To Be Loved, To Be Seen, To Be Heard

Today has been a weird Christmas Day. Not bad, just different and strange. I got to have a lovely Christmas morning with E. A. and the boys. We opened presents in our living room and listened to our holiday playlist. I got to see everyone’s faces light up at different gifts. I got to lay against my wife on the couch as she read and laughed as I played video games with one of my sons. Then I went to work at the hospital and I will be here until Boxing Day afternoon.

Yet I got to eat Christmas lunch in the cafeteria with my cohort as all of us worked full shifts today. We gathered in our normal circle in our CPE room and learned from each other like we do three times a week. It was my day to share my statement of ministry, which is our statement of what we think effective spiritual care is to each of us. I already knew that my statement delved too deep into the theological at the expense of the experiential. I wrote about Christ as our guiding example, about “God with us” and the ministry of presence, the Greek word kenosis and the way we approach serving others with humility.

All technically good practices but my educator asked me where I was in this process. It was a good example of what Christians should strive towards; it was a good general statement. Yet where did my story intersect with all of this?

So I began to process out loud and had to take a detour into my mind before I came up with this thought that was inspired by my sons: When I am with a patient, I want them to know that they are loved, that they are seen, and they are heard. I acknowledged that the love part might be more difficult when you meet a person in a hospital room for the first time, but at the very least I could convey that by making them feel and believe that they are seen and heard.

I confess that part of this desire comes from the fact that there have been times in my life when I did not feel seen nor heard. It feels awful and I don’t want others to feel that way. So when a person in the hospital already has the deck stacked against them because of an illness or a loved one who is slipping away, the least I can do is be present with that person so they don’t feel invisible, so they don’t feel like no one is listening. There are times that I hit this mark and times when I fail miserably. Yet at least it is the direction in which I am still trying to move.

What I love about Christmas (besides the fact that the services are full of bangers to which you can full-throatedly sing along) is the beautiful, perhaps scandalous, maybe dangerous picture of God with us. God loves us so much that there was this willingness to come down to this messy, screwed up place as a vulnerable baby. Completely dependent on a teenage mother, fleeing danger like a refugee, eating with the elites and the outcasts, and love, love, loving us.

God was willing to be with us. To sit in the room with us. To laugh and cry with us. To see us with human eyes and hear us with human ears. In Jesus, the infinite beyond our imagination comes down to us and shows us that we are loved, we are seen, and we are heard. Words fail to convey what an unbelievable gift that is. And it is there for every one of us. We just need to remember it and remind each other of it.

Merry Christmas. God loves you. God sees you. God hears you.