliance we had on each other throughout the week. Teamwork mattered more than anything else. Nothing good happened because one person was brilliant alone, but because a group of people moved together, each one trusting the person beside them to hold their part. Process carried people through the hard moments, taking the pressure from the stressful moments. Accountability mattered, not because someone was watching, but because someone was depending on them. And the relationships, the ones that make a day genuinely better and not just functional, held just as much weight in a hospital as anywhere else.
But beneath all of it was the same quiet conviction a surgeon has when they finish a knot and move on: the hold will keep. As individuals and as a team, we reach and all carried the big picture, and still grab a chair, run an errand, do the small thing for whoever needed it, because we weren’t carrying the full weight ourselves. We were leaning on something that holds.
Our time together this week covered an insurmountable amount of ground and made an impact that can never be fully measured.
With five operating rooms running side by side, each one relying on the same anchor, our team saw nearly 100 patients patients, performed as many surgeries surgeries, and released as many patients out of our care.
The team performed skin grafts, hernia repairs, hysterectomies, prolapse repairs, removed cancerous tissues, separated webbed hands, removed painful cysts, cleared endometrial debris and degrading tissues, and what feels like a million things in between.
All of these procedures were performed with expert care, precise movements and dosing and most importantly, safely. The preparation teams, the recovery teams, the administrative teams, each played a part.
Not everyone can be in the operating room. But this work doesn’t happen alone, and it never did. Every prayer, every encouraging word, every gift, every person who followed along this week — that’s part of the hold too. Support in any form is always appreciated, and always felt. This is what your support creates.
To everyone who walked alongside this team this week, thank you. A surgeon trusts the suture to hold what they can’t keep holding themselves. We trust Jesus the same way. We’re grateful for our time together this week and always, to be anchored to a knot that keeps.
Special thank you to Dr Davis for leading this group.
