Note: Laura Ellis served as an intern at Lifeline Chaplaincy Houston in summer, 2016.
I truly love my job this summer. I get be a part of something beautiful. I am often invited in on the most intimate moments of people’s lives. I get to share in their vulnerability, pain, frustration, joy, and hope. I get to meet people from all different walks of lives and hear a part of their story. These moments are precious, and they are sacred.
Sometimes however people are less than willing to open up even after they are handed the talking stick. I have to be honest, not every person I visit feels the urge to reach for the boxes of tissues, because they are so touched by the incredible conversation that we had. Some people invite me in, and then we interact in a few moments of uncomfortable small talk until it is evident that my time to leave has come. Patients are constantly bombarded by people who storm into their not so private space at any and all hours, and some do not want a chaplain added to that list. Some patients are in the hospital for quick check ups, and do not need spiritual guidance in their less than dire hour of need. Most all of these patients however are polite.
There have been a few patients though, who were not so cordial. I was doing rounds on my normal floor, following the normal protocol of what rooms to visit first. It was a routine day. I had seen a couple people already when I walked into her room. I have a bit of a litany of an introduction, one that includes the words, “I Sacred Spaces: Encountering God in the Unexpected am one of the chaplains here.” Once I said these words however, the reaction of this particular patient was far from anything I was used to.
Before this summer I got my hair cut for the sole reason that I thought shorter hair makes you look older. As it is I look like I am 15. Maybe a bit of an exaggeration, but not by much. I used to work in a middle school, and one day a teacher stopped me in the hall and asked what class I was supposed to be in. So I was really hoping the haircut would at least make me appear that I legally drove myself to the hospital. For someone who was planning on playing the role of spiritual caregiver to people usually much older than myself, I could take all the help I could get. Sadly this haircut had the opposite effect that I was hoping for. I went from being 15 to 12 in a matter of a few quick snips. It is possible that I am being mildly dramatic, but not by much.
Some of the people I visit are acutely aware of my youth. Some of them even comment on it. Many are excited that someone so young is interested in hospital ministry. Some seem a little skeptical. But almost everyone comes around in the end. My age is something essential to my being that I do not have much control over, and I had grown accustom to people asking about it. For some people, there was another elephant in the room about an aspect of myself that they do not like to see in a minister. Most people do not mind it, but on that routine day I met someone who did.
I entered the room and introduced myself as a chaplain to the elderly white haired woman in the bed. She sat up abruptly, furrowed her brow, and snarled her upper lip into a face. “You’re what?” she spat out. I moved closer to her bed and explained again who I was and why I was there. I thought maybe she did not understand or hear clearly what I said the first time. “No. You’re not a chaplain,” she said with wide eyes. This was a new one for me. I was unsure of what to say in response. Fortunately, or unfortunately as it was, the woman filled the empty quiet space for me. She spent the next 5 minutes informing that I could not be a chaplain because I was a woman. She told me that she knew the church was changing, but she did not know it had fallen so far. She was very clear of her disgust on the subject. She was even generous enough to back up her belief with Bible verses, which I found very thoughtful of her to really go the extra mile.
The only comfort she took in our visit, was finding out that I did not preach sermons or lead my own church. Even though she became slightly less hostile, I honestly was still pretty eager to get out of room. I asked my typical parting question about whether there was anything I could do for her. In my panic, I made the terrible mistake of mentioning prayer. “You cannot pray for me,” she said with a laugh as if I had told the world’s funniest knock knock joke.
This was an incredibly alarming visit for me. As a religion major, I am used to being in the all-boys club. Up until this point however, my arguments for women in ministry against someone who believed differently were always theoretical. The person I was debating was not attacking me, but an idea. This encounter however was a personal rejection, and I have to say I did not enjoy the way it felt.
Even though every fiber of my defensive self screamed to fight back, and to insist to this 70 year old woman that my beliefs were right and hers were wrong, I knew that debating would be incredibly harmful to the visit. More importantly, it might have been harmful for her relationship with God. Rejection sucks. I’m certainly not pretending that it doesn’t. I am slightly disappointed by the fact that I was not able to have a meaningful conversation with her. And I am incredibly annoyed by the fact that if I were male, that conversation might have happened.
But here’s the slightly hard to swallow truth. The truth is that her understanding of a woman’s role in the church went against my belief system. The truth is that I wanted nothing more than to offer my well-rehearsed counter argument. The truth is that herwords personally offended me a little bit. But the truth is that her beliefs did not harm her relationship with God. And the truth is that my belief system did not really matter in the situation, because ministry is not about me.
During training, we were taught to come alongside and meet someone where they are. This stranger and I were not in the same place. But as I stood in that dimly lit cookie cutter hospital room trying to pick my mouth up off the ground at her blatant rejection of my well-meaning attempts to care for her, I was reminded of why I was there. It was my job to meet her where she was in her journey. As much as I wanted to drag her over to where I was on my personal path, I realized that desire would only appease what I wanted. The difficulty, yet beauty of our calling to genuinely love others, is that it is selfless. Or at least it is supposed to be. May we embrace the people we encounter by meeting them exactly where they are on their unique life journey. Not to judge, or to correct, or to pull them over to our own shiny path, but to meet them where they are as a fellow journeyer and to ask, “Can I walk with you for a bit?” And let God do the rest.
Lifeline Chaplaincy 