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We All Have Something To Give To One Another

Early in my pastoral education training I was assigned a patient in the hospital for one of the many horrendous effects of multiple sclerosis. This woman was young, maybe in her forties, and would have been in the prime of her life, but her disease had rendered her bound to a wheelchair, in constant excruciating pain, unable to care for herself, never mind her children. She was despondent.

On the first day I saw her, I attempted to pull her out of the listless depression that hung like a cloud over her. When my efforts at feeble humor and chatty conversation failed, I asked her directly if she needed to talk.

“What is there to say, chaplain?” she said. “I don’t have a reason to live. I can’t take care of myself or my children. I’m stuck forever in this wheelchair. I can’t perform the simplest task for myself. Why is God keeping me alive? Why?”

I had no answer, but I was terribly troubled by her circumstance and so I consulted my much revered spiritual mentor. He cut right to the essence of this situation, saying, “You are only worried about your inability to solve her problem, not by the problem itself. This woman has a purpose if she can accept it and it is to live in the state she is in, and offer to her family and other loved ones the wherewithal to care for her and comfort her and perform those deeds that will keep her life going. You can only help her accept. Not as glamorous perhaps as curing her, but probably more important.”

He was so right. I had let my ego get in the way. Often care providers feel helpless if we can’t beat disease, and I am no exception. The next day when I visited my patient I approached her with a different attitude. I did not think of her as a helpless and sorry victim. I saw her as a model to emulate and a testament to human courage.

This didn’t make a difference at first, but day after day I approached her in the same way until finally I could feel her spirit pick up as she absorbed my respect for her. From that day until she was discharged, my patient no longer wallowed in her bed, but sat propped up, with a bloom in her cheeks that was most likely a result of her taking time to make up.

When she got back in the wheelchair, she moved around the hallways with energy and joked with the nursing staff. Most satisfying to me was the day I found her son and daughter visiting her and saw how loving and caring the trio was, with each of them caring for the other in turn.

It is disastrous to feel that one isn’t needed or wanted. And it’s not only on the material plane that we hunger to find meaning. Most of us ask ourselves questions of purpose that go beyond the routines of our daily lives. We have at least fleeting thoughts about the broader reasons for our existence. It is a rare person who doesn’t once in a while wonder why he or she is here. The obvious answer is to be kind to one another, to help another if he or she is in need, and to perform good deeds.

I have learned through the school of hard knocks that when I begin to purposefully perform acts of kindness, my spirit changes and soon doing good deeds becomes a focal point for my life. Doing good begins to be the same as feeling good. The periods of emptiness when we search for the meaning of it all begin to fill with acts of kindness. We all have something to give to one another.

By Bob Mueller, Bob Mueller is a Bishop of the United Catholic Church. bobmueller.org

Today's Transitions | Spring 2023