The ICU chaplain wanted to make me aware of a situation in ICU. She prepped me prior to my on-call shift as she was leaving. Her prepping conversations were always too real for me but my duty and call was to listen. My natural response was to begin to run out of that hospital vowing never ever to return. “There was a 24-year-old boy who over the July 4th holiday had been drinking. He fell down some concrete steps and suffered a brain bleed. He is in ICU on a vent. He had been talking to the nurses earlier in the week. However, perhaps as the swelling in the brain continued, he had lost his consciousness. You may be called by the ICU nurses tonight so be prepared”.
I was the on-call chaplain on this day and night. I hated the role of being the only voice of God in the hospital. I always felt so incompetent to even pretend to speak for God on issues of this magnitude in person’s lives. “Just be yourself, God is with you” echoed in my mind each week when I was assigned the 24 hour shift in my role as a Clinical Pastoral Education Chaplain doing a full year residency at a large community hospital in Atlanta. I would scream inside myself “I cannot speak for God. I am only a lowly person who has much sin and error in my ways. Please let me go home where it is safe. Send someone else in my place”. Some nights I would be petrified by the mere sound of a ringing telephone or that unforgiving pager.
It was not very long after I had been briefed about the situation that a call came. “Hell-o this is Sabrina in ICU”. She proceeded to tell me the same story that I had been already briefed on. I listened to the story once again. It was just as painful to hear the second time around.
“We will need you to come down once the girl friend comes in. She does not know the
Family. She wants to say goodbye to him. They did not know how involved she was with their son. Please know to come when we call”.
“OK I will be prepared”. I knew not what I could be prepared for, however, it felt good to say that phase "I will be prepared".
A few minutes later the call came. It was a different call. “Please come down now”, the nurse commanded. The family needs you. The brain scan came back saying the son has brain activity. The Dad (who is a pediatrician) has decided to pull the tubes and give him a morphine drip. “I’ll be right down”, I declared.
I go to the ICU waiting room. There are four people in the room. I entered with a sense that they had expected someone else. “Hi my name is Dawn Britt. I’m the chaplain”. They were pleasant with me. I learned that they were “pseudo Presbyterians” they professed. They had established a connection with the other chaplain who had been with them all day. They seemed very stoic, the Dad, Mom, grandfather and grandmother. There were many pregnant pauses during the brief meeting. The nurse came in to tell the family that they could now see their son. I walked with the Dad and Mom to the son’s room. As we entered the room, I looked over at the boy who was lying on the bed grasping periodically for air. His breaths were scattered and not consistent. I felt sick to my stomach from the sight. He looked so much like my stepson. I felt as though I was moving in slow motion.
I watched as both parents laid their heads on their son’s chest and caressed his face. I had tears flowing down my eyes. The Dad who had seemed so stoic to me previously looked over at me and then quickly turned toward his wife and buried his face into her shoulder.
The grandfather and grandmother wanted to leave after they had said their good-byes. The grandfather took my hand to say thank you. I saw the pain in his eyes. “Thank you for what you did for our family tonight”. They left.
I eventually left also to give the parents some time to be with their son without an audience. The pain of the experience lingers with me even today.
During this time of lent, we are called to repentance, silence, solitude, prayer, meditation and the study of the Word. I experienced each of these spiritual practices on that long night while doing CPE chaplaincy with that grieving family. Although at the time, I never realized exactly how God was working.
At times during our spiritual walk, we are called to be “on the mountain alone” (John 6:15). We may feel unprepared for the event while filled with many negative emotions. However, for me, it is in these times that I feel most the presence of the Holy Spirit. Whether I ask for the presence or not, the Holy Spirit is there. The Holy Spirit is there with us all in the peace and silence of the moment. This Spirit lies in the gap between the useless words not uttered.
I have learned much from my many experiences while serving the two years of CPE. The greatest of this knowledge is to “be still and know that I am God”. So many times in our lives we find ourselves so oppressed by the burdens of living, we seek something but we know not what. For me, that night in that ICU room, I found God through the power of the Holy Spirit in full force. For that family, in the midst of there horrific pain, we all found peace and rest. It was not that we found necessarily the solution to our problems. Their son would die. What that family found that night was peace and reconciliation and most importantly love. This finding is the message for everyone: Find Your Peace. Find Your Reconciliation. Find Your Love. Be still and know that God Works In All Things.
I was the on-call chaplain on this day and night. I hated the role of being the only voice of God in the hospital. I always felt so incompetent to even pretend to speak for God on issues of this magnitude in person’s lives. “Just be yourself, God is with you” echoed in my mind each week when I was assigned the 24 hour shift in my role as a Clinical Pastoral Education Chaplain doing a full year residency at a large community hospital in Atlanta. I would scream inside myself “I cannot speak for God. I am only a lowly person who has much sin and error in my ways. Please let me go home where it is safe. Send someone else in my place”. Some nights I would be petrified by the mere sound of a ringing telephone or that unforgiving pager.
It was not very long after I had been briefed about the situation that a call came. “Hell-o this is Sabrina in ICU”. She proceeded to tell me the same story that I had been already briefed on. I listened to the story once again. It was just as painful to hear the second time around.
“We will need you to come down once the girl friend comes in. She does not know the
Family. She wants to say goodbye to him. They did not know how involved she was with their son. Please know to come when we call”.
“OK I will be prepared”. I knew not what I could be prepared for, however, it felt good to say that phase "I will be prepared".
A few minutes later the call came. It was a different call. “Please come down now”, the nurse commanded. The family needs you. The brain scan came back saying the son has brain activity. The Dad (who is a pediatrician) has decided to pull the tubes and give him a morphine drip. “I’ll be right down”, I declared.
I go to the ICU waiting room. There are four people in the room. I entered with a sense that they had expected someone else. “Hi my name is Dawn Britt. I’m the chaplain”. They were pleasant with me. I learned that they were “pseudo Presbyterians” they professed. They had established a connection with the other chaplain who had been with them all day. They seemed very stoic, the Dad, Mom, grandfather and grandmother. There were many pregnant pauses during the brief meeting. The nurse came in to tell the family that they could now see their son. I walked with the Dad and Mom to the son’s room. As we entered the room, I looked over at the boy who was lying on the bed grasping periodically for air. His breaths were scattered and not consistent. I felt sick to my stomach from the sight. He looked so much like my stepson. I felt as though I was moving in slow motion.
I watched as both parents laid their heads on their son’s chest and caressed his face. I had tears flowing down my eyes. The Dad who had seemed so stoic to me previously looked over at me and then quickly turned toward his wife and buried his face into her shoulder.
The grandfather and grandmother wanted to leave after they had said their good-byes. The grandfather took my hand to say thank you. I saw the pain in his eyes. “Thank you for what you did for our family tonight”. They left.
I eventually left also to give the parents some time to be with their son without an audience. The pain of the experience lingers with me even today.
During this time of lent, we are called to repentance, silence, solitude, prayer, meditation and the study of the Word. I experienced each of these spiritual practices on that long night while doing CPE chaplaincy with that grieving family. Although at the time, I never realized exactly how God was working.
At times during our spiritual walk, we are called to be “on the mountain alone” (John 6:15). We may feel unprepared for the event while filled with many negative emotions. However, for me, it is in these times that I feel most the presence of the Holy Spirit. Whether I ask for the presence or not, the Holy Spirit is there. The Holy Spirit is there with us all in the peace and silence of the moment. This Spirit lies in the gap between the useless words not uttered.
I have learned much from my many experiences while serving the two years of CPE. The greatest of this knowledge is to “be still and know that I am God”. So many times in our lives we find ourselves so oppressed by the burdens of living, we seek something but we know not what. For me, that night in that ICU room, I found God through the power of the Holy Spirit in full force. For that family, in the midst of there horrific pain, we all found peace and rest. It was not that we found necessarily the solution to our problems. Their son would die. What that family found that night was peace and reconciliation and most importantly love. This finding is the message for everyone: Find Your Peace. Find Your Reconciliation. Find Your Love. Be still and know that God Works In All Things.
