Why I love my job…and hate it too.

A.Hanson, 2013

I love my job as a hospital chaplain. I get to be present with God's beloved people at all stages of their lives.  I get to be present at the beginning, middles, and ends of so many lives. 

I hate my job too.  I will meet you at the doors of the Emergency Department and escort you to a windowless room that is euphemistically called the "Compassion Room" and tell you that I will find the doctor to speak with you. To deliver the horrible news that you never imagined. 

I love my job because I get to hold the presence of the holy in unimaginable situations.  But I also hate my job because I will tell you that I was standing alongside your loved one praying when they coded and were pronounced dead in a sterile trauma room. I hate this because you should have been the one who stood with them, not me. 

I love my job because I get to hear so many stories of love and families and travel and adventures. I get to be a part of your life for a little bit of time, and that is such an honor.  

But I hate my job because some of the most intimate moments of your life are invaded by strangers.  By chaplains and social workers and nurses and doctors, and we are all kind, but you never wanted to see us. Not now. 

I love my job because I drive away from the hospital at night and I often cry.  I shed tears because of the injustice of it all.  Because of the beauty of your life or death. Because I grieve along with you.  But I hate my job because while your entire world changed in an instant, I have an extremely skewed sense of what is normal, and I know that tomorrow will hold another tragedy and another death and another trauma for another family.  And I will cry alongside them too. 

I love my job because I will sit with you in the darkest moments of your life.  I will hold your hand and walk with you.  I will provide you with information and guidance about things you never wanted to know.  And I do so because I love you even though I have not met you. 

I hate my job because I have to talk with you about mortuaries and organ and tissue donation and coroners and final conversations to have with your loved one and letting go. I hate my job because sometimes I have to be the one to tell you that it is time to leave the hospital because this is the start of a new normal. Even though you wish that the world could stop and you could freeze this moment of time forever.  

I love my job because I am truly working in the midst of the world and in the trenches where God can be found. And I get to proclaim with my pastoral presence and comforting touch and gentle words that God is here and death is not the end.  And that you can borrow the strength of a merciful God when it feels like you cannot go on. 

But I hate my job because I have the same questions that you do.  "How could God let this happen?"  "Why didn't God heal them?"  "Where is the justice?"  

But I love my job because I promise to sit with you and go with you wherever you need to go. I am not afraid of your pain or illness or body fluids or trauma.  I love my job because it is my calling. 

Chaplaincy in the Ministry of Word and Sacrament

Chaplaincy is considered a Specialized Ministry in the ELCA. The normative "first call" ministry in the ELCA is parish ministry.  The first call pastor is placed in a congregation where they serve in traditional functions of Word and Sacrament such as preaching, presiding at communion, baptizing, teaching confirmation, and so on.

First call candidates are generally not considered for specialized ministry. My own sense of call has been to hospital chaplaincy. I find this to be the place where I am most living out of my call of service to God and to the world. I frequently find myself not fitting into the mold of the normative first call ministry. So I am attempting to think through how my call to chaplaincy is an incarnation of the ministry of word and sacrament (ordained) ministry.

The ELCA defines the Word as both the holy scriptures and the living Christ. So the proclamation of the Word includes preaching and teaching of scripture, but also testifying to the work of the Living Christ in the world. This is where I find myself most often resonating with this aspect of my call in chaplaincy. Jesus Christ epitomized a ministry of accompaniment.  Jesus SAW people in their need (blind man, hemorrhaging woman, woman returning from burying her son, and so on.) Through my baptism, I die and live in Christ, and Christ lives in me. I am called to walk alongside those I meet in the hospital.  I am called to extend the love of Christ to those in their greatest time of need.

The Lutheran church defines a sacrament as taking a very ordinary thing (water, bread, and wine) and using that to make manifest the promises of God.  Baptism with water grants us eternal life in Christ, and Holy Communion feeds us for this journey on earth and reminds us to whom we belong. These sacraments are of paramount importance in the hospital, when we are reminded of our mortality and finitude and frailty in the face of overwhelming circumstances. While I am not presently allowed to preside over the sacraments because I am not ordained, I have no doubt that being able to offer them in my ministry of chaplaincy is crucial.

One of the ELCA buzzwords these days is the idea of "Missional Leadership".  This was the prompt for my candidacy approval essay and I will explore it in my next blog post: Chaplains as Missional Leaders