Changes are afoot in my life, but for the next few weeks, I'm still working as a hospice chaplain. It's important work, work I both believe in and enjoy. It's also exhausting work. It's sad watching people's bodies shut down, their families grieve. Death isn't a pretty thing.
I've had to learn what helps me pick myself back up after a difficult day. This isn't just a list of happy things, it's a list of ten things that help me process, grieve, and let go of patients I've lost, families I've cried with, and pain I've witnessed. It all has to go somewhere, and it's best if that somewhere isn't permanently on my shoulders.
I think knowing these things about myself will bode well for a life of ministry, and using them for a "Ten on Tuesday" gives me the opportunity to ask: what picks you up after a difficult day? Share!
10. Phone calls with friends.
My good friend Katie called me during my lunch break a couple of weeks ago. "Courtney!" she chirped in that exceedingly extroverted way she has. "I need to talk to you!" What freedom to be able to call a friend mid-day, after work, on the weekend, to say, "Gosh, this was hard for me. What should I do? Will you pray for me?"
9. Puzzles.
I process while doing puzzles. It gives me a way to decompress that isn't just plopping myself in front of House. Though, admittedly, sometimes I do puzzles while plopped in front of House. Doing a puzzle gives me that think-but-not-think state of mind where I can say goodbye to a difficult day while beginning to transition to the rest of life.
(This is the one I'm working on now. I am loving it.)
8. Good, good music.
I have the most utterly absurd CD in my car right now. It contains songs by the most random assortment of artists known to humanity. Journey, James Blunt, Black Eyed Peas, Jeff Buckley, Dar Williams... it's pretty ridiculous. But somehow, after I've witnessed a patient's death or cried with a patient's loved one, there always seems to be the perfect song for the moment. Sometimes it's "Hallelujah." Sometimes it's "Don't Stop Believin'." Sometimes it's "It's Gonna Be a Good Night." Some days I'm singing along at the top of my lungs with the windows down in traffic to "Viva Las Vegas." I don't know why, but it really helps.
7. Baking.
When the world seems crazy, it gives me incredible comfort to mix up some eggs, sugar, flour (gluten-free, of course!), butter, and cinnamon, roll it out, and come up with cinnamon rolls. It's like, "Glory be, at least
something in this world has gone right today."
6. Surprises.
I had a hard weekend. I finally had enough time and space to process through the past couple of weeks which have been crazy. Just plain crazy. Chaplaincy has easy weeks and hard ones, and these past have been really tough. Daryl and I sat in a parking lot on our way to a date and I just cried. I cried because of patients I've loved who have died. I cried for the grief of their families who now have to go on living without them. I cried over the dysfunction of families who try to love each other and just can't sometimes. I cried because it's just plain hard to listen to people's stories all day every day when those stories involve cancer and Alzheimer's and strokes and heart attacks and suffering of every shape and kind.
Daryl listened patiently, as he is incredibly amazing at doing. He prayed with me. He held my hand. Then, after I'd dried my tears and said, "Okay, I think I'm good now," he asked if he could tell me a secret.
"What's that?" I asked.
"Well..." he said quietly. "You mentioned that you wanted to go see Ben Folds with the Nashville Symphony..." (I had mentioned this once, briefly, and completely forgotten to follow up and look for tickets. When I thought to look, they were already sold out.)
I was shocked. I wasn't even sure he was listening when I mentioned it weeks earlier. I definitely wasn't sure we had the money to spend.
What a sweet surprise.
5. Organizing.
This is like baking. When the world seems like it's in shambles (read: lots of people are dying of lots of terrible things), I come home and organize a cabinet. I fold laundry. I rearrange some furniture. Then I stand back and say, "Ah. That's better." It helps.
4. Prayer.
Anne Lamott says that her two most often-used prayers are "Help me help me help me" and Thank you thank you thank you." I find myself praying these more often than I imagined before hospice. Pulling up to a patient's house: "Help me." Leaving after a visit: "Thank you." Sitting with a dying patient: "Help me." Witnessing the power of God in the life of a family: "Thank you."
There are many other prayers, but often this one rings in my mind.
3. More prayer.
Then there are days where "Help me" and "Thank you" don't seem to cut it. A friend of mine said recently that he finds himself praying certain lines from the Lord's prayer over and over again. Worried about money? "Give us today our daily bread." Struck by the tragedies of this world? "Deliver us from evil." Jesus gave us this prayer for a reason: it really does cover just about anything we might encounter in this crazy world. Forgive us. Thy kingdom come.
In the face of death and disaster within families' lives, often I can only reach for these words from Jesus. My own words fail me, and I am so grateful for his on my behalf.
2. Daryl.
Daryl is a source of deep and abiding joy for me. No matter what the day holds, at the end of the day, there he is.
1. Jesus.
Would this be a good list if it didn't end this way? Well, yes, but not very truthful to what really helps me (or better yet:
who).
In hospice, sometimes the only thing I know is true is that Jesus is with me. We serve a God who suffered and died on our behalf, a God who is no stranger to suffering, brokenness, disease, and even death. When I sit with a suffering patient and feel like I can't do it a moment longer because their pain is too much, too hard, too excruciating, I remember that I am not alone in that room, in that house, in that hospital. I go with Jesus. Jesus goes with me. And Jesus loves that patient more than I ever could.
This is what helps me this Tuesday.
What helps you?
