Pastor's Points: An Unexpected Journey

Pastor's Points: An Unexpected Journey

I am beginning this article on December 27 from Rahway, NJ.  It is not where I expected to be spending the week after Christmas 7 months ago or so. But you never know what tomorrow will bring you. You never know when life’s journey may unexpectedly take you down a new road. June 5, 2016 would wind up changing the course of life for my Mom and for our family.

On June 5, Mom and I had gone to a party for my 15 ^th anniversary of ordination.  We came back to my house, and Mom fell backwards and landed on her backside. She had fallen before with increasing weakness in her legs due to Polio, which she had as a child.  Every time Mom fell before, she bounced back. We were not concerned originally when she fell in June, but as the days went on, Mom complained of pain in her lower back and down her leg.  She saw her local orthopedist and had some X-rays and MRI.  We were told that there was nothing concerning.  As June progressed, Mom got worse and she wound up in the hospital in Smithfield, NC where she lived. We found out that the issue was with her sciatic nerve. Mom wound up being transferred to a convalescent center in Durham to be near me. While there, we were able to see a neurosurgeon who told us that Mom had a compressed nerve and that she would need nerve decompression surgery. That surgery took place on July 8. We were told recovery would be about 3 or 4 weeks. As the weeks went on, though, Mom wound up with a tremendous amount of pain in her hip. I was fortunate to have access to doctors from the parish to seek help from them in trying to get some answers to why Mom was having this pain problem. Many tests were run and examinations performed, but we could not get to the source of the pain. Physical Therapy became harder and harder to do with the pain and the effects of Mom’s Post-Polio Syndrome. She wound up back in the hospital in September for further evaluation to try and figure out the problem. In the end, Mom had a second back surgery, this time to fuse her spine. From this hospitalization, we went to another nursing center for rehabilitation. Her pain persisted and therapy was again very hard to do. 

As we looked toward the future, it became clear that Mom would need care. My sister Susan and her husband Joe were gracious enough to offer to let Mom come and live with them and their two children in New Jersey. This would be a very hard thing for Mom to do. She would have to leave behind her life in Smithfield where she had lived for 10 years. She had made many friends and was involved in a lot of ministries in the local parish. Mom would have to leave her home behind and be dependent on other people for daily care. Certainly not what she was expecting on this journey of life at this time. This would be a hard thing for my sister and her husband, too, as they had to prepare to have another person who would require care living with them.

Mom made the transition to NJ on December 16 via medical transport. She has settled in nicely in Susan’s home. The dining room has been converted into a room for her. There is an aide that comes in for about 6 hours a day, and Mom gets physical and occupational therapy several times a week. I am happy to report that as of this writing (mid-January), Mom’s pain has decreased dramatically. She is now able to walk around the house with a walker, and she can stand on her own volition while holding on to someone. Recently she was able to get into the passenger seat of a car for the first time since early June. I cannot tell you how happy I am to get the reports from my sister about the abilities that Mom is recovering. These are things we take for granted…being able to put your own shoes on, dressing yourself and repositioning yourself in bed.

This was certainly an unexpected journey for all involved, this Priest included. I have gone to places I had never been before, and I have gained new insights into the depths of human suffering, the experience of care givers, and what families go through when a loved one is sick or injured. This whole thing has, I believe, made me a better son, a better priest, and a better pastor. I was always the one who came into the hospital room or the room in the nursing home and ministered to the patient and the family member sitting bedside.  Now I found myself in that chair. I, as the family member, was now welcoming doctors, nurses, chaplains, parishioners into the room. You see, before I would offer the sacraments and go. I would not experience what happened before and after I got there.  I never knew what the experience was like for the care giver or family member. Now I know. I had never witnessed the cries, the suffering, the pain of someone very close to me. Now I have. I never understood depression. Now I do. I never had to ponder where God was in the midst of the suffering of a family member and try to respond the question of “why is this happening?” or “Why God?”  Now I have had to try to somehow come up with a response. Not an answer…a response. There is no answer.  I never before had to give Holy Communion or anoint someone while trying to fight back tears. Now I have.

As a priest I come in contact on a regular basis with pain, suffering, sickness, death and dying. You can get the best preparation for these situations in the seminary and you can have countless experiences of them in ministry, but there is nothing like living through them. You who have ever accompanied a spouse, parent, child, sibling or friend through a sickness know what that experience can be like. You who have ever had the role of care giver know how very exhausting that can be; both physically and emotionally. I understand this now. I am a better priest because of this road I have walked. I wish we never had to go down this road, but it is what it is and I understand a new dimension of life because of it.

I have to be honest, at the height of this experience I fell into despair. The pain I saw and the prognosis overwhelmed me. Mom could not walk, and it seemed as though she would be in bed for the rest of her life. Who wants to see those closest to them suffer? I wondered where my God was in all of this. I wondered if we had been abandoned. Yet I would see that my Mom had her rosary beads by her bed every day. I saw how friends checked in on us, walked with us, offered to come and spend time with Mom when I could not be there. I had a friend who would call or text to say “How are you?” each day knowing of the deep effect this experience had on me. Where was God?  There was God. In the midst of my Mom’s fervent prayer each day. There was God in the midst of those who offered a kind word or came to spend time with Mom or the people who provided Thanksgiving dinner for us. God was found in the midst of suffering. 

I will admit, too, that I found it hard to pray during the height of this experience. I found it hard to do much. I found it hard to focus on my work. I just wanted to be with Mom, doing what I could for her. Even though I found it hard to pray, I pushed forward on this unexpected journey. I just tried to remember the experience of Mother Teresa, who remained faithful in her prayer even in the midst of an extremely long period of darkness in her life when she felt God was very much absent. Have you ever felt like that? Even if you are in the midst of that period now, remain faithful.  God does not always expect good prayer, but He expects us to pray.

None of us knows where life will take us. We do not know what tomorrow will bring. Yet we are people of faith, and we have that faith to fall back on when all else falls into chaos and life does not seem to make sense. Jesus has gone before us on the journey of life. The incarnation means that God has come and visited His people. God has walked this earthly journey and subjected Himself to the trials and pains of life. God suffered for and with us. We never walk the journey alone, even the unexpected ones.