I often find myself riveted to the medical teams’ routines, especially since the pandemic began. These medical professionals—warriors—don personal protection equipment and enter isolation rooms where every choice, decision, and effort made is to connect with others and to preserve the life of another. The very act of entering one of these rooms is an act of ‘salvation’ as they continuously strive to relieve the patients suffering the ravages of COVID-19.
Although unprepared for such a pandemic, we believed being unprepared did not mean that we should fail to perform, not act, not try, or not pray. Undaunted, we readied ourselves to attend, to fight, and to armor up. We became poised for the task, ready to confront a faceless and sinister enemy whose invisible ‘crown’ stood to thwart our resolve and to overthrow our balance and weaken our unity.
No deaths occurred for us during the first ‘wave’ in late March but the second ‘wave’ in May and June flipped the switch. Not until the most intensive spaces became COVID care units, did we foresee the trials and challenges of being human during a pandemic. Social distancing became a shield and a necessary restriction against what we needed in order to cope, to recover, to adapt, and to thrive in the early months. What we needed most was in short supply: connection and an affirmation of our common humanity. Human touch, handholding and hugs were discouraged. After a while, the threat of disconnection got lost in all the commotion. We denied the pings of our consciences when such statements like “safety first” and “it doesn’t look like normalcy will be coming back any time soon” set us up for weeks of hungering after connection and thirsting for relief.
Many of us struggled in our search for new avenues of support, communication, closeness, and compassion in our traumatized world. Despite being overwhelmed, the simple acts of love, kindness and good old-fashioned nursing ingenuity prevailed. With creative use of tablets, smartphones, computers, and software, doctors and nurses, chaplains and social workers, bridged the distance, bringing loved ones and families to bedsides and giving broken bodies and spirits fresh courage and hope. Such interactions helped people to be seen, known, and found. Is that not the root of what it means “to be saved”? Doesn’t every healing begin with a call, a listening ear, a passionate prayer, and a promise to be present? Is that not how God reaches to us? (When you get the chance listen to Jesus as you read the Gospel of John, Chapter 17.)
Our Savior is never absent from the rooms I serve or from the spaces we occupy. God is not distant from the exhausted and the worn out. God provides a means of every kind of life-sustaining treatment and life support through a combined divine and human touch. When “present” we can become a ‘means of grace’—the Father’s love and grace through us.
Despite extreme anxiety and palpable fears, with hearts beating fast from stress and adrenaline, the warriors in the medical trenches make the time to weep and rest, and to muster the strength to try again. That’s where I, as a chaplain, see beauty—the truly human uniting with the holy tenderness of God. That’s where I see God at work—in their putting on and taking off, under their sweat and fogged up face shields, in the emotional phone calls and humbling condolences, in the protocols, practices and procedures, in the allowances of visitors (however brief), the smiles and sighs behind level one masks, and the quiet acts of compassion that provide moments of reprieve, hope, and joy.
We must be reminded that we have a name and a face God can see undeterred by our ‘shields’ and personal protection. When I met Sarah, she couldn’t remove her oxygen mask. Although she was negative for COVID her body, due to the ravages of lung disease and a failing heart, couldn’t regulate her oxygen levels naturally. Scared and aware of her fate, she sought out connection. A number of her care team members broke social distancing demands extending our hearts and hands at her request: “Would you please hold my hand? I need to be with a friend.” We want to be known, seen, and heard. We want to be ‘saved’. Disease takes so much and gives nothing in return. Fighting the COVID battle in the midst of what continues to ail the weak and moribund, the elderly and young alike, only adds stress and strain being reminded so immediately of our frailty and mortality. But we are adapting all the same.
Before I enter the hospital, I center and breathe then bow my head and heart to pray: “LORD, be with me as I enter these sacred spaces. Let wholeness and healing begin in me, then in us and through us according to Your will. Bear witness to the lives of others as we bear witness to You. Keep us ever in Your care. Lead us not into discord or disconnection but dress us in Your holy armor (Ephesians 6:10-20). With this mask, these gloves, this gown, these scrubs and this heart, may I serve as a means of Your grace. Keep us—every caregiver and support member—connected to You and to each other. In Jesus’ name. Amen.”
Grace and peace,
Rev. Brian Fitzgerald, MDiv, MATS, BCC
