Praying, Crying, Wrestling

It is 3:30 in the morning and I am wide-awake, pulled to the computer to put the words of my heart out in the open. You see it’s been a difficult ministry week, full of death, spiritual intensity and situations that remind me of my precious Hope gone too soon from our family. I feel completely stripped bare, the cup fully empty and living in an emotional disaster area. Why is it that when I am utterly exhausted and just want to sleep that it is the wee-hours of the morning that find my soul and body awake and wrestling with the difficult task of discernment and finding balance.

It probably is not helping that the gray winter of January and February along with the reality that January would have been Hope’s birth month sets my soul to struggle to move lightly some days. I’ve been reading Henry Nouwen’s The Wounded Healer, and while a good book, it’s not exactly light reading, my Lent devotional words have been hunger, fasting and penitence – not exactly light words. I’m taking a class on Henry Lester’s book The Angry Christian, again not exactly easy. In reality I’ve been residing in a fairly deep place. I’m still in awe and wonder that all this has managed to collect in one time and space. I guess when I dive deep, I really dive deep.

Add on top of this, changes at work, and while they are good changes – change is change and after you’ve been someplace as along as I have at my place of work grief also comes with change – even good change. And through it all I am still attending to my high need areas at work, attending to publicity and speaking events for Still a Mother, trying to be a grace filled mom as my 8 year old prepares to start braces (and having been there I know with it will come some painful days) and being a supportive, fully present wife.

And so here I find myself in the early morning,

writing, praying, wrestling

in the midst of what is the emotional disaster area of my soul. For the first time in a long time I found myself in a place where the idea of having to walk into a patient room and do one more patient/family visit put terror in my soul, because I was afraid of being thrown into one more intense situation and completely falling into a quivering pile of mush right in front of them out of the sheer inability to find once again the strength to be fully present to and minister in the mist of the stuff of life. So I hightailed it back to the office to hide, fall apart in my supervisors office and reached out to colleagues to help me on to the path of putting myself back together again.

And so here I sit, in the wee-hours of the morning,

writing, praying, crying and wrestling

in this space with ideas of letting go, creating space to care for myself, and desperately seeking God’s voice. A couple of wise people have suggested a time of stepping back to a more basic, broader assignment and letting go of my high need units for a while, and after 8 almost 9 years of being a critical care chaplain – they may be right. Not letting go forever, because I love my units and it is where my heart is, but only for a time. Time enough to let myself reset and come back with fresh eyes, ears and heart.

And this is the source of my wrestling – I don’t want these areas I have come to care for deeply to feel abandoned, but then again ministering to them out my desolation may very well be a type of abandonment. I’m not making a quick decision, but instead staying here

praying, listening and crying

and letting myself embrace the gift of a couple of days off to discern my own self-care and path forward.

And if I am completely honest, what I am really doing is trying to find the courage to actually put myself first for once, claim what I need and take a step back. And so for just a little bit longer I will stay here –

praying, crying, wrestling

and seeking peace with the decision I know I need to make.