chaplain diary

So medicine can really use terms that sound hideous. Cause in point from my day: fetal demise. Fetal demise is what happens when something happens to the baby during labor and the baby dies. I didn't even really think of this as a possibility anymore. The term "still born" is no longer relevant right? I knew that newborns are often too sick or premature to survive, but they die only after extraordinary effort of the NICU, right? They don't just DIE in labor right?

so having run out of things to do on my regular floors after an hour and a half (i'm supposed to be there for 4 hours), i went around to the areas that usually aren't assigned chaplains as i have been instructed to do. ER, heart lab, women's center (labor and delivery) etc. I went into the women's center and the nurses sent me to the room of a woman who had experienced "fetal demise" the night before. The baby was only 23 weeks when she went into labor, so it didn't have much of a chance (viable is 26 weeks minimum). i stood outside the door of this room hyper-ventilating. what was i supposed to say to this family?

and I see that i have to walk in here as the representative of a God that loves this family and that mourns with them but also of the God that allowed this thing to happen. And I can't make those fit. It's not my job to make those fit right now. I want to make them fit, but I can't.

I think the main thing that i was terrified of in the chaplain thing was i didn't feel qualified. I wasn't old enough, mature enough, mature enough as a Christian and had no experience with ministry in trajedy. But God is teaching me that I CAN walk in a door as his representative because He's there. No merits of my own other than willingness to be used.

Anticlimactically, she didn't want to talk to me and the visit lasted all of 30 seconds. But if she did want to talk to me, I knew God was there and that I was able to speak for him to those people who needed him.