Iwanna

There's a newspaper-size shopping guide in our area called the Iwanna. It publishes thousands upon thousands of user-generated classified listings every week. General merchandise, home and real estate, cars, motorcycles, trucks, jobs, businesses, agriculture - pretty much the whole gammut. If you want it, it's probably advertized in this so-called "shopping network."

I'm pretty sure that there's one thing that's not listed in this rag that I hear requested over and over. Here's one example.

I enter the patient's room and he looks right in my eye. He's confused anyway, and with my white chaplain jacket he assumes that I am a doctor or therapist or nurse or some medical treatment person. No, I reply, I'm the Chaplain. He pauses to consider this but he's very aggravated.

I WANT TO GO HOME!!! NOW!!! AND NOT IN THREE DAYS!!! NOW!!!

This is his echoing request, even after I remind him that I'm simply there to be with him and visit with him until his mother arrives in a few minutes. "My mom?" he asks. He pauses to consider this. Then he remembers what he wants.

I DON'T WANT MY MOM. I WANT TO GO HOME!!!

After a while, he gets more aggravated and more angry, waving his white-mitted hands at me and speaking gruffly through his recently extubated throat. His 75 year old mom arrives after five agonizing minutes. She reminds him that he had died. "Don't you remember, son? You stopped breathing. You were blue! I rolled you over, gave you CPR and then the ambulance brought you here to the hospital. You are in ICU." He pauses to consider this, but still...

MOM, I WANT TO GO HOME!!! NOW!!!

I reflected on this visit all afternoon. How am I like this patient? I want to go home, too! And, thankfully, I reflect on how I am not like this patient. It will be soon - 3 1/2 weeks - and I'll cry and grieve the loss of this program, the transitioning of relationships, and even the familiar pattern of sleeping in three different beds a week. What I "want" comes with it's costs and it's benefits - that's a big difference between me and this patient.

Still, what does this patient's theology say to me? That it's okay to yell at God. To keep asking for what I want even with the knowledge that God has a bigger sense of what's possible in the big picture.

...I'm trying to be helpful and make it as easy as possible for you, not make things harder. All I want is for you to be able to develop a way of life in which you can spend plenty of time together with the Master without a lot of distractions. 1 Cor 7:32

What do uwanna in this moment?