Hospital room
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My dad almost died this past week. He has leukemia. On top of that, his depressed immune system, caused by his chemotherapy drugs, led to him catching an infection, entering septic shock, carrying sky-high fevers, and fighting for his life. Thankfully, wide-spectrum antibiotics and expert medical care have returned him home to my mother and me.
We are a small family. I am an only child. My mother has dementia. There is a great deal on my plate at the moment. I couldn’t have made it through the past week without my wife. Now only about two weeks from its disaffiliation vote, my congregation seems like a distant memory as I’ve had two Sundays off to care for my parents. Right now, family comes first.
As I waited during the long nights in his hospital room while he walked the line between living and dead, I thought of my congregation, both figuratively and making the same journey. Would the results of this vote be the knell for a 255-year-old community? Listening to my father’s shallow breaths, I decided it was time to plead ignorance. I didn’t know. I didn’t want to know. Though they occupied space in my consciousness, the congregation was the farthest thing from my soul. I only knew, beyond a shadow of a doubt, I wanted my dad to live until morning. Be there, old man, until the shift change; show them you were still alive and had the strength to make it to another day. That’s all that mattered.
Honestly, I didn’t know what to pray for. I didn’t want to talk to God. Why go to a divine intermediary when the object of my prayers was lying in bed before me? I wanted to talk to my dad. I spoke out loud to him while he slept. I guess I said more than I’d said in years. How many ways can you tell someone you love them? I lost count. In the moments my eyes closed, I would softly repeat to him and myself the words “loving-kindness” repeatedly. When I ran out of memories or how much the rain gauge had collected in the previous night’s storm, I aimed to fill the room with loving kindness. If I said the words enough, they would take a literal form beyond a spoken prayer and become an intangible reality that could not be contained by his ICU room, the floor, or the entire hospital. I hoped that from my bedside chair, love and kindness would extend into places unseen throughout the labyrinth of a hospital where my dad now resided.
Here’s the thing: it worked.
The more I repeated "loving-kindness," the more my heart rate calmed, my father’s vital signs became more regular, and a sense of peace came over the room. I made sure to thank the nurses and medical staff for their love and kindness to my father. When the words love and kindness are paired with “appreciation,” it’s incredible what joy can be revealed within the human heart. To see love and kindness start in our room and then spread down the hall, like a positive infection, from heart to heart and life to life, is like watching prayers unfold before someone gathers the words or thoughts to pray them.
It’s incredible to see prayers at work, independent of human instigation, rolling through the cosmos, listening for the right moment, existing without our notice or awareness, doing the bidding of the divine, without our ever having made a request, mentioned a name, or bent a knee.
Paul was right. We do not know how to pray. Despite our ineptitude, the Holy Spirit prays for us (and with us) in love, kindness, and appreciation, taking on a life of their own to go and do when our words, energy, and spirits fall short.