An Old Experience for Growth

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.

Another Leaf Drops

I lost my last aunt this past Thursday. While at first glance, she was at times a distant aunt, she was still a leaf on my tree. I gazed at her. She was not there. I knew it at once. It was not my vibrant, laughing, strong, aunt. Her eyes were closed now forever with a downward frown on her face. She was clearly with her Lord and not in this place.

My mother is the last in her family now. There is something about attending a funeral in which I was not the officiant. It somehow put me in a different place an in between spot. I was not entirely comfortable being in the in between. My mother strong and yet clearly disturb by her own loss.

We tend to have such attachments to our relatives. They are a link to our identity and our heritage. My Aunt was a major link in our family. She always seemed to smile. She was a strong lady who died with that same grace and dignity. She was a very young ninety seven born in 1913 in a so very different time. Our time will seem and be different for others in our passing too.

My mother who has really never been very religious when I asked her if she wanted me to say a prayer, quietly nodded "yes". I can only imagine all the feelings that soared through her as she gazed at the beautiful white coffin. Crosses etched into the sides. On the inside top of the coffin was embroidered the Holy Bible. I never thought about what we actually can take with us. The Bible!! Our love of people, our smiles at life, our gratitude for all that God has provided us even when we never knew. Oh aunt Mary I will sorely miss you, your love and care. God is continuing to provide for all of your needs my fallen leaf.

Thoughts in the Afternoon

It is the afternoon. I am thinking about how little time we have on this earth. I remember all of the people who told me when I was growing up "oh enjoy your youth" or when I had children "oh they grow up so fast".

It is difficult not being a little grumpy about how little time we do have. I ponder the days of our life at times like these. I wonder just how much time I have wasted on "this and that". It seems that "this and that" have been around me for most of my life taking all of my time.

However, I am reminded of what God says to me: don't worry about how much time or days you have. "I will give back to you". I think about Job and all he lost in time and how in the Exodus how much wandering or time it took to get back to God.

When I want to stop time, I can't. All I can do is watch as it passes by me. "All the stars in the sky or the grains of sand" "it will all be yours" God told Abraham. I just want the grains of time and stars of life. God will provide I know!!

Who Is the Samaritan?

On the way to church today I saw a woman on the side of the road walking. It was still early in the day so the heat of the day was only about 81 degrees. She was carrying a bag of groceries and some clothes that she had gotten from the cleaners. They were still in plastic. My first thought was to stop and ask her if she wanted a ride to wherever she was going. I immediately thought if I did ask I might miss church or the other hundreds of things I have to do today. I kept on going.

Two questions and two answers. “What shall I do to inherit eternal life?” and “Who is my neighbor?”

Who is our neighbor? What if Jesus was the one who was hurt and lying by the road? Would we stop to help him.

In the parable today from the Gospel of Luke, both the religious leaders and the Samaritan "see" the man in the ditch, but who really "sees" him?

I have lived on my same street since 1985 or so. Who are my neighbors? I sadly say that with the exception of maybe three or four persons living in and around me, I do not know my neighbors at all. However, one summer night several years ago, I really saw my neighbor when he suffered a major heart attack and was lying in a comma at Emory Adventist Hospital. Not knowing him very well, I felt called by God to visit him in the ICU. “I put my hand on his chest and said “God loves you. God loves you” The only words I could muster up to repeat. I was truly his neighbor that night.

In our text today, Jesus is described as telling this parable as a response to a question which someone has asked him “who is my neighbor?” In the Levitical law is says that one should love their neighbor. In Leviticus 19:18 it says “Do not seek revenge or bear a grudge against one of your people, but love your neighbor as yourself. I am the LORD.” Is the Lord our neighbor then??

We have a lawyer, a priest, a Levite and a man in a ditch. Like my incident this morning, each and every day, I can really see myself in all of these roles. The lawyer- judging the Samaritan “well how did he get in this place?” “He should have been more careful” or “maybe he did something wrong against our laws. I judge him against the laws of the land and against my own law of justice.

Or maybe, I am the Levite in my priestly role, I say “he must not be a church goer”. “I read the Bible everyday he must not”. I am the pious one. “Maybe he is not Christian at all”. “I have no patient or tolerance towards people who don't profess Christ as their Savior”.

There are of course those days when I am the man in the ditch myself. Torn and battered down weary from the battles of life. At my wits end. I have been beaten down by society, the jobless market, the economies of life. I can go no further.

Perhaps even rarely, I am the Good Samaritan. I stop and care for those who need me. I help, hold out a hand and raise the person out of the ditch. It is the Samaritan that really "sees" and "has compassion" on the needy man in the ditch. He "cares" for the man in the ditch. He also asks the innkeeper to "care". The Samaritan doesn't provide all of the direct aid to the needy man. He is the one "doing mercy".

As Christians we are called to have compassion to others; to come (near) to others; to care for others; to do mercy to others. It is not enough just to talk about "what one believes," but "what difference does it make in my life that I believe."

Some of us in our Parent's Morning Out Program recently received our first aid and CPR training. We were taught what to do, and what not to do and even to not respond or help an injured person if we were not certified to do so (beyond calling 911). The main thing that we are instructed is to get help. Help the person who is unable to help themselves. Jesus asks us as His followers to be good Samaritans to your neighbor.

“Go and do this kind of mercy to even the last person you can ever imagine as being a neighbor to you.” Go and help all those you can!

Emotional Attachment with God

I was just thinking today about how we as human beings seem to attach so many emotions to situations. It is one of the primary ways that humans learn. We may store these emotions for years or just for a day. The problem with this learning is that we attach negative emotions to a situation. It then distracts us from God 's purposes for the situation and for us. We remain out of God's loop on what God desires from us and the situation.

If we can consider leaving the emotions up to God maybe situations would be less traumatic. Our reliance upon God should be for everything. If I can just do that then my emotions would be from God too.

I find myself automatically thinking that a situation is either good or bad by my thinking. However, it is my very thinking that really makes a situation as such. I am going to try to rely on God to determine my emotional take on life. I can do this by not judging myself, anyone or anything. I will leave all of the judgment up to God and Christ at least for one day at a time anyway.

Are We Hungry Today

I have been reading a book called “Love Hunger”. It is about people who have food addictions. Well, it could really be any type of addiction. In our techno, broadcasted, information overloaded culture why not? What I found interesting in the book was the authors’ discussion of the six-step downward spiral of an addiction: The first step is called “Love Hunger”. Interestingly, it is the trigger mechanism that sets off the addiction–cycle like the first domino in a circle of dominos. The authors say that one hits another and then another until the entire circle of dominoes has collapsed. The difference is that in the domino example once they all fall the cycle is over. However, in the real world, the stages continue to go around and around deeper into the addiction.

What causes this first step in the process you might ask? The very first domino to fall is our hunger for love. Whether it be from trauma in early childhood, a disastrous love interest, a severe disappointment, a trauma at work or a disfiguring disease, they all serve to start our hunger for love.

For Christians, if we only know one thing, we must know internally that we are loved by our creator. As the Psalmist says in Psalm 139:14: we are “fearfully and wonderfully made”. A human being is an incredible thing: complex and intricate to have come into being without the guiding hand of a Creator.

We have been made in the image of God. At some point in our lives, we must internalize that love.. It is the key to the salvation of our spirits. Our lives are all about love. Love of God and love of one another. No matter how you got to the place where you are today, remember that God truly loves you. If you don’t believe that statement, why, ask another Christian. They most certainly will affirm God’s love for you. For no matter what we have done in the past or will do in the future, we have been restored to the image of our creator. The next time you are feeling the pressures of this world, or the past life you have lived or the worry of your future repeat John 3:16 only substitute, your name in the blanks.

John 3:16

¹⁶"For God so loved ___________that he gave his one and only Son,^[a] that _________believes in him ____________shall not perish but have eternal life.