Making Pain Worse Her pain was excruciating. She’d had two surgeries in as many days, and the stabbing, stinging ache she felt was worse, she said, than childbirth. She was scared, too. Not only could she barely move her legs, but she had a fever. She worried something terrible was wrong with her, but the staff dismissed her complaints. To make things worse, her doctor was already trying to wean her off the pain medication, as if she were a drug addict. She felt desperate, abandoned, and judged. Old traumas surfaced. Although she would “never” do anything to hurt herself, she prayed for God to take her. She wanted to…
-
-
Shame and Self-Forgiveness
Toxic Shame I met with her many times. Being chronically ill, she ended up in the hospital often. Regardless of what we started talking about – her health, her grandchildren, her attempts to find a place where she could be at home – we always ended up talking about shame. For most of her life, people who claimed to loved her behaved as if they hated her. They told her she was stupid, ugly, worthless, and hopeless. They beat her, they sabotaged her efforts to achieve, they denied her the right of personhood. According to them, she couldn’t do anything right. Certainly she couldn’t “be” right. Her burden of shame…
-
The Mutuality of Friendship
Friends Care There are many ways to understand friendship, but one thing everyone agrees on is that friends care about one another. In some circles, this looks like going to parties or movies together. It might mean we help each other when times are hard. For some, friendship is about gossip or encouragement. Some friends garden, sew, or cook together. Others exercise together. Some hang out, drinking coffee and talking. Regardless of what they do, friends enjoy spending time together, they support you when you’re down, and they try not to betray you because they don’t want to see you hurt. All this is a way of caring. Professionals Care…
-
Honesty in the Face of Challenge
A Cycle of Lies Let’s call her Honey. She’d gotten pregnant. Her boyfriend was thrilled; she was not. If her parents learned she’d had sex outside of marriage, they’d be crestfallen. If her conservative Christian college found out, she’d be expelled. Since she was in a special program that would allow her to get a combined bachelor’s and master’s degree in only five years, she didn’t want to transfer someplace where she wouldn’t have the same opportunity. Besides, regardless of where she studied, Honey knew how stressful it would be to raise an infant while in school, and her career was important to her. She wouldn’t jeopardize that. To make…
-
Free Will and Microbes Among Us
Not Captains of Our Souls The more we learn about the creatures who inhabit this planet with us, the more obvious it seems that, regardless of what William Ernst Henley believed, we are not the captain of our souls, nor can we master our fate. [1] Yes, to some degree we can choose how to respond to adversity, and this is really what his poem is about. Written when he lay ill with tuberculosis and feared he might lose a foot, which was especially worrisome because he’d already had one leg cut off when he was sixteen, Henley’s poem honors his courage and his “unconquerable soul.” His words have inspired…
-
The Benefits of Laughing at Ourselves
Of Storms and Presidents Farce in the White House is nothing new these days, but we may have hit a new low. Does our president have such a tender ego that he can’t abide being wrong even about the weather? As you may have heard, he predicted that the hurricane, Dorian, would strike Alabama. Now he’s furious because the weather service in that area pointed out he was wrong. It didn’t even rain there. [1] Yet our president will never admit he made a mistake, not even a petty one, so he’s mad. Is he fuming at the storm itself, cursing God for not making it rain where he wanted…
-
Finding Significance
Four Human Needs There are many ways to understand a human life. Theories abound about how we navigate the stages and cycles that make up our existence, whether we focus on psychological development, spiritual growth, or financial well-being. In Seven Habits of Highly Effective Families, Stephen Covey wrote about four human needs: survival, stability, success, and significance. [1] Motivational speakers such as Zig Ziglar and Joseph Stumpf have created a hierarchical system from that idea that focuses on our financial health. They appear to be making a good living telling people how to move from one stage to the next. Encouraging others to take responsibility for their lives, these men…
-
The Importance of Paying Attention
Coddling and Kindness Father Gregory Boyle, who welcomes hardened gang members into compassionate community through his nonprofit Homeboy Industries, has been accused of “coddling” these young men and women. Detractors say this as if coddling were a terrible thing, perhaps as bad as throttling them. On “Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood,” Fred Rogers used to gaze kindly into the eye of the camera to make his television listeners feel that he was talking directly to them. Then, he’d say, “You’ve made this day a special day, by just your being you.” For this, he has been blamed for creating a generation of selfish brats who think they deserve to rewarded for doing…
-
Valuable, Not Special
To Seek Healing The woman lay unresponsive in the hospital bed. Tubes and wires connected her to machines that kept her alive. Standing at her side, her husband stroked her hand. She didn’t flinch, stir, blink. No movement at all. The man asked me to pray that his wife be healed. After all, Jesus raised up Lazarus after he had been dead four days. Surely he could cure this woman who was so beloved. So I prayed for healing, believing as I do that healing means many things. Our hearts need restoration; our spirits get wounded and need to be soothed. These are worth praying for. Rarely, though, have I…
-
On Not Making Assumptions
Making An Ass of You and Me In my forties, during my chaplain training, I heard about the acronym A.S.S.U.M.E. It means that when we make an assumption, we make an ass of you and me. Now that was a new idea. Was my teacher saying I shouldn’t assume I know what someone else is thinking? I was intuitive. I could feel these things. Besides, it takes less time to jump to conclusions than to listen to what someone has to say or ask for clarification. If I was anything, I was impatient. Then I started visiting patients, and I discovered I had been fooling myself all this time. I…