How do you do it?

So far, in my few months as a hospital chaplain, a number of people have told me some variation of "I could never do what you do." Which is fine with me, because if everyone could do what I do then there wouldn't be much of a job market for me. But more importantly, there's plenty of things they do that I couldn't, or won't, do, so I think it's good we can't all do everything. I can't imagine cleaning up after people for a living (which is a lot of what nurses seem to do); or risking my life regularly (like firefighters); or any job where there is a serious chance of getting shot; or being on the road weeks at a time as a trucker (I told a husband of a patient that when he was telling me about his life away from home as a trucker, and he laughed since he had just said he couldn't do what I do).

Common corollary questions are "How do you do it?" or "Why do you do it?" I don't usually have a very good answer to either of those questions, partly because it doesn't often occur to me to ask those questions myself. Sometimes it does, so I do have some answers. As to "why," I do it because I think that's what I'm supposed to do. Simply put, I think God has asked me to do this. "Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted." Perhaps sometimes it is people who are to do the comforting, not only the mourning, so I am here. Jesus said that visiting people who are sick is important. These days, visiting sick people has to include visiting people in the hospital, so I do that. Visit enough people in the hospital and you will be supporting people through the process of dying, so I do that too.

As to "how," that is a bit harder to answer. I do it with a lot of support from other chaplains, first. But something that a chaplain much wiser than me has said points out a key reason how I can do this: "Remember, it is their crisis, not yours." Very true. I can stand with a family and watch as their mother and grandmother slowly stops breathing over the course of a couple hours, and they have to struggle themselves to remember to breath, because she is not my mother, or my grandmother. I can sit through multiple attempts to revive someone when the children and lovers can't bear to watch and have to leave the room because I am not his child, and I am not her lover. I can handle watching people grieve over the inexplicable death of a child without it rending my own heart into minuscule pieces because he is not my son, and she is not my daughter. They are not my siblings, or family, or friends. In fact most of the people here I hardly know at all, and that is how I do it. I can empathize and support, and I can feel the sorrow and pain, but I can also reasonably step aside from it, because it is not my crisis. The people I support cannot do this, because it IS their crisis: to step aside would be to deny what is happening, and in the long run they will most likely be healthier if they face the pain and sorrow now than if they avoid it. It is precisely when I do have a stronger connection to the patients or their family and friends that it becomes much harder to do the task of chaplain. But those moments also help remind me of what it feels like, so in the end they are beneficial.

So I leave the hospital, and step away from it all at the end of the day. I think and pray about the people I serve, but I do not continue to grieve the same way they do. And I turn up the music and let it cue my emotions, and feel the release wash over me. And I remember that it's not my crisis after-all. That's how I do it.