Many pastors, especially of the mainline and Catholic varieties, are required as part of their training to do a brief internship at a hospital serving as a chaplain to the sick and dying. Oh how I wish I had read the blog post by Catherine Woodiwess and the accompanying op-ed by David Brooks that appeared in The NY Times before I stumbled through my own hospital rotation a few years back! It would have saved me (and more importantly the patients I visited) a good deal of unnecessary grief.
Woodiwess offers a few bullet-point reflections on her own trauma and the things she learned. A couple of salient take-ways Brooks summarizes:
Do be there. Some people think that those who experience trauma need space to sort things through. Assume the opposite. Most people need presence. The Woodiwisses say they were awed after each tragedy by the number of people, many of whom had been mere acquaintances, who showed up and offered love, from across the nation and the continents. They were also disoriented by a number of close friends who simply weren’t there, who were afraid or too busy…
Don’t compare, ever. Don’t say, “I understand what it’s like to lose a child. My dog died, and that was hard, too.” Even if the comparison seems more germane, don’t make it. Each trauma should be respected in its uniqueness. Each story should be heard attentively as its own thing. “From the inside,” Catherine writes, comparisons “sting as clueless, careless, or just plain false.”
Do bring soup. The non-verbal expressions of love are as healing as eloquence. When Mary was living with Catherine during her recovery, some young friend noticed she didn’t have a bathmat. He went to Target and got a bathmat. Mary says she will never forget that.
Do not say “you’ll get over it.” “There is no such thing as ‘getting over it,’” Catherine writes, “A major disruption leaves a new normal in its wake. There is no ‘back to the old me.’”…
Don’t say it’s all for the best or try to make sense out of what has happened. Catherine and her parents speak with astonishing gentleness and quiet thoughtfulness, but it’s pretty obvious that these tragedies have stripped away their tolerance for pretense and unrooted optimism. Ashley also warned against those who would overinterpret, and try to make sense of the inexplicable. Even devout Christians, as the Woodiwisses are, should worry about taking theology beyond its limits. Theology is a grounding in ultimate hope, not a formula book to explain away each individual event.
Much of this may seem like obvious or standard fare for walking with someone in their suffering – especially for those of us who have had some pretty awful pastoral care in our time of need. Woodiwess speaks repeatedly of the “presence” of those around her – how much it helped that people were simply there. But what Brooks aptly notes is that this presence is rarely, if ever, one that is aided by the speech of the console-er. When the world goes to hell, the last thing one needs is “a word” from the pastor. A cup of soup? Absolutely! A book on “why bad things happen…’? Not so much.
For many people – especially for pastors highly trained in preaching and teaching – this is incredibly disarming. It feels like resignation or irresponsibility not to say anything to the person in the midst of trauma. At best, we want to help. But so often “help” is just another word for “control” and a defense mechanism for feeling uncomfortable with another’s grief. Perhaps some might even think that a failure to talk about Jesus is un-Christian. And so we assault the grieving with misguided theological platitudes, congratulating ourselves that we’ve done our job.
But theologically speaking, the Incarnation is not simply about what Jesus said, however great those words might be. It is also, if not primarily, about what Jesus did – being with his wayward, suffering people. Jesus did not solve the plight of humanity by fiat, but by descending from heaven to suffer with us, and therefore for us, to the point of death.
And so Grace for sufferers is not always what one says, but what one does: the gift of oneself for the other. As Tim Kreider writes, “just showing up turns out to be one of the kindest, most selfless things you can do for someone”. Grace for the traumatized is not a matter of words, but the gift of time, the gift of sympathetic listening, and the gift of a much-needed bathmat.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BQISujVdfv8&w=600
COMMENTS
4 responses to “Buying Bathmats for the Traumatized”
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Great advise, thanks for this. Just concerned that you are turning some wise ideas into absolutes. Sometimes people do need a word of kindness or a psalm in addition to soup or magazine. One of my favorites when the “mountains are sliding into the midst of the sea” is psalm 46. I know it might seem strange to expect comfort from God’s word… I have been thanked long after the fact that I was both there and able to speak a word in season. I have also heard that people have appreciated my own tears and entering into their grief.
Hey Matt, the post is admittedly one-sided – but there is a method to the madness! Namely, that the desire to speak, to control, to solve problems, to normalize the deviants, etc. is so firmly ingrained in how we operate, that any allowance for speech creates a crack which “the flesh” exploits and rationalizes. Put another way, I don’t think the pastoral stance is one of either speech or presence, as if these are two equally helpful tools. Rather, the stance is entirely one of listening and presence, reflecting back to the person what they say/feel. You’d be amazed the kind of things that emerge when no one is telling the mourner how to feel. And maybe, just maybe, after the dust has settled and the hours have turned into days, into maybe weeks, and perhaps into months, then the rational processes can kick in to allow for actual speech.
Thank you Todd. David Brooks column was timely for me. I especially like his line: “Theology is a grounding in ultimate hope, not a formula book to explain away each individual event.” I agree there is pressure on the layman so I can only imagine the ordained to try too hard when all that may be needed at the moment are arms and ears.
Hi Todd. Great piece, found via Reader’s Digest this month. Anyway, while I do understand Todd’s thinking, I find that faith and life experience have both my feet firmly planted on your side of this idea. I am a 60yr old man, to whom Jesus called out almost 38yrs ago to be a pat of the family. I have some experience in the realm of long term suffering, the likes of which no “magic words” from the Lord were of much benefit to my family and I. Our turn began when our newly 16yr old daughter, raised in the faith, left home to live with the 21yr old “love of her life” on Christmas morning. Not too long afterward her older sister got mono and was brought home from college. Her condition rapidly worsened, with excruciating pain and inflammation, complete with lymph nodes which seemed to get larger daily. Primary care Doc, Oncologist, HIV testing Infectious disease Specialist, and finally to Rhumatologist, who was finally able to correctly diagnose her condition a Systematic Lupus E. A chronic autoimmune disease, where her body sees various parts of itself as foreign pathogens and through the immune system sets out to destroy the “invaders”. By this time her pain level was so high that she was unable to even get up out of bed to use the bathroom. I had to physically lift her up and put her on her feet. This was a competitive volleyball player through school, and a runner, but who now had to contend with a body that had turned on her. As if this wasn’t enough bricks on the load, I would soon spiral down into the abyss of mental illness. Specifically, Bipolar 2 and to make it even more complicated I was classified “Atypical” with regard to both symptoms and treatment. The next 8 yrs would see the Psyche ER, and hospitalization for my psychotic breaks, which at times were hourly. My Psychiatrist told me my 1st trip to ER against my will, was because she was losing sleep over me.
Prior to all of this, my wife and I were involved at every level of our church. Our sphere of friends was large, to say the least. The 1st yr of my personal struggle saw all but 2 couples disappear from our lives. Even my own mother and brothers were unable to deal with with what they saw and were frightened away. Oh, we continued to attend services with the exception of my being inside, but people withdrew. As my condition rapidly declined I would eventually be unable to read, and finally to pray. What I did know through it though
was I had the small circle left, not the least of which was my dear wife, praying their best prayers for me. I saw them as the 4 friends of the paralytic in the gospels who brought their friend to see Jesus, and being unable to get into the house where he was because of the crowd, dragged him up to the roof, tore it open and lowered their friend down right in front of the master. They would not be deterred and neither were mine. My situation has turned out to be rather unique in that a few yrs ago God “put crazy back in the box” for me. I have no explanation. What I do have is a very clear track record of a sound mind again. I’m not “me” again necessarily, but rather a different me.
What I appreciated the most about the few who hung in there and didn’t give in to their discomfort with seeing me like that was that they didn’t try to make me “all better” with just the right “carefully and prayerfully considered words”. They felt no misguided allegiance to the truth driving them to correct my words or attitude, but rather had the good sense and faith that God was big enough to take care of us through this, and they just wanted to let us know they knew we were hurting badly and that they loved us maturely enough to not be driven off. They were there for the long haul. I will never forget my friend coming to see me inside for the 1st time when they finally allowed visits. I was embarrassed to be where I was, I mean this was the nut-house, ya know? Anyway, we sat across from each other. We both had tears welling up, and after a long silence I thanked him for coming to see me. He was barely able to speak, but said (even now it brings tears) “I just couldn’t bear the thought of my friend being here alone.” That was the 1st time I had ever actually seen Jesus, in person, right in front of me. I hadn’t recognized him at first because of the disguise. He was right there with me, but he was wearing my friend Bill’s clothes.
That is what the “ministry of presence” looks like, up close and personal and it brings life to the one going through whatever it is they’re dealing with.
There is another equally important aspect to bringing comfort to the hurting though, and sadly way to many never see it. Namely the family. They are hurting just as much, and receive little attention beyond a cursory glance and expression. My poor wife was left practically alone throughout this whole nightmare. Children are another area of need as well. Take them somewhere for an hour or two away from the pain and distract them with a movie or whatever so they can hopefully have a brief window of time to make believe like everything is OK, out from under the constant pressure.
I know this is too long, but I close with something to think about for those who feel compelled to speak, and to do so in God’s name to someone who is suffering. I’m no bible scholar, but the way I read the book it seems to me that living out what it teaches outweighs one’s ability to quote it verbatim on demand. I am in no way diminishing the bible, however,recalling Jesus in the gospels, I don’t know that he ever actually quoted the OT (bible of his day) to anyone but the religious hypocrites and Pharisees.