Glimmers of Grace: A Doctor’s Reflections on Faith, Suffering, and the Goodness of God
For the past few years I have been training to be a professional chaplain in a medical setting. One training regimen involved exposure in a level 1 trauma center and behavioral health unit. In my current professional setting, I work in Hospice care where I spend each day in this liminal space of death and dying. The patients I currently see are required to have a terminal diagnosis; given natural disease progression, these patients...
Finding God’s Will
How many of us know what we are going to face going into 2022? All of us certainly have personal questions going into the new year. Most likely, some of our decisions will change the course of our lives significantly. The decision might be whether to relocate to another city. Some might make a significant financial decision. It might be a decision on dating and marriage. Processing these decisions can be paralyzing. The question we...
The History and Purpose of Hospice Care
Psalm 90 encourages “us to number our days carefully so that we may develop wisdom in our hearts.”[1] While we may not know when we will die, we do know that we will die one day if the Lord does not return first. Here, in this liminal space, at the end of life, hospice care might step in to help. Few people think about their wishes regarding end-of-life treatment, much less communicate it. Yet our Christian faith is central to our...
Preparing for a Funeral
What should I say? How long should my sermon be? Will there be a visitation or viewing service? I remember feeling overwhelmed preparing for my first funeral a few years ago. Honestly, I still feel this way now. Funerals can be emotionally draining for the ministry leader. You may feel an unintentional need to perform well or fix everyone’s grief all at once. The person delivering the sermon or eulogy receives a lot of pressure....
Compassion, Fatigue, and the Need for Self-care
Empathy muscles are being used by many different people right now. Serving in ministry can be overwhelming at any time, and that fact is certainly true now. COVID-19 has had an impact on everyone in our world in at least some capacity. If you are caring for people, the challenge now is to maintain resilience in order to keep doing the work of caring with energy and compassion. The danger involved in caring for others is facing burnout...
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