Difficult Seasons

While visiting with a man yesterday who was in the process of dying, he asked me to pray with him and his family who had gathered to support him.  So as has become my practice, I looked him in the eyes and asked him what he’d like to pray about.

What he said was something like, “Pray that like Abraham, I’ll find a path.”  As I grasped the word picture he was painting for me and his family, I immediately heard the words my mom spoke to me years ago as she knew she was dying.  “I’m not afraid of dying, of what’s on the other side.  I’m just afraid of the process of dying.”

This minister of 40 years was helping us understand that he was on a journey into a foreign land, like Abraham, and that he didn’t know the way, but that he was wanting and trusting God to take his hand and lead him to his destination, the promised land.

Everyone fears the process of dying.  Even Jesus had anxiety about the process as he spent the night before his death in the Garden praying about it.  So it’s okay if we’re anxious, if we’re fearful.

Like Jesus, we pray about our anxiety, our fears.  And like this good man, we pray that God leads us through this unknown territory, showing us the way.

Praying

I am convinced that praying is the most important thing I do.

I’ve lived long enough, been through enough of life experiences, to understand that I’m not in control.  Further, I’ve learned that I’m helpless to fix all the things that are broken, that are wrong, in this life.

But through prayer, I can connect to the One who is in control and who has the ability to fix broken things.  Broken bodies, broken hearts, broken relationships, broken whatever.

Prayer is simply the way I deal with life, whether its joys or its disappointments or its unfairness.

So when I visit people in the hospital, I love to pray with them, to bring their desires which have become my desires to the God who cares and who can do something about them.

But before I do, I ask two questions.

1.  “Would it be okay if I prayed with you?”  You see, not everyone is comfortable praying, or it may just not be the right time, or they may not feel well enough at the moment.  I want to give them the opportunity to say no if that’s their desire, and if they do, I honor it.

2.  If they indicate they would like to pray, I ask what they’d like to pray for.  You see, my guess from our conversation might not be accurate.  Plus, there are often things that are weighing on them that may not have come up before that they’d like to include.

Then, if they’ve agreed, and after I understand what they’d like included, I word a prayer that includes to the best of my ability what we’ve talked about.  That’s the most common style of prayer from my faith tradition, and the one most of the folks I visit are most comfortable with.

You might choose to handle praying with a patient differently depending on your faith tradition and your level of comfort.  Sometimes simply praying the Lord’s Prayer together is perfect.  Many love the beautiful prayers from The Book of Common Prayer or another book of prayers.

But regardless of how you handle it, praying with someone you visit in the hospital is often the most powerful part of your visit, the time when you feel most connected, the time when most healing occurs.  And that just seems right.

Photo Credit: Judy Baxter

Today I saw pain.

Not the pain that powerful chemicals can dull.

But the pain that so often we hide from others.  The pain that comes from having our normal lives ruthlessly interrupted.  The pain that comes from not being able to do those important things that we often take for granted.  The pain that hurts all over, yet whose source can’t be seen on a PET scan.

For one person, it was pain from not being able to provide care for her husband and her 94-year old mother, instead having to focus everything on her one hope to add years to her life in a battle with an unrelenting disease.

For another, it was a still two-week-fresh devastating diagnosis, and the fight of his life, for his life.

And for another, it was recurrance of a nasty cancer that had been gone for 13 months, that remission itself against huge odds.

They allowed me the special privilege of seeing what they hide most of the time from most people.  They allowed me to connect with them in a special way, in a special place.  And I’m honored by their trust.

We talked about how precious hope is, how important the opportunity to fight is.  We prayed to the One who has the power to heal for healing.  And I prayed to the One who has the power to remove their non-physical pain to do so for each of them.