Making Old Things New

I went over to the hospital today, the hospital where I will begin a year-long Clinical Pastoral Education residency in a matter of days. I had to get a test to confirm my immunizations. I don't like to think that I have only been to the UCDavis Medical Centre twice now, and I have already had to spill blood. I sincerely hope that this de-sanguination doesn't move from the literal to the figurative too soon.

To be honest, I can hardly believe that I am doing a yearlong CPE residency. During my whole seminary program I have been discerning between two vocations: a parish ministry or an academic ministry. I never, ever, thought that I would do any more chaplaincy. This was not the plan. But here I am, waiting on the unplanned residency. I trust that God is in this, because I am deeply relying on him, and will continue to deeply rely on him. If this was not my plan, let us hope it is God's.

It didn't help that I did not have a great experience in my summer of CPE. A lot of blood was spilled in those few weeks, a lot of it mine. I certainly learned a lot, about myself and how I cope with stress and injury, and about how to minister to people in those situations. But as many of you know, that kind of learning is very, very, hard. In some sense it was especially hard for me, because to be present with someone who is coping with a stressful injury forces me to be present to how I have coped and continue to cope with my own injury. Even though I have recovered healthily from my own trauma twelve years ago, being alongside someone who knows now what I knew then compels me to remember just how difficult these adjustments are in a deeply personal way, making my own old wounds painfully present.

I feel like I am about to begin training for a marathon, or that I am on the ground but about to start preparing for a spacewalk. There is a lot of hard work ahead of me. The only difference is that the goal is not one that will bring any glory to me, like crossing a finish line, or a fantastic journey into weightlessness: the goal is the care of suffering people. May God's glory be revealed to me through them, may God's glory be revealed to them through me.

Pray that for all of the emptying, I might also be filled, that my weakness becomes my strength, and that through this work I grow into the life of the Holy Trinity; pray for those to whom I minister, that their weakness turns to strength, and that God enters their life through my ministrations.

Lord in your mercy . . .