Over a period of a few days a very difficult situation evolved at our hospital; it ended this past Saturday with two people dying violently.  This traumatized our staff and patients, to varying degrees, including all members of our spiritual care team.  Some team members were involved directly with the situation, others supported staff and patients who had been directly involved, the rest supported our team and other staff.  No one was untouched; all who weren’t at the epicenter know they easily could have been.

A chaplain from a sister hospital kindly offered to lead a debriefing session for our team, so for three hours on Monday we came together to share our personal experiences of the situation.  Perhaps more importantly, we listened deeply to each other and felt the healing power of being listened to deeply.  This is, after all, what chaplains do, and as painful as it was, I think we did it well.

As we began to sense that hearts were settling, at least as much as they could in a single meeting, our facilitator led us into silence with an invitation to each member to speak to this query as each felt led: 

Why do you keep coming back?

It’s not my place to share how others answered this query.  I can only say that listening to each person share, coming as it did after listening to each of their stories of service in this horrible situation, was as inspiring as anything I have ever experienced.  One common theme was that each of us is inspired by the opportunity to serve with others whose hearts are so big and whose skills are so profound.  Yes.

What is mine to share is my own response to this query.  The section below contains the words I spoke to our group of chaplains, as best as I could recall them 12 hours later, reshaped—as all such memories are—by how we would like to remember them, including what we’d wished we’d said but didn’t. 

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As some of you know, my Friday here at the hospital was hard; my part in this situation was only a piece of it.  I spent time in the recovery room with a couple in their 40s whose final attempt at IVF—their last embryo—had just ended in miscarriage.  The minute I stepped away from that couple, it was time to go accompany the family of a patient I had come to know and love as we withdrew life support from their wife/mother and watched as she died.  So I was feeling pretty drained … and then Saturday happened.

It took me a long time yesterday to get settled into my morning yoga and prayer routine—and a lot of silence—but when I finally got centered, this very question rose for me:  Why do you keep coming back?  As you all know, today is my 68^th birthday, so it’s a pretty obvious question for me when you think about it.  But as the question rose, the Spirit also rose within me, and offered me this:

I have led you to this place, and equipped you to do this work, because the need is there and you have the ability to do it.  It’s work that needs to be done, and most people not only don’t want to do it, they don’t want to hear about it, they don’t want to even think about it.  But you help people to feel my love in the midst of their hurt, and in doing so you feel my love grow in you as well, and that’s why you keep coming back.

You guys—each of you—are doing the same thing.  You are agents of God’s love, you bring God’s light into darkness to help others see their way forward.  As I sit here, I see God’s light shining brightly through each of you, and it’s just the most beautiful thing.  So how could I not keep coming back?

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I have the pleasure of knowing quite a few of you who read this blog, and I know many of you live lives of service to others—be they family, friends, or strangers—that often take a toll on your spirits.  Really, most people do.  So I invite each of you to reflect on this query:  Why do you keep coming back?