Send in the Clowns: Experiencing Crisis from the Other Side
I was working at a call center once again. Instead of peddling long distance plans, I was quick dialing, leaving messages, and desperately trying to figure out who would take in our foster kids for a few nights and who’d be able to watch our own kids after school tomorrow. I blissfully imagined having family live nearby, which would make everything easier. But they don't, so the phone jockeying must continue. I even had to call back our piano tuner who only comes twice a year. When I spoke with him the day before I didn’t know that by the next afternoon my wife would be on an operating room table undergoing surgery.
The Help We Got
All those logistical issues fell into place within an hour or so. It was now supper time, but I wasn’t hungry. I wanted to be strong, reassuring, and calm for my wife. We had a total of five kids in the house who also needed to be fed and go to bed without grown-up stuff on their minds. But inside all I could do was worry.
The next morning each of the five kids left, and then it was just me and her by 8AM. We hugged and prayed. The fog outside seemed to be lifting. Farmers around here say that means we’ll get moisture in three months. I’ve never bothered to check if they are right. Making the 90 mile drive we listened to KT Tunstall and talked about anything but the reason why we were driving at all.
I brought two books, one brainy, one not. The hospital was abuzz by mid-morning. I had to slowly stalk in my car some guy walking in the parking lot from the building, like we were at a suburban mall in the middle of December. Once inside there was paperwork and then more paperwork. Volunteers herded old and sick people through registration lines. While we waited I got to people-watch, something I rarely get to do in my town of 450 people. Anxiety leads people to be pushy, scatter-brained, or even angry. To their credit, the paperwork people know how to deal with us all.
Once we signed our lives away my wife and I parted: she to pre-surgery and me to watery coffee, mindless television, generic lemon cookies, and fellow anxious people. One person knitted. Another scrolled on their phone. I chose the non-brainy book I got for a dollar at a local thrift store and dug in.
When our kids were born my job was to update family and friends from the hospital with joy. Now I was manning two phones, not wanting to use either of them. But people care, and that’s good. I just wanted it to be over.
An hour later the phone rang in the waiting room. One by one the room had emptied out. Although it was just me, I didn’t answer. The person at the desk told me to pick it up. Duh. The surgeon said all went well and gave some brief aftercare instructions. Now it was just a matter of time for her to wake up.
I finished the non-brainy book and just wasn’t in the mood for the brainy one, volume one of a lengthy study of Paul. Lunchtime came and went, and a cookie here and there plus too much coffee sufficed. I then spotted a rare diamond in the rough of magazines about what Hollywood star wore what to some dumb event. My diamond was a North Dakota history journal. I read about the young sons of German farmers going to the Philippines to fight for America, chuckling at the weather and culture shock that awaited them there. Also, with all the German immigrants North Dakota was more anti-World War I than the rest of the country, and that's saying something. At the time it was quite an unpopular war. I wonder if we'll ever have one of those again.
Almost two hours after I spoke with the surgeon my wife awoke. She didn’t remember anything about the procedure. I told her there are a lot of doctory shows on television in the afternoons, tackling important scandals such as not trusting pills that say they’ll shrink your butt in two weeks. I probably shouldn’t have, but I also mentioned the front-page news story on a malpractice case against the very hospital we were sitting in. The nurse gave us final instructions, we filled our prescriptions, and then headed on our way. The parking lot was mostly empty. Things were going to be okay.
The Help I Didn't Get
Just about every family goes through something like this. I should know because I’m a pastor. I’ve entered countless ICUs, hospital rooms, and waiting rooms with the knitting, phone-scrolling, mindless television, and celebrity gossip magazines. I’ve silently sat, actively listened, hopefully prayed, and even nervously laughed a time or two.
I had a friend who was both a part-time pastor and part-time janitor. He said he enjoyed the janitor job quite a bit because at the end of a shift he could inspect the building, how clean it was and say to himself, “I did that.” As a pastor, on the other hand, we come home from Sunday worship, remove our shoes, sit on our bed, and sometimes wonder what just happened. Or we come back from a home that just lost a loved one to a fatal car crash, peek on our sleeping kids, and then cry. Or we deal with routine reminders of our failure as leaders and spiritual mentors: Poorly-attended prayer meetings, dysfunctional groups, grumbling feedback, 250 sermons and not much perceptible growth. I’m no janitor, but I did enjoy working my lawn last Sunday afternoon. In what felt like no time I could look around at a cleaned-up yard and say, “I did that.”
When I trained in pastoral care one mentor said that we pastors and chaplains, especially when we are in hospitals, are the clowns of the circus. All the other acts with their physical strength and death-defying dares receive the crowd’s awe, while what we do is taken for granted. It requires much skill to be a good clown, but everyone thinks it looks easy. And yet clowns add a lot to the show. The circus would never be the same without them. My other mentor said what he loved most about being a pastor and a chaplain was that he could really help people in a way no one else ever could.
It often doesn’t seem like much from the pastor side: being a low-anxious presence, entering your own pain to enter into someone else’s, witnessing a crisis as a conduit of God’s presence in a heavy room. I suppose it is as prestigious as being a clown when compared to a group of board-certified surgeons. But when I was the one on the other side, sitting in the waiting room in my own anxious pit, I craved pastoral care. It would’ve really helped. Who will pastor the pastors of this world?
Our 90-mile drive home was quiet. She slept as Neil Young narrated the rolling plains, scurrying birds, and setting sun along the highway. One of our church members delivered our girls to us. Another dropped off supper for tomorrow. Both listened. Both cared. Real family lives nearby, the kind that only Christ can bring together.
I rescheduled some pastoral visits I had planned for the next day, so I could stay with my wife as she recovers. But when I do get back to them I’ll be reminded of what it’s like to be on that other side. And I’ll know just how helpful it is to send in the clowns.
The Help We Got
All those logistical issues fell into place within an hour or so. It was now supper time, but I wasn’t hungry. I wanted to be strong, reassuring, and calm for my wife. We had a total of five kids in the house who also needed to be fed and go to bed without grown-up stuff on their minds. But inside all I could do was worry.
The next morning each of the five kids left, and then it was just me and her by 8AM. We hugged and prayed. The fog outside seemed to be lifting. Farmers around here say that means we’ll get moisture in three months. I’ve never bothered to check if they are right. Making the 90 mile drive we listened to KT Tunstall and talked about anything but the reason why we were driving at all.
I brought two books, one brainy, one not. The hospital was abuzz by mid-morning. I had to slowly stalk in my car some guy walking in the parking lot from the building, like we were at a suburban mall in the middle of December. Once inside there was paperwork and then more paperwork. Volunteers herded old and sick people through registration lines. While we waited I got to people-watch, something I rarely get to do in my town of 450 people. Anxiety leads people to be pushy, scatter-brained, or even angry. To their credit, the paperwork people know how to deal with us all.
Once we signed our lives away my wife and I parted: she to pre-surgery and me to watery coffee, mindless television, generic lemon cookies, and fellow anxious people. One person knitted. Another scrolled on their phone. I chose the non-brainy book I got for a dollar at a local thrift store and dug in.
When our kids were born my job was to update family and friends from the hospital with joy. Now I was manning two phones, not wanting to use either of them. But people care, and that’s good. I just wanted it to be over.
An hour later the phone rang in the waiting room. One by one the room had emptied out. Although it was just me, I didn’t answer. The person at the desk told me to pick it up. Duh. The surgeon said all went well and gave some brief aftercare instructions. Now it was just a matter of time for her to wake up.
I finished the non-brainy book and just wasn’t in the mood for the brainy one, volume one of a lengthy study of Paul. Lunchtime came and went, and a cookie here and there plus too much coffee sufficed. I then spotted a rare diamond in the rough of magazines about what Hollywood star wore what to some dumb event. My diamond was a North Dakota history journal. I read about the young sons of German farmers going to the Philippines to fight for America, chuckling at the weather and culture shock that awaited them there. Also, with all the German immigrants North Dakota was more anti-World War I than the rest of the country, and that's saying something. At the time it was quite an unpopular war. I wonder if we'll ever have one of those again.
Almost two hours after I spoke with the surgeon my wife awoke. She didn’t remember anything about the procedure. I told her there are a lot of doctory shows on television in the afternoons, tackling important scandals such as not trusting pills that say they’ll shrink your butt in two weeks. I probably shouldn’t have, but I also mentioned the front-page news story on a malpractice case against the very hospital we were sitting in. The nurse gave us final instructions, we filled our prescriptions, and then headed on our way. The parking lot was mostly empty. Things were going to be okay.
The Help I Didn't Get
Just about every family goes through something like this. I should know because I’m a pastor. I’ve entered countless ICUs, hospital rooms, and waiting rooms with the knitting, phone-scrolling, mindless television, and celebrity gossip magazines. I’ve silently sat, actively listened, hopefully prayed, and even nervously laughed a time or two.
I had a friend who was both a part-time pastor and part-time janitor. He said he enjoyed the janitor job quite a bit because at the end of a shift he could inspect the building, how clean it was and say to himself, “I did that.” As a pastor, on the other hand, we come home from Sunday worship, remove our shoes, sit on our bed, and sometimes wonder what just happened. Or we come back from a home that just lost a loved one to a fatal car crash, peek on our sleeping kids, and then cry. Or we deal with routine reminders of our failure as leaders and spiritual mentors: Poorly-attended prayer meetings, dysfunctional groups, grumbling feedback, 250 sermons and not much perceptible growth. I’m no janitor, but I did enjoy working my lawn last Sunday afternoon. In what felt like no time I could look around at a cleaned-up yard and say, “I did that.”
When I trained in pastoral care one mentor said that we pastors and chaplains, especially when we are in hospitals, are the clowns of the circus. All the other acts with their physical strength and death-defying dares receive the crowd’s awe, while what we do is taken for granted. It requires much skill to be a good clown, but everyone thinks it looks easy. And yet clowns add a lot to the show. The circus would never be the same without them. My other mentor said what he loved most about being a pastor and a chaplain was that he could really help people in a way no one else ever could.
It often doesn’t seem like much from the pastor side: being a low-anxious presence, entering your own pain to enter into someone else’s, witnessing a crisis as a conduit of God’s presence in a heavy room. I suppose it is as prestigious as being a clown when compared to a group of board-certified surgeons. But when I was the one on the other side, sitting in the waiting room in my own anxious pit, I craved pastoral care. It would’ve really helped. Who will pastor the pastors of this world?Our 90-mile drive home was quiet. She slept as Neil Young narrated the rolling plains, scurrying birds, and setting sun along the highway. One of our church members delivered our girls to us. Another dropped off supper for tomorrow. Both listened. Both cared. Real family lives nearby, the kind that only Christ can bring together.
I rescheduled some pastoral visits I had planned for the next day, so I could stay with my wife as she recovers. But when I do get back to them I’ll be reminded of what it’s like to be on that other side. And I’ll know just how helpful it is to send in the clowns.
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