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The Rev. Dr. Larry J. Austin on recognizing our worth
On Losing Your Soul
I recently attended a funeral for a young man who had just turned 16. He died in a car accident after a football game. As my wife and I sat in the church and listened to the pastor, my mind wandered to a former supervisor of mine who asked if I would ever find enough excitement to stay in the ministry? I remember saying with no hesitation, “Lord, yes, there is a tremendous amount of excitement in the hospital ministry.”
Well, I have reflected quite a bit these last few days and wanted to let people know that my excitement for ministry is still there. I am quite aware that if I ever get out of this line of work, it will be because the pain of the ministry got me first, long before the lack of excitement.
Over the years I have had the wonderful opportunity to work in an environment that has allowed me to do participate in people’s lives in a significant way. As much as I have tried to stay distant by reveling in the excitement of the hospital ministry I find that I keep getting drawn back to the intimacy, vulnerability and pain of the human encounter in the midst of crisis. To paraphrase the Gospel story found in Matthew 10:28, we should not fear the ones who can kill the body but we should fear the one who steals the soul.
It takes courage to be a chaplain to people in awful situations. A patient’s pain will affect you in a cumulative sense. The longer you are in the business the more personal pain you will feel. After a day of working in terrible situations, even when they are people you barely know, you will go home tired and exhausted, and try to distance yourself from the situations of the day, only to realize you have to go back to work the next day.
Patients will give us compliments for our being there with them in difficult times and we will get embarrassed and discount their compliments by denying that we did anything important. We let others discount our worth because our narratives do not have the weight of scientific research.
We contribute to our own pain by the failure to recognize the worth of what we do, and our failure to confront those who discount the profession and the person doesn’t help either. And finally, if you are not careful your pain will sneak up on you and steal your soul.
The Rev. Larry Austin, D.Min., is a Board Certified Chaplain, ACPE Supervisor; and serves as the Director of Pastoral Services of Pitt County Memorial Hospital, University Health Systems of Eastern Carolina in Greenville, NC.
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