Final Week - Bunny Trails

August 12, 2009
Have you not known? Have you not heard? I am the everlasting God, the Creator of the ends of the earth. Isaiah 40:27

I enjoyed very much visiting patients and families today; no didactic readings to complete, no verbatims due this week or next, no scheduled appointments to make. Ahhhh... I simply visited patients and did the best that I could to bring some relief to their suffering.

So the woman with the unusual name surprised me. She seemed at first to want to talk on the phone or watch the TV, but after I introduced myself and made some small talk, she frankly and without an ounce of shame told me about her disease. It's a very common one, but she knew it very well and wanted to tell me about how it flared up recently. I went with her down a bunny-trail-conversation that looped around and eventually ended up with her telling me how good God is. How her faith had gotten her through tough times (she enumerated them) and how strongly she believed she was right with God.

The surprise was when she told me about how God even helps her when she is angry or anxious. "Why, just the other day, I was so angry at my sister that I prayed to God to release me from the grip of this anger and do you know, the next day I talked to my sister and - God healed me." In true CPE Chaplain fashion, I recalled how just last night I had been angry and had struggled to not be so as I drifted off to sleep.

Have I not known? Have I not heard? God is the everlasting God... and when I was ministered to by this patient, my anger was healed. Liberated. Released.

How have you not known, nor heard, God today?