Chaplain Larry Hirst on providing clear, honest information

I Just Need to Know

“I sure wish someone would tell me what is going on.” This was the exasperated statement of a patient. It reminded me of many other patients who had made similar statements about their desire, no, need to receive information from the medical staff about what was happening to them.

This “need to know” becomes a spiritual issue as it creates anxiety that sinks into the soul of patients as they wait, sometimes for days and weeks, without being given information about what is happening.

I’m not picking on doctors. What I would like to raise, however, is the importance of providing clear, honest information to people who are under the care of any of the many disciplines in our medical system.

When a person seeks medical attention it is because they are afraid. Sometimes the fear is exaggerated and not in proportion to the actual symptoms that are being experienced. For others the fear is absent, even in the face of symptoms that ought to stir considerable concern. Fear is, after all, not a mechanistic response to stimuli, but a soul response to stimuli.

Our souls are all “tuned” differently. Some are tuned to be extremely sensitive and the fear rises quickly with even the slightest symptom. Others of us have had our souls tuned in such a way that anything less than raging symptoms are brushed off as nothing. We have little control over the way our souls have been tuned.

There are many factors that contribute to the “tuning” of our souls: There is our unique personal nature, the temperamental intonations that we were born with; there is also the nurture we received from the family and culture in which we grew up; as well as biological and genetic factors that are still quite a mystery to medical science. We all reached adulthood pretty much “tuned” to respond to the stimuli of life in certain ways. Changing the “tuning” of our souls is difficult and takes an extreme amount of energy and time and often, even after all that, there is little success in altering the “tuning” of the human soul.

Because this “need to know” is a matter of the soul, it is important that we not ignore it. It is important that we be aware of the need, accept responsibility, and take the initiative necessary to find out what is happening to our bodies so that our souls can begin to process what is happening. This then enables us to come to terms with ourselves, our circumstances and our God in the face of health crises.

Because this “need to know” is a spiritual issue, it is my hope that whether we are the holder of the information or the one needing it that we will be kind and gracious, patient and forbearing, as we seek to help one another process life changes in a way that enables us to come to a place of peace and rest.

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