Faith – TessEnterline.com

The Sanctuary of Charles Haas

There’s so much I love about writing memoir.

I love looking back and pulling up remembrances of people, places, and events that make up my past. I love taking all of those details and recreating scenes that I can then pull together and craft into a story. And because it’s memoir, it’s all true. I’d be the first person to admit that I don’t have a great imagination, so writing nonfiction suits me just fine.

I’ve mentioned before in this space that I’m currently writing my first memoir. It’s based on my experiences as a hospital chaplain and my emotional healing afterward. I’ve shared bits and pieces of a couple of the trauma cases, but I started thinking this past week that I haven’t really shared any of the more joyful moments with you … the moments that lifted me up, even on what might have been an otherwise difficult day.

No such story fits that description better than the story of Charles Haas (his family has graciously given me permission to use his real name in my writing). I met Charles on what was, perhaps, my most challenging day as a chaplain, April 7, 2008. To say that he saved me that day is not at all an overstatement.

The night before, two-year-old Darisabel Baez (her name is public record because of what happened) was flown to Hershey Med after having been brutally beaten by her mother’s boyfriend. I was the chaplain on-call when she was rushed into a trauma bay on a gurney.

Soon after arriving at the hospital on the morning of April 7, 2008, I learned from Darisabel’s doctor that she was most likely already brain-dead, and life support would probably be removed by evening (this becomes an uplifting story, I promise).

As you might imagine, I felt completely distracted by all that was going on in Darisabel’s room in the Pediatric Intensive Care Unit (PICU) on the seventh floor. But I knew there were other patients who deserved visits as well.

I wasn’t in the mood for it. The thought of striking up a pleasant conversation with a stranger didn’t sit well. However, in my continuing effort to show my supervisor that I could function well amidst trauma, I pushed on. In the early afternoon, I chose four names from the patient list laying on the table in the Pastoral Services Conference Room, and set off for the elevator and the sixth floor.

My first visit would be to an eighty-year-old male patient named Charles Haas. I think I instinctively chose the oldest of the four patients as my first stop. I’ve always had a good rapport with seniors. As a chaplain, I found older folks to be the friendliest and most appreciative of a visit, I suppose because many of them don’t get many.

It was 2:00 pm when I arrived at Room #6245. The door to the room was open part-way. I knocked lightly and slowly pushed the door back another foot or so, peeking in as the opening widened.

“Mr. Haas?”

“Yes, come on in!” he said, sounding like he was inviting a neighbor in for a cup of coffee.

With my left hand still on the upper edge of the door, I pushed it back the rest of the way and stepped further into the room.

And there he was. Sitting up in bed with a couple of pillows stacked up behind him. Gold, metal-trimmed eyeglasses on, a newspaper resting in his lap on top of a milky-white hospital blanket and rumpled sheets. He was clean-shaven, with his thick, white hair neatly parted and combed to the right. His eyes were bluish-grey and bright. Based on the size of his upper torso, extending up from the blanket and clothed in blue cotton pajamas, and the spot towards the foot of the bed where I could see his toes creating a tent under the sheets and blanket, I could tell that he was a tall and substantial man, perhaps a couple hundred pounds.

He smiled. I smiled back.

“Hi, Mr. Haas,” I said in as pleasant a voice as I could pull above the ache in my chest. “My name’s Teresa, I’m the Catholic chaplain. How are you today?”

I didn’t want to be there. I didn’t want to sound happy. I wanted to act professionally and put my own feelings aside in order to provide pastoral care to this patient, but I didn’t have much “cheerful” in me right then and there.

“Well, Teresa, it’s nice to meet you. Thank you for stopping by.”

“You’re quite welcome.”

Mr. Haas extended his right hand and we joined hands in a firm, but not uncomfortable, clasp.

What happened next was quite a surprise. Considering how tired and disheartened I felt at that moment, it was the last thing I expected.

When Charles and I shook hands, I felt like I had just wrapped my hand around a lifeline. There was something about this man. His smile, his warmth, his … I don’t know. It was all of him, coming to me in that particular moment … when I needed some kind of relief. It didn’t make everything ok. There was still a two-year-old girl upstairs dying. But I could feel the tightened muscles in my stomach, jaw, and forehead start to relax slightly. The lifeline was starting to draw me into the Sanctuary of Charles Haas. All of a sudden Charles and Room 6245 had become a respite from all that was going on in Pediatric ICU.

We slowly released each other’s hand.

“How are you feeling today?” I asked.

“Better today. I have some problems with my heart. I got here two days ago, but feel better than I did then. It’s been a rough couple of months. My wife just died in February, from congestive heart failure.”

“I’m very sorry to hear that. What was her name?”

“Janet. We were married fifty-seven years. And you know what? During one of her hospital stays she was in this room too. That’s a coincidence, isn’t it?”

“It sure is. And I’m very impressed you remember something like that!” I wondered if my own husband would remember such a detail.

I pulled a chair up next to Charles’s bed and took a seat. We talked, we laughed. It went on like that for forty-five minutes. Charles sharing tender vignettes from the full life he had shared with his wife over all those years, and me, interjecting occasionally, but otherwise happy to sit, listen, smile, and breathe. It was like salve on an open wound.

“My wife and I dedicated the first thirty-five years of our marriage to our family, and we spent the last twenty-two years on a spiritual journey. We even took a trip to Calcutta, India in 1988 and spent time with Mother Teresa.”

Oh. My. Goodness. I had never before, and haven’t since, met anyone who had actually met Mother Teresa, now Saint Teresa of Calcutta. And here was this man who met her in the flesh, stood right there with her and shook her hand. Maybe even gave her a hug for all I know. On a day when I so wanted to feel God’s presence, Charles Haas, hand-shaker of Mother Teresa, came into my life, or, rather, I walked into his.

Now, I’m not trying to make this sound like the second coming. But, I mean, what are the chances? The man in front of me had touched holiness. It was enough to make a difference that day.

I looked at Charles’ face and I couldn’t help but smile. I listened to him talk about life and love and faith, and for forty-five minutes I forgot—or at least didn’t think as much—about senseless cruelty and a two-year-old girl’s battered and bruised body and imminent death. I wanted to make sense of the senseless and demystify the mysterious, but all I could do was rest in it.

Charles transported me away from my own pain and into the world of his benevolent humanity. But I was the Chaplain. I was supposed to be the comforter. Yet, Charles was comforting me. I didn’t try to fight it. My soul absorbed his kindness, like a plant absorbing sunlight.

As I was getting ready to pray with Charles, a thirty-something year-old woman walked into the room. She was slender, with a friendly face, narrow nose, and wavy, blond, shoulder length hair. She was dressed in pale green scrubs and the rubber clogs I often noticed being worn by doctors and nurses who had been in surgery. She walked in casually, carrying a coat and lunch bag.

Charles smiled at the first sight of her.

“Ah Diana! Teresa, this is my daughter Diana. She works here at the hospital.”

“Diana, so nice to meet you. I’m the chaplain, and I have to tell you, I’m having more fun with your dad than I ought to.”

“Thank you for visiting. And I know, he can be a charmer!”

She went around to the right side of her father’s bed, the window side, placed her left hand on his, squeezed, and leaned over to kiss his forehead. It struck me how much Diana’s sweet and gentle traits mimicked her dad’s. She continued holding his hand.

“Diana, where do you work in the hospital?”

“I’m an OR nurse. I just finished my shift and thought I’d spend some time with dad before heading home.”

My visit with them last a little longer. How I wanted to stay there and bask in the love and safety of The Sanctuary of Charles Haas. When I said goodbye, it was with both my hands wrapped around Charles’ right hand. I pressed gently into his skin, wanting my touch to somehow transmit a message to Charles, letting him know how much the past hour had meant to me. How much I had needed it … and him.

“The Lord sent you today,” he said.

I gave him a slight smile and thought, The Lord sent you to me, Charles.

“Thank you, Mr. Haas. I’ve really enjoyed being here with you.”

I said goodbye to Diana, turned, gave a little wave, and headed for the door and down the corridor.

After a short break to digest my visit with Charles and Diana, I made three more patient visits, limiting each one to about fifteen minutes.

The only visit left, after that, was the one waiting for me in PICU, and that wasn’t so much a visit as it was keeping vigil. I walked back into the unit at 5:00 pm. Darisabel had, by then, failed two of the three brain criteria tests required before her family could request that life support be removed. The third test was performed at 9:00 pm, life support was removed, and Darisabel passed shortly thereafter.

I thank God that Darisabel’s death is not the only memory I have of April 7, 2008. I also have my very own Charles and Diana, without the royal pedigree. They were royalty to me just the same, assuming a place in my life that’s rare for a chance encounter. I suppose that’s very much the reason for the joy of it all, along with the fact that it may not have been by chance at all.

(Note: Another chapter in my relationship with Charles and Diana occurred in 2009, a story which I will share in my memoir.)

(Photo by Dyu-ha on Unsplash)

Thank you for reading my blog! Please feel free to share it with family and friends.

Tess

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God Never Calls U-Haul

God bless my poor neighbor Linda. She had picked the wrong time to do yard work.

It was earlier this year, about four in the afternoon on May 14^th. I had just locked up our old house for the final time, taking with me the last couple of boxes of odds and ends accumulated during our thirty-two years of living there. Rick and I had already moved into our new house.

I walked just outside the garage and pressed the four-digit code into the keypad to lower the door. The creaking sound of the garage door panels sliding over the rails and slowly inching down toward the foundation only served to rub my heart in it … “it” being the fact that this house—our home for thirty-two years—was no longer ours.

The door hit the concrete with a thud. So much noisy rattling for ten seconds and in the very next instant, silence.

It was like the sting that comes after a after a slap.

I tried to hold back the tears, which was totally in keeping with my habit of wearing the face that says, “I’m fine.” But the garage door closing and the sudden quiet released the catch on my emotions. My tears broke free. My breaths shortened, and I started sucking air in shorter bursts, muscles contracting from deep within my diaphragm.

My car was parked along the curb and I aimed myself in its direction. As I walked, I forced myself to keep looking straight ahead and not turn around for another look. The last thing I needed was to give my mind another opportunity to remember. Thirty-two years gives you lots to remember. I just kept moving forward down the driveway.

That’s when I spotted Linda across the street in her front yard.

She was wearing gardening gloves, and a baseball cap to help protect her from an unusually hot mid-May day. She saw me, too, and we waved to one another.

It crossed my mind to keep walking to my car, accompanied by my tears and heaving breaths. I could have slipped into the driver’s seat and slinked away. But I couldn’t. I wouldn’t just allow myself to wave and make that my goodbye to such a good woman. So, I crossed the street, went up to Linda, and gave her the biggest, longest, and teariest—maybe even the only—hug I had given her in the thirty-plus years we had been neighbors. I couldn’t even talk, I was crying so much.

We had watched as each other’s kids grow up. As some families moved elsewhere, Linda and her husband and family, and Rick, me, and our family—along with other original homeowners on our street—remained. We were the Deer Path Woods old timers. Except now, we were leaving as well, to become the “new neighbors” somewhere else. And a new, young family would be moving in the next day and raising their family there just like we did.

And I was okay with that. Really, I was. Still, I couldn’t help but feel sad and wistful about bringing those chapters of our lives to a close.

Three months have passed …

… and although the move brought some changes to our lives—some big (a new church, a new bank, some new doctors) and some small (a new dry cleaner and ice cream stand)—I can honestly say that I’ve been very much at peace with it. So much so, in fact, that I’ve asked myself, “How is that? How could I live in one place for thirty-two years, move, and almost immediately feel comfortable in my new surroundings?”

I soon understood—no, felt—the reason why.

The reason goes beyond the fact that Rick and I feel very comfortable in our new home. There’s more to it than, once again, being blessed with wonderful neighbors. And, even though I’m thrilled for our dogs that there are many furry friends for them here in our new community, that doesn’t explain my contentment either.

As with most things that speak to our inner selves, the explanation goes deeper than anything I can lay my eyes or hands on. And yet, I feel it as strongly as having arms wrapped around me in a tight, loving embrace. Once the following thought came to me, I felt the sweet peace of surrendering to it:

We had moved, but God was where He’s always been, which is … right by my side.

The thought of these words, even now as I type and repeat them to myself, are such a comfort.

In no way do I want to dismiss the sadness that moving away from family, friends, and familiar surroundings can bring. Those feelings are powerful and only ease with time. In God, though, we have someone who will navigate it all with us; we need only to keep our hearts open to Him.

This same way of thinking can be applied to so many aspects of our lives where there is change:

Has a family member or friend recently been admitted to the hospital … or passed away … thereby changing who is present in your life?
Has a relationship in your life become strained or recently ended?
Have you changed jobs?
Are you sending a child off to college for the first time, thereby changing life as you’ve known it for the past eighteen years? (Been there, done that!)

Or something as seemingly innocuous as:

Has your normal route to work been closed due to construction, thereby changing and lengthening your commute?

Through any change—large or small—remember: God never calls U-Haul. God does not move or change. He is, rather, the steadiest, most loving presence in our lives. God is wherever you are.

(Photo by Brooke Cagle on Unsplash)

When anger and God collide

It humbled me to be angry at God.

I used to be one of those people who thought she could never be angry at God. When others told me they felt that way, including bereaved parents I had supported through their grief (who may have had more right than anyone else to question God’s faithfulness), I always had a ready answer.

A parent would say, “I’m so angry at God for letting my son die. How could He let that happen?”

And I would reply, “It’s okay to be angry at God. He can take it.” I didn’t say it in a dismissive way, because … my God, I can’t even imagine the pain. Yet, I still wondered how anyone could possibly, ever, for any reason, blame God or be angry with Him. “He is the one,” I’d say to myself, “who loves you more than any other will ever love you.” I guess it all made me feel a bit superior in the “who loves God more” category.

Then, I experienced my own devastation, and a conversion … to someone who questioned why God allows certain things to unfold the way they do. And yes, to someone who was angry with God.

It made me understand the anger of those over whom I had felt so superior. I no longer felt special in the “who loves God more” category (as if I had any right to feel it in the first place).

Simply feeling anger toward God shook me. I had become the one I thought I’d never be. My adult life to that point had been one of, perhaps not always unquestioning faith, but always unquestioning contentment with God. To be angry at Him felt like my own deception. But for a while, it felt justified. Why? Because God had called me to the Promised Land, and then He disappeared. At least that’s how I started to feel during the late summer of 2008, after I realized that my days as a hospital chaplain were probably over.

So many of us spend years searching for that one true, meaningful purpose in life. You know the euphoria you feel when you think you’ve found it? That’s how I felt about hospital chaplaincy. When I walked into Hershey Medical Center on September 25, 2006 to begin training as a chaplain, I was convinced that God had finally delivered me to the doorstep of the fulfillment and purpose that I had craved for so long. The start to my journey there was serendipitous.

During a phone call with my friend Cecilia in early 2006, she mentioned that she was considering a training program in hospital chaplaincy—Clinical Pastoral Education (CPE)—at Hershey Med. I was intrigued, so learned what I could about the program online. Clinical Pastoral Education combined pedagogy, discussion, reflection, clinical time in patient units, and overnight on-call shifts. It sounded rewarding and exciting. And it seemed to have my name written all over it.

I ended up applying to the program; Cecilia did not. If not for the phone call with my friend, would I still have been a chaplain? Possibly not. But it’s also possible that things unfolded exactly the way God had planned. Maybe that phone call with Ceil happened right when God thought I was ready for chaplaincy, at age forty-seven.

It all made perfect sense. Everything I had been doing over the years—nurturing, caring, comforting—seemed like the ideal precursor to hospital chaplaincy. I felt like God had been grooming me for this all along. It was a relief to have finally found my true calling. I was to be a Hospital Chaplain.

And, oh the joy and contentment I felt in the role at times. There were moments I hold as close to my heart now as then: Sitting with an aged patient as he recalled a trip to India with his wife, and their meeting Mother Teresa (now Saint Teresa of Calcutta); being in the emergency room with an Amish family and seeing their relief when they were told that their daughter—run over by a truck on their farm earlier in the day—would survive; glancing out a window and seeing the sun rise over the mountains while paying an early morning visit to a double amputee; and the somber privilege of praying the Twenty-third Psalm in the early morning hours of another overnight on-call shift, at the bedside of a sixty-something-year-old woman who had just died, her gay partner standing across from me on the other side of the bed, holding the hand of the person with whom she had expected to spend many more years.

To be allowed onto the altar of sacredness and intimacy on occasions such as these, filled me with such peace of heart … the kind of peace that flows from a true union between the soul and God.

During the truly heartbreaking cases when, because of disease, an accident or violence, lives—sometimes very young—were lost … even those cases could make me feel that I was exactly where I should be, that I was exactly where God intended. In the midst of tears, fears, and anxious questions from patients’ loved ones, I remained calm, even as I often struggled to find words that would comfort. Composed on the outside; unsure and questioning of myself on the inside. It was as if I had grown an extra layer of skin to separate the two. My questioning hadn’t been about actually being at Hershey Med as a chaplain. That felt right; it felt almost ordained. I couldn’t stop myself, however, from constantly questioning my reactions, non-reactions, and responses to people and situations.

And the thing is, there’s no reason I should have expected myself to know how to respond all time; I had never been a chaplain before. But I lacked the ability to be vulnerable to what I didn’t know, while, at the same time, I expected perfection in myself. And, most of all, I expected God to protect me from the bad stuff.

Month by month, trauma after trauma, my certainty about chaplaincy became diluted … first by doubt, and then by fear. When even getting out of my car in the med center parking garage became a long, drawn-out pep talk (“Come on, Tess, I know you can do this!”), I knew chaplaincy was over for me. At that point, even the thought that hospital chaplaincy might have been God’s plan for me—a thought that had once been so comforting and inspiring to me—wasn’t enough to keep me there. I finished the training program, then left the hospital. In the months that followed, I started to battle the demons that eventually come after anyone who experiences trauma. Memories of the sights and sounds of suffering … things the mind holds onto for a very long time.

I also felt confused.

I felt deceived by The One who I believed would never desert me.

I was angry at God, who had called me tantalizingly close to the contentment and sense of purpose I had longed for over so many years. And I grieved, because hospital chaplaincy—to that point the closest I had come to finding my spiritual and professional home—had become something I could no longer touch. That’s what hospital chaplaincy becomes, in its most sacred sense—a world you gently touch and love, one patient at a time. Instead, that world had become toxic to me.

For a long time after I left Hershey Med, all I could associate with hospital chaplaincy was emotional pain, anger, and a sense of betrayal. The backdrop for all of that emotion were the questions I endlessly put to God: “How could my trying to do something good end in so much pain? How could you let this happen, Lord? Why didn’t you protect me?”

At the same time, I felt that I had failed God. He had called me to chaplaincy, and I couldn’t cut it.

I came away from hospital chaplaincy feeling depressed and traumatized.

I carried on with life and functioned pretty well. Most days, and in front of most people, I could keep up the façade that everything in my world was peachy. There were some days, though, when I had to will myself to get out of bed, take a shower, and leave the house. I’m thankful that, through the worst of it, my two kids were away at college and then off starting their own lives, but I suspect they could sense, at times, that something was wrong.

Somehow, through it all, I was never without the hope that things would get better. I always envisioned a return to a happy life, and that belief was a blessing. I just didn’t know how long it would take.

It ended up taking the better part of eight years. I’m so very grateful to the loving, caring people in my life, especially my husband and therapist, who saw me through.

I hate to think of all of the hours and days of my life that I lost to depression and PTSD. Hours creating, caring, holding my husband’s hand, calling the kids, playing with our dogs, reading … hours just being happy. I can’t get it back. But I have turned it around. Some memories will never go away, but I can now peacefully coexist with them.

The past few years have given me the time and distance I’ve needed to think of many of my past experiences as lessons learned, and acknowledge the graces they’ve bestowed on my life.

Explaining past pain as a means of finding grace sounds convenient, doesn’t it? From about 2008 to 2016, I never could have done it; I hurt too much. Honestly, though, sometimes you have to push yourself to find grace in a painful experience in order to start healing. The grace you find that way isn’t a lie, and it doesn’t suddenly make everything all better. In my case, as grace slowly revealed itself, it lifted such a burden from my heart and helped to dispel my anger.

One grace for me was in realizing and accepting that I didn’t have to fully heal from trauma. I wrote about that more fully in my February 1, 2019 Newsletter.

Another grace is the belief that, despite the resulting emotional pain, there were good reasons for me to have been at Hershey Medical Center as a chaplain … that it was still God’s plan for me. Not that He wanted me to suffer. No, not at all.

Without trying to infer that I have any idea what God is thinking, I’ll just offer that perhaps God thought that my experiences—good or bad—as a chaplain would take me to an even better place in my life.

What if God intended hospital chaplaincy to be the path, rather than the destination? (If you’re going through a difficult time right now, could you maybe think of it as a path to something better that God has planned for you?)

What if writing about my experiences as a hospital chaplain—what I’m now doing—is what God intended all along? Writing about those experiences in a way that has meaning for others … maybe that has always been God’s plan for me.

Far from making me angry, this thought only deepens my love for Him.

And I am humbled by the mystery of it all.

(I’ll have more to say about everything here in the memoir I’m currently writing.)

Photo Credit: Paola Chaaya on Unsplash.

It’s a Mystery

A slight movement, off in the distance, caught my eye, thank God. A sudden shift of something near the end of my line of sight made me squint and strain for a better look. Is that a child?

It was … a little girl. She looked to be the size of a three- or four-year-old, and she was alone in an empty Gulf gas station parking lot, several hundred yards in front of me. It was a summer evening … lots of people would normally be outside. Surely someone else—an older child or an adult—would appear alongside her at any moment. No one came.

I had driven away from my house just a few minutes earlier, a quick errand to pick up a few things for the next day at the grocery store—bananas, milk, perhaps. As I approached the corner of Laurel Glen Drive and Crooked Hill Road, I gently applied the brake and gradually rolled to a stop (which my husband would have appreciated as he has never liked my habit of hard stops). It had been an ordinary evening, until that moment as I sat at the STOP sign, when I looked up ahead and saw her.

After a few seconds, I released the brake, and slowly drove the short distance to the next intersection, keeping an eye on her the whole time. I still had to get through a traffic light before I would reach her.

As I drove, I prayed. Prayed that this small child would move slowly, that her little legs would keep her from getting very far, or that maybe she would stop moving altogether. I prayed that another car wouldn’t hit her, or that another driver wouldn’t stop and snatch her.

What a relief when I pulled into gas station parking lot, not far from where she was standing. Taking my time, without any sudden movements, and with a smile on my face, I walked up to her, all the while checking in all directions for someone to go along with this young child. I saw no one.

“Hi sweetie, “What’s your name? Is anyone with you?”

I can’t remember her name, or if she even provided one. I just knew that I wasn’t going to leave her there alone, nor was I going to be able to resolve the situation on my own. And just as I was about to tap “9-1-1” into my cell phone, a young teenage boy, walking with frazzled speed, came around a row of tall shrubs which separated the parking lot from one end of a large cluster of homes.

“Oh my God, there you are!” he said.

And with that, there was finally someone—a very relieved older brother—to pair with this little girl who, I soon learned, had wandered off from their home.

Okay, we all know this happens. A parent (I’m one, too), sibling, grandparent, anyone who’s babysitting, looks in the other direction or gets distracted for a second or two and … gone. The child in their care has slipped away. And if you have a child who can cover a lot of ground quickly (like my little friend), it can create a very scary situation. The brother’s fear had just about escalated to the panic stage by the time he reached the parking lot.

I wanted to say something constructive and instructive to him. He seemed genuinely upset by what had happened, so I didn’t want to pile on.

“You can’t let this happen again. You can’t take your eyes off your sister if it’s your responsibility to watch her,” I said in a stern, but motherly, tone.

And then, because I guess I did want to instill just a little bit of fear, I added, “It’s a good thing you got here when you did, because I was just about to call the police.”

“Yes, ma’am. Thank you.”

The young man took his little sister by the hand, and they walked off toward home. I headed to the grocery store, feeling thankful for a happy ending, and feeling thankful to have been at the right place at the right time. And therein lies the rub: the coincidental, enigmatic timing of the events of that evening.

When you can be any number of places in a given moment, but you end up exactly where you are needed, is it the grace of God’s timing that has put you there?

About the summer’s night I just described:

How many other things could I have chosen to do at that exact time of day? How many distractions could have kept me from leaving my house when I did? How many other cars could have slowed me, how many rabbits, dogs, squirrels, or even other children, could have darted into the street to stop me, how many reasons could I have thought of to not leave the house that night?

So many things could have unfolded in such a way so as to prevent me from being at exactly the right spot, at exactly the right time, to spot that little girl, alone, in an empty parking lot.

Just about any adult who had come upon such a scene would have gone to that little girl. It didn’t have to be me; yet, it was.

Why me? Why then? Why there? And most of all—for what purpose? Because with God there is always a purpose.

I sometimes feel like a broken record.

“Why, God?” … “Why, God?” … “Why, God?”

I can just imagine God wanting to toss a question right back at me: “Does it really matter, Tess?”

To which I’d reply: “Yes, Lord! Yes … it really does matter to me!”

In His patient, loving way, perhaps God would then say, “Just trust me,” knowing the whole time how difficult that is for me, (I suppose for many of us). God’s awareness of my trust issue doesn’t let me off the hook. He understands my shortcomings, just as, I imagine, He understands my need to know “why.” But still … God wants us to trust Him. It’s one of the hardest thing He asks of us.

God, cars, unusual sights, and me are apparently a thing, because it happened again, late one afternoon in September 2010. While out on another quick errand, this time to AAA to wrap up final preparations for a twenty-fifth anniversary trip for my husband, Rick, and me to Jamaica, I came upon a sight that was even more unusual than the first. This time it was a long-, dark-haired woman, roughly my age (late forties at the time), shoulders slumped, and clumsily walking down the center of the road between two lanes of opposing traffic, blankly staring ahead the whole time, as if in a trance.

I spotted her within seconds of turning left out of our development, and onto Linglestown Road, which, because of urban sprawl, has become busy and congested and lined with shopping centers, office buildings, banks, dry cleaners, drug stores, and gas stations. Walking along the side of Linglestown Road is a bad idea; walking down the center of it is a death wish. Could that have been what the dark-haired woman had in mind?

As if the sight of this woman wasn’t strange enough, what I noticed next shocked me: Although traffic had slowed, not one car had stopped … not one person had gone over to help her.

To be honest, I really didn’t want that good Samaritan to be me, either. I wanted to keep driving like everyone else so that I could take care of my business at AAA. I just wanted to get my “stuff” done and head back home.

My conscience, however, would have no part in driving right past this dazed-looking woman. I tried, but with each second I drove past her, the voice inside of me grew louder. “What the heck are you doing, Tess? How can you not stop? You’ll be filled with regret if you don’t. Just turn around and go back.” And I did. At the first opportunity, I turned around. I knew that my conscience was right. It’s always right, isn’t it?

It would be wasted time anyway, I told myself. Surely, by the time I had completed my turn-around maneuver and drove back to whatever point the woman had reached by then, someone else would have stopped. I was wrong. She was still walking—undisturbed, still staring ahead, and, miraculously, without having been struck.

I was relieved that she was still walking and not lying injured on the ground. But I also had this, “Crap, I’m really going to have to this,” feeling inside. And then I thought back to my sighting of the little girl and thought, Lord, if there’s a point you’re trying to make with me, could we please take it off-road next time?

I pulled into the gas station parking lot (yes, the very same gas station parking lot mentioned above), quickly parked, and then carefully waded into traffic. Fortunately, I didn’t have to go far; by then the woman had just about reached the gas station.

As I approached this obviously troubled individual, a driver who had slowed to almost a stop, put down his window and felt it necessary to share. “That lady shouldn’t be out here in the middle of the road,” he said. A real genius.

I should have been a smartass and hit him with, “You don’t say. And you feel so strongly about that that you’re driving right by.” Instead, I brushed him with a benign “I know … that’s why I stopped.”

The long-haired woman let me come to her. She didn’t seem alarmed. She didn’t seem much of anything, with a flat affect and slightly-stooped posture as she walked. When I said, “We have to get off the road,” she allowed me to place a hand on her shoulder and guide her into the parking lot, toward my car. It was a hot day, so I opened the back door, and, with arm and hand extended, offered her a seat.

“It’s hot, and you must be exhausted. Why don’t you sit down in my car.”

She accepted without a word.

I handed money to a teenage boy who was standing nearby, taking it all in.

“Would you please go buy two bottles of water?”

After a moment’s hesitation, he headed for the convenience store located on the other side of the gas pumps.

A police car arrived; someone had at least notified them. Two officers came up to my car and one politely addressed me.

“Hello, ma’am. Do you know this woman?”

“No. I just saw her walking down the middle of the road.”

To this point, I had not heard one word from her. She had walked and stared ahead and that was it. One of the officers tried to get a name.

“Ma’am,” he said to her, “can you tell us your name?”

Nothing. He tried again.

“Ma’am, what’s your name? Can you tell us your name?”

Finally, a speck of engagement with the world outside of her world.

“Teresa,” she said. Her voice was barely audible.

Wait … what’s her name? Did she say …”

“Your name is Teresa? Where do you live, Teresa?” asked one of the officers.

No reply. Her engagement with the world lasted three syllables.

By then, word had been relayed to the officers that a woman matching Teresa’s description had recently been observed in another part of town.

“Mrs. Enterline” (the police had also, apparently, run my license plate through their system), “we appreciate your help. We’ll take care things here.”

It felt wrong to leave the long-haired woman, to abandon her like that. But, there was nothing more I could do, and, certainly, nothing more I was being asked to do except, in a polite way, to leave.

And I was relieved by that. It had all become a bit much.

The officers helped Teresa into the back seat of their cruiser, and I sat down in the driver’s seat of my car. I got back onto Linglestown Road, drove ten minutes to the AAA office, and took care of business, just as I had set out to do half an hour before. Emotionally, though, I hadn’t moved an inch away from the long-haired woman, Teresa. Emotionally, I was still hanging in that moment’s pause after she had said her name.

I carried on with the things I had to do—dinner, clean-up, nighttime routine—and made my way into the next day. But my thoughts kept going back—to this day my thoughts still drift back—to my encounter with the long-haired woman.

I had stopped to help her, and, even though her name could have been any one of thousands of names, it was the same as mine. Maybe I’d be better off if I could take a situation like that and say, “So what.” Unfortunately (depending on how you look at it), I’m a “need to know why” kind of person.

So once again, my questions: Why, God? What does it all mean? For what purpose?

I so wanted answers, just like after I had spotted the little girl. But just like then, I knew there would be none. It would be yet another divine moment of, “What the heck just happened, Lord?”

It’s a mystery, I tell myself, in the hope that it will quiet my wild speculation and my desire to understand what it all means. If only “it’s a mystery” could ever be a satisfying answer. But it’s never enough to truly assuage my need to know why. Which makes we wonder, what answer would satisfy me? What do I want to hear?

What answer do I so want to hear from God that I can almost taste the vanity-coated words I allow myself to imagine?

I’m ashamed to say it.

I want to hear God say, “Teresa, you are special.”

I want God to tell me that yes, He could have chosen any number of people to pause at the STOP sign and see the little girl, or turn onto Linglestown Road and come upon the long-haired woman. But, God would go on to say in my imagined conversation, He specifically chose me in both cases, because He knew that I would listen to my conscience and do something.

In that last assumption—that I would listen to my conscience—God would be correct. The fear of regret and self-recrimination probably drives at least half of the actions I take in life.

It is the other declaration—that I am special—that I cannot lay claim to.

I cannot allow myself to believe such a lofty thing. My conscience shoots down the notion every time it dares to enter my mind, because there have been too many times when I have failed to heed God’s call to love, feed, clothe, forgive, comfort, pray, share, be slow to anger, put myself out, pull someone close, or risk something for Him. I wish I could be more of all that is good … be more of all that I’m called to be.

On so many occasions, though, I fall short. I fail. I show you the imperfect me. It is my humanness that makes perfection impossible.

It is my humanness that will, at times, make being more special than someone else, more important to me than being special to God, which requires nothing of me except to exist in this human condition.

I am special to God … no more, no less than anyone else. That is enough. That is a gift.

I am loved by God simply because I exist … because I am here, with all of my imperfections.

That God could so love me … that I am special to Him, despite my many infidelities … that is a mystery, and a grace God gives to each of us.

And what if I hadn’t helped the little girl or the long-haired woman—would God love me any less, would I be any less special to him? No, and no. But I know the regret of it would be with me to this day.

(Photo Credit: Aleyna Rentz on Unsplash)

The Way of My Healing from PTSD

As a hospital chaplain I often saw trauma; as a writer I’m healing from it.

I was surrounded by a magnificent fall afternoon that day in November. The air was fresh, like it had just settled after a breeze. There was a restrained chill in the air, too — the kind you dread the thought of in July, but recall fondly in January.

I had just stepped out of my Prius in the Superfresh parking lot and was walking toward the store, enjoying shades of the season in the maple and birch trees circling the lot, and hoping the post-work grocery store lines wouldn’t be too long.

Suddenly, a familiar, dreaded sound filled the air. I felt betrayed by the clear, blue sky that allowed me such a perfect view of the source — a royal blue helicopter with a white stripe down the side. I know the markings well. The blades from the LifeFlight helicopter sliced through the air as it made its way east along the flight path to Hershey Medical Center.

My reaction to the sight and sound of a medevac suddenly bursting into view has become programmed. My eyes fix on it, longer than anyone around me who hears the whirring sound and raises their chin skyward. I look the helicopter … wishing it would disappear from view and, at the same time, wondering who’s on board. An accident victim? Maybe someone who had a heart attack? A child?

I close my eyes. Then, as if the swirling air from the blades sucks me in, I’m transported back to the Hershey Medical Center Emergency Room, to April 6, 2008, where, as the on-call chaplain, I stood and waited with the medical team for the LifeFlight helicopter, which was en route with a two-year-old girl who had been severely-beaten by her mother’s boyfriend.

As doctors and nurses prepared the trauma room, I stood just outside in the hallway with more nurses and a social worker. I thought about offering a prayer. It seemed, to me, what an experienced, confident chaplain would do.

I was not that chaplain. Only seven months into training, and, even more of a hindrance, I lacked the self-assurance to suggest a prayer in that moment. I wanted to be thatchaplain … the kind who would try to bring a sense of peace and calm to an air of anxious anticipation. Who better than the chaplain?

I felt it right there within me. If I had moved an inch or said a word in that direction it would have been done. But I couldn’t bring myself to it. So I pressed my back up against the wall and waited and tried to imagine what a two-year-old who’s been beaten looks like. As if I could. I tried to prepare myself. As if I could. And I thought back five months prior, to November 2007, and another on-call shift, when I kept vigil with a family in the final hours of their baby’s life. I was present when eight-month-old Nino took his final breath. That night in April 2008, with the helicopter about to land, I thought, Oh God … not another child.

Then I heard it. We all did. The growing sound of rotors. I felt a very slight vibration and pictured the helicopter approaching an “X” on the landing pad. From inside the hospital the sound of the blades was muffled. It was two sounds really — an intermittent whirring, along with a steady, low-pitched hum.

Closer. Louder. Landing. Louder still. Engine’s cut. The blades whir and stop. Moments later, a gurney, flanked on each side by a doctor, nurse, and flight medic, is whisked in. The rest of us quickly flow into Trauma B behind it.

A trunk lid is slammed shut in the Superfresh lot; the loud thud jerks me out of my flashback.

My eyes follow the helicopter as it disappears into the eastern sky. I feel a bit done in by the sight of it, and by memories of a time and place and work and tragedies and regrets that had chewed at my soul and spit out bits of my spirit.

I want to turn around and run to the safe, locked-in isolation of my car. But then my memories would claim victory, wouldn’t they?

I had been working too hard at fighting those emotional battles with my own psyche … at beating back the triggers that hammered me.

Fuck the memories. I keep moving forward.

Even as I walk toward the store, my gait slower than when I had first arrived, I’m not sure I have it in me to go inside and deal with picking bananas, deciding which tomatoes look plumper, and asking if the tilapia is fresh. Still, I keep walking.

I pick up the pace. The store gets closer. The shoppers get louder. The flashback fades.

That day, I have won.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

This is the way of my healing from PTSD. The memories haven’t disappeared, but when they do come, they gradually fade back into the normal course of my day, my life. And it’s a good life, made richer by family, friends, faith, writing, books, my dogs, and often-failed attempts at exercise.

Not long ago, in the course of reflecting and writing, I made a decision: to accept that, for me, being healed isn’t going to mean being all healed (and, in my mind, being all healed meant being free of every horrible memory from the hospital trauma cases I had been involved in).

I had never before considered that anything less than complete healing could be a triumph. But once I made that decision—that I didn’t have to be “all healed”—I felt the repose of a weight being lifted from my shoulders. That decision meant I could stop fighting and struggling to wipe every bad memory from my mind, an impossible goal in the first place.

Ridding myself of those memories wasn’t going to happen, and I was suddenly okay with that. In an instant, I made a deal with my memory … to coexist.

Ironically, my acceptance of less healing let me feel more healed than ever before. I felt renewed. I felt energized. I felt able to go on with my life … and to write about the experiences that started me on this healing journey.

(Photo Credit: Lex Sirikiat on Unsplash