Chaplain Sarah Byrne on simply showing love

The Word Became Flesh

A handsome, charming twenty-eight year old, “Michael”, had spent recent years living the high life. I met Michael in the locked psychiatric unit where I served as chaplain. Michael had attempted to take his life the previous night.

What a soul-shock it must have been to awaken from an anticipated death. My heart felt full with the heaviness of his story as I entered his room.

Once he decided that I was a non-threatening presence, Michael shared his pain. Raised by a zealous Christian mother, he saw her faith as legalistic and superstitious. Michael devoted himself to understanding his experiences from a non-religious perspective. He took in a confusing world and tried to formulate a worldview from it. Not surprisingly, this, along with a tendency toward depression and a series of losses, led him into despair.

Michael wanted to die because he thought life was meaningless and that, in the grand scheme, his existence didn’t matter. He concluded that if there was a God, He was horribly strange, and if there wasn’t a God, then life was utterly fleeting and empty. Either way, non-existence seemed better.

As I sat with Michael, I felt his despair in my body and heart. Stunningly, Michael’s mother had yelled at him that morning, telling him that he was now guaranteed a place in Hell for his suicide attempt. He was vulnerable, a wounded soul.

We cried on behalf of life lost and found. We cried because it is easy to lose sight of joy when the world is overwhelming. We cried because there is so much brokenness. We cried with questions: Should we disengage from the struggles inside us and around us, or live through them? Should we risk joy, heartbreak? Where is hope, at the end of the day, when all is still?

And I cried inside myself because sometimes I don’t know how to speak of God when the weight of the world is too much to bear. I want to say something real. I want to minister as I have been ministered to in times of need.

But I gradually remembered, while perched on the wooden chair beside Michael’s bed, that I must not be a mouthful of good intentions. I must be a whole person sharing Michael’s space of suffering. I must, simply, show love.

This God-given love is one thing I know in my heart to be true. We are called to speak it in ways beyond words. An unwavering presence, even a silent one, would speak volumes more than any words. No ideas for a better life would honor the depths of Michael’s pain or drag him out of it. No, I needed him to know that for this day, I would stay.
No fancy words were needed. The Word was all that was needed – the indwelling presence of God. It is a nearly silent presence, a still, small voice, a fullness in the midst of emptiness.

This love sits with us in our grief. It cries with us as Jesus did for Lazarus. It speaks creation into being. It seeks us out amidst the chaos of unknowing. This Love stays with us in a stark, white hospital room.

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