To help make sense of some of the below comments, I am in day 6 of a 21 day fast.
Today, in the middle of typing in my prayer journal, I got called to the hospital (I am on-call every Saturday morning). A patient coded and was not expected to survive. On my way, I got a call about another patient who had just died. While driving, I prayed with eyes wide open for the patients, family, staff, and myself. As I approached the hospital, that all-too familiar anger began to rage inside of me.
No matter how hard I try, I cannot rationalize my emotions as I face the anguish of family and staff after yet another senseless COVID death. My animosity toward those whom I deem selfish and ignorant about these issues, those I blame for continuing to cause this heartache, oozes to the surface.
Sometimes, when my emotions are in check, I am able to think with some semblance of reason. This is part of my prayer journal entry from this past Thursday:
Speaking of thoughts, ______ said something that I found head-scratching-interesting – she commented on her wow moment of realizing you see our thoughts. What does that mean? Yes, you know our thoughts, but what does it mean to see them? Is that like knowing how they play out in a movie? Or just that nothing is hidden? Well, if you know our every thought, of course nothing is hidden. Then again, to see means you cannot unsee.
Maybe it’s like what I say about COVID. I can tell people about what I see, they can know my thoughts on the subject, but to actually see it makes it more real. When I get angry with people like ______ for being what I think of as unchristian for putting her desires above everyone else’s, knowing what I know – seeing what I have seen, I remind myself that they have not seen what I have seen. To see it has a much greater impact than simply hearing about it or knowing about it. Yes, we can know that this Delta variant is bad, that it is attacking younger people, but until we see the impact – on patients, families, staff – it’s not fully real.
It’s like I tell people how I cannot unsee what I’ve seen – especially early on, that one woman who was dying, but chose no help whatsoever, how zombie looking she was from her skin tone to her eyes, the way she looked at me and moved her hand, to the yellow foamy saliva bubbling out of her mouth. That image changed me, changed the face of COVID for me. I can never unsee that. I know if people like ______ could see what I saw, it would change her thinking completely. She would be ashamed for being so selfish. That’s why I say I wish I could take people like her with me to see what I see for just five minutes.
I suppose that’s the significance of you being able to see my thoughts. It’s like my obsession with _____. No one knows about that. That would be embarrassing. To know my thoughts, is easy to hide my thoughts, but to see them, they cannot be unseen, they cannot be ignored. They cannot be dismissed. I cannot pretend they do not exist.
So, for me to say COVID is a bitch is simply – wait – that’s not what I said, is it? But COVID is a bitch. Looking back, we were talking about fear. Fear is a bitch as well. Anyway, to type this, to make it real by putting it on “paper” to be seen by you or anyone who may ever stumble upon this journal would be to make my thoughts seen which means they cannot be unseen which means I cannot hide them which means I have to deal with them.
So, for you to see my thoughts means you cannot ignore them, and I cannot, and should not ignore them. So, pruning – our fast topic. You get rid of what does not bear fruit and you prune what does.
This (il)logical way of explaining how people could think so differently from me about this topic goes out the window the moment I am once again living the reality of the traumatic effects of COVID.
That patient I mentioned – the one who looked like a zombie. There is no better way for me to describe what I saw. She had zero family support and declined all treatment options, including morphine. To see what this disease does to the human body will forever be etched in my memory – and no Hollywood moviemaker could ever create anything more gruesome or heartbreaking than what I witnessed firsthand.
All I can hear are the words of the nurse I spoke with yesterday. She is angry, as so many frontline COVID nurses are. She told me of a conversation with a family member who still thinks COVID is somehow not real. She finally told him to keep his mouth shut, that until he holds the hand of a person as they lay dying for the umpteenth time, she demanded he keep his opinions to himself when in her presence.
Another nurse told me about a conversation with the director of the nursing facility where her mom lives. He touted that 60% of his staff were fully vaccinated. She rightly challenged, “then that means 40% of your staff do not care if my mom lives or dies?”
All I can feel is the sorrow of the husband who wept as he watched as his beloved wife take her last breath. I held onto him as he held onto her. Through broken sobs, he wanted to know why. They did everything right, but her immune system was weak. She got sick and died because of someone else’s negligence.
And just today, I watched as one family made the gut-wrenching decision to put a young spouse and parent on hospice care. Moments later, in the next room, I listened as a nurse explained to a patient’s children and grandchildren the terrible turn the patient took overnight and prepared them for the likely outcome.
Countless others in my little hospital have similar harrowing stories. Countless nurses wondering how much more they can take and when this will all end.
A common refrain: this will only end when people get vaccinated – stop making this a political whatever and start taking responsibility for one another. Where is the compassion? That’s what staff wants to know. They are on the verge and fearful of losing their own compassion. It’s called compassion fatigue.
This morning, when I returned home and resumed my journaling, I realized what I feel right now is quite similar to what I felt when Brad’s management was grooming him to become the next Garth Brooks. He had just been fired from a band and that band’s management knew gold when they saw it. The unfortunate thing is that money is all they cared about when they looked at Brad. They did not see the pain that caused him to be fired in the first place.
Rumor was that the band fired him because he stole the spotlight, and there may be truth to some of that. After all, after a show, fans wanted to talk to him just as much (and sometimes more) than they wanted to talk to the main act. He was a celebrity in his own right – hence, why management wanted to move him from the back to the front of the stage. They did not care that a bigger reason for him being fired was the problems his drinking and mental illness caused. If they could make money off his talent, they chose to turn a blind eye.
I remember the day his manager came up to me and asked me what I thought. I told him it was not the right time. Brad needed help and putting him out there like that was not good for him. Did he listen? Nope. He probably assumed I would care more about his celebrity and money potential, but they were dead wrong. Brad was exceptionally good at self-sabotage, and he finally did something even they could not ignore or work around. The dream died. I was thankful that the deal died before it ever took flight. I am certain it would have killed Brad much sooner and harsher had he made it to that spotlight. But the whole experience made me loathe the entire music and entertainment industry.
I used to think my distaste for celebrity and fandom was because of my experiences with Brad’s short-lived celebrity and my work at Belmont, but I think it has more to do with this one experience. It made me hate the business and everyone who blindly loved and worshipped the beast, thus, aiding in creating and feeding the monster – and destroying lives along the way.
I see now that my anger for the entertainment industry is similar to my former hatred for the Catholic church. I tend to blame an entire industry for the mistakes and failures of a few.
I got over the Catholic thing. I’m just now realizing the entertainment thing. As I realize this trend, I wonder how it correlates to the COVID thing – because it does – and my anger, more than anything or anyone, is geared toward what I call Christian Nationalism, good old fashioned American superiority with a God complex.
But I am beginning to realize that there is good in all these systems.
For example, my anger at the Catholic church subsided after a young Catholic Priest took the time to truly listen to me and answer my personal and theological questions.
Odd as it may seem, Faith Hill restored my faith in the music business. (If you are reading this and want to know more, I would love to share that story. In short, it involves my work with Belmont’s security during one of the CMT Video Music Awards hosted by Belmont and Faith’s treatment of one of my officers.)
COVID – who are the good ones outside of the realm of frontline workers who have witnessed it firsthand? Or the patients, families, or friends directly impacted? Right now, the emotion is too strong for me to be able to see. The point is that I realize my anger, and how I have dealt with it both now and in the past, has been misguided.
As I have said before, I do believe all this is an answer to prayer. We have prayed for revival for years, but rarely, if ever, has the church experienced revival without a huge shakeup. Again – my fasting theme of pruning. (John 15)
I am finding that what makes me mad are people who abuse their power for their own selfish gains.
My mistake is that I tend to blame entire institutions rather than a handful of the guilty.
What I have learned is that I have a heart to protect and fight for the helpless and hurting. Right now, in my small bubble of the world, the most helpless and hurting are our frontline COVID nurses.
What I have done in the past is fight the institutions – a losing battle.
What I have learned is the only way to create any lasting change is at the lowest levels – through relationships, by being who God has called me to be, by doing what God has called me to do.
What I must do is ignore the desire to participate in ineffective online platforms and, instead, create change through love and action on the small scale.
It goes back to that moment at Tent City – the small yeses which led to a moment when that one man asked me why. I never set out to start a homeless ministry when I lived in Nashville. It just happened – one small yes at a time. Then, one day, one of the men in the camp asked me why I did what I did. I said, “because our Daddy told me to.”
From today’s prayer journal entry:
The old canes do not produce again. The image I got is of my Tent City Ministry. Yes, it makes for a great memory, a great story, a great sermon illustration, but that ministry is no longer bearing fruit because it no longer exists. I cannot continue to cling to this as a sign and symbol that I am bearing fruit for Jesus. It bore fruit, but it is not currently bearing fruit. There is a very stark difference. What am I – what are we – doing to bear fruit now? Other than the hospital, I’m not fully certain. But I am committed to remaining in you. When I talk about Tent City, I talk about the many small yeses which eventually led to Tent City – and what I consider the Christmas culmination with me, ________, our church, and the Haitian congregation. That was an awesome moment. All because of small yeses that had nothing to do with the end result, the end result which I never envisioned. So, what small yeses am I saying today which will culminate in another cool adventure like that?
Yes, it’s a ton more time consuming and the results are much slower, but also much more effective. I have already learned from television and social media that gongs and cymbals accomplish nothing more than creating a lot of pointless noise, further alienating, and dividing us. It’s wasted effort. What we need are a whole lot of small yeses. (1 Corinthians 13)
What we need is to continually ask ourselves, “is what I am doing, is the choice I am about to make, communicating my love for Jesus and love for others or is it merely affirming my love of self?” If we (I) are truly honest with the answer, and respond accordingly, how would that change us (me)?
A few lyrics from When We Fall Apart by Ryan Stevenson – and my dedication to all our weary and fiercely dedicated COVID nurses:
It's okay to cry
It's okay to fall apart
You don't have to try
To be strong when you are not
And it may take sometime to make sense of all your thoughts
But don't ever fight your tears
'Cause there is freedom in every drop
Sometimes the only way to heal a broken heart is when we fall apart
And you've got the gift of mercy
Don't ever think it's strange
Not a curse, but it is a blessing to feel other people's pain
And always love without condition
And trust with all your heart
There's healing in the story of your scars
***If one were to read the side blurb of my blog, you would notice that I feel like my writings here are something I feel called to do as a kind of ministry. I used to argue with God about how I would rather not. Recently, God and I came to a compromise. I would still be faithful to publish these occasional blog posts when I felt the nudge, but I would not be required to post links to my social media accounts, advertising that I had written them. So, if anyone happens upon this entry, I firmly believe you were meant to for some reason that only God (and possibly you) know. The way I see it, if I am free from the obligation of self-promotion, then anyone who finds this obscure post was meant to read it.
