Life is a gift… with an ode to joy

I’ve said this on this blog before, but after this week it bears saying again. Most nights when I rock Lucas to sleep it is a mostly sweet but still bittersweet moment for me. Having him snuggle up to me and run his fingers through my hair while I sing to him (sometimes he joins in, which is oh so sweet), or rocking this precious baby (toddler) in silence, then watching him fall asleep with that angelic face — that is very, very sweet. The bitter part comes with my full awareness that he will grow up too soon and be out of my arms, the knowledge that one day he will get hurt and I won’t be able to protect him from everything, and worse — my full awareness that we are not promised tomorrow and I simply do not know how many more times I will get to rock this precious child to sleep.

That may seem a little morbid but I can’t help it — I’m a hospice chaplain and I see people dying everyday. Young and old, people of every kind. People like me. Babies like my baby. It doesn’t depress me like many people think it might; knowing this has taught me the value of life and to appreciate it to its fullest.

This week the bittersweet moments have been even more bittersweet due to several events: first, a dear friend died on Monday. She was a happy, hardworking, active, wonderful person, mother, and friend. She had a nine year-old daughter who will miss her dearly. Then, a couple of friends experienced similar losses when two other parents of young children died this week. Finally, the shooting in Connecticut left us all numb and wild with grief at the thought of losing our own children.

A really great seminary professor of mine — John Claypool — used to say that “life is a gift.” His very young daughter died of cancer and he was later diagnosed with Multiple Myeloma — a nasty cancer that eventually took his life. And his response was this: life is a gift. It helped him to appreciate the time he was able to spend with his daughter, and the life he shared with his wife, family and friends.

That has always, always stayed with me. Life is a gift. Appreciate life.

By the way — here’s the back of our Christmas card this year!

And the front:

And to finish up I have to share this with you… someone shared this on facebook today and I thought it was perfect timing since tomorrow we light the Advent candle of Joy… amidst all the grief! Flash mobs are awesome and this one is really special. Made me tear up! I hope it gives you some joy.

Peace, love and joy this season and always!! XOXO, Alice.

The power to bless, Part I (the easy part)

Blessings have become somewhat diluted in our culture. There’s the well-meaning “Bless you” when we sneeze, or “Have a blessed day!” when folks say goodbye. Here in the south, we also say “Bless his heart!” when someone does something touching or we feel sorry for them. And then there’s also the dismissive “God bless!” that’s become popular when someone does something with which we disagree — as if saying, “Do what you will. I could care less.”

The kind of blessing I want to talk about today goes a little deeper than that. It’s the kind of deliberate validation of another person that says, “May God’s favor be upon you,” or the deliberate setting of our intentions for extending grace unto another. I know, that sounds murky… I’m having a hard time articulating a definition for blessing. I trust you know what I mean. Let me know if you’ve got a good definition!

The Bible is full of examples of blessings. Sometimes we read about people praying for or requesting God’s blessing. Sometimes they are conferring blessings themselves — sometimes even blessing God. There are even exhortations to bless: “Bless, and do not curse” (Romans 12:14).  It turns out we do have the power to bless. Hopefully all of us have experienced what it’s like to give and receive a blessing, even if we don’t always use the language of blessing. Lately I have been more conscious about offering my blessing and it has really made a difference to me. Today, I will focus on the most natural ways I have incorporated blessings into my life (the easy stuff). Next week, I’ll discuss how I’ve been working on offering my blessing when it’s challenging or not-so-natural to do so (the hard stuff).

The sweetest and easiest way I have integrated blessing into my life is making sure that I bless my child every day. The most common times for me to bless Lucas are at bedtime (right before I place him in his crib) and when I drop him off at daycare. That way, I am blessing him at the start and end of each day, or blessing each day and night. I love the feeling of holding Lucas in my arms and whispering a blessing into his ears.

By the way, some families in Brazil have a neat tradition of having children request blessings from their parents when they are about to leave the house. We didn’t practice this in my family and I don’t know if it’s still practiced, but I remember seeing friends and cousins practice this within their families. It would go like this:

Child (as they’re leaving): “The blessing, Mom.”
Mother: “God bless you, son.”

Another easy way for me to tap into my power to bless is through my work as a chaplain. I often pray for God’s blessing upon the patients I see, frequently invoking blessing upon their bodies, upon the hands of the caregivers, and the instruments used in their care. I started doing this while doing a rotation in a children’s hospital during my chaplaincy training. When praying with children, I thought they needed something concrete to relate to. So, I started asking God to bless the IVs, medicines, needles and whatever else was being used to provide them medical care. Being specific in my prayers for blessing felt so meaningful to me that I carried it over to my ministry to adults. Now I always include an element of blessing in my prayers and I can always find something specific to bless.

In addition to requesting God’s blessing on my patients, I often offer my own blessing to them as well and sometimes encourage them to bless themselves. For example, the other day a patient expressed sadness about the fact that his legs are giving out on him and it is becoming increasingly difficult for him to walk. He described his legs as “weak” and “failing” him. When I offered prayer, I started by leading us into a blessing of his legs. Instead of weak and failing, I called them blessed and recounted all the ways in which his legs have served him well — how they have supported his weight for so many years and have taken him where he wanted to go, and how he has made good use of them in specific ways. And we blessed them in the state they are now to receive what they need.

I hope this gives you some ideas for blessing those around you. I would love to hear how you use blessing in your daily life. One thing I have noticed about blessing those I love is that the act of blessing always seems to involve an element of gratitude. When I bless Lucas at the end of the day, I can’t help but feel grateful for having him in my life. And the blessing of my patient’s legs was really a form of thanksgiving for what his legs have represented to him.

The more we learn about gratitude, the more it seems like it really is the key to happiness. It also does wonders for your health (check out some of the news articles on this compiled by the University of California. You’ll be amazed!). There is a myriad of ways of practicing gratitude, and extending our blessing can be one of them. And what a sweet way to count our blessings — by blessing them back!

With gratitude and blessings in mind, here’s a nice video from gratefulness.org. Watch this every morning and you’re sure to have a good day!

Dear “Private Practice”: I didn’t like your tone. (A hospice chaplain rant)

Watching “Private Practice” is one of my guilty pleasures. The TV show chronicles the lives and medical practices of a group of doctors. Aside from all the relationship drama in the show, I like how the doctors collaborate about their patients and enhance each other’s views about complex medical issues. Their joint clinic is named “Oceanside Wellness Center” and seems to aim at providing holistic care to their patients.

Recently a character from the show (“Erica”) was found to have an inoperable brain tumor and a life expectancy of 6-9 months. This was especially devastating due to the fact that she has a young son (“Mason”) who has only recently developed a relationship with his father (“Cooper”, one of the doctors at Oceanside). For the past three episodes, Erica and Cooper have been disagreeing on whether Erica should take on chemotherapy treatments. A neurosurgeon told Erica that cure is not possible and chemo might extend for life for a couple of months. Cooper believes that by undergoing treatments Erica will have more time with her son and possibly even find a cure for her illness (should a new drug develop in the very near future). However, Erica decides after consulting with the neurosurgeon that she would rather spend every healthy moment with her son and letting the illness take its course rather than spending her time in treatments. She reconsiders her decision, however, when her symptoms start getting out of control and she is no longer capable of hiding her disease.

So far, so good. What disturbed me were the ways in which stereotypes about end of life care and issues were reinforced in the storyline (even if hospice care was never mentioned). When Charlotte is comforting her husband Cooper, she tells him that Erica needs him to help her understand “why she should fight the disease” by undergoing treatments. She also says that having treatments is “the hard way” of dealing with the illness (meaning the brave way). So when Cooper has a heart-to-heart conversation with Erica about this, he tells her that she needs to “fight” because “maybe we’ll get lucky” and “maybe it will show Mason how much you care.” Once again, you see, “fighting” cancer/terminal illness is equated with undergoing aggressive medical treatments and is also equated with being noble and courageous. Deciding not to pursue curative treatments is equated with “giving up” and “not caring”, and maybe even being cowardly.

These associations are wrong in so many levels that I cannot address them adequately on this blog. But I’ll try to address some of it. First, please understand that I am not saying “Erica” is wrong to pursue chemotherapy or that anyone who makes that choice in the face of terminal illness is wrong to do so. She is a young woman who is otherwise healthy, and has a young son. Who can fault her for wanting to live as long as possible? God knows I would. The problems I have with the show are:

1) They made it seem like it was a clear-cut decision between living longer with chemo treatments (even if life might be “rough”), or living shorter without treatments. The reality is that chemo or radiation do not always extend life. Conversely, good end of life care with hospice or a palliative care team can often prolong life expectancy.

Surprised? It’s true. Those of us who work in hospice care often see our patients improve survival rates once they receive hospice/palliative care. There are many reasons for this, including close monitoring and management of symptoms, and the spiritual and emotional support patients receive in such programs. Palliative care and hospice are designed to provide comfort care, and thus increase patients’ quality of life. When quality of life increases, patients are more resilient and often live longer than predicted. Here is reference to one of several studies on this.

2) The idea that one should always choose curative treatments, no matter what the cost, and no matter how remote/elusive the cure is (if they truly care about life or about their loved ones).

Have we considered that there are more important things than finding a cure? Things such as living with dignity, spending meaningful time with loved ones, leaving a leguacy, finding emotional and spiritual healing, and yes – even preparing for death.

Look, I get it. We don’t want to miss out on the chance that things could be restored back to “normal” if we only did this treatment or that. I mentioned on a previous post that my dad has ALS, which is a fatal disease. Every now and then my step mother tells me she is looking for an experimental treatment and is willing to sell anything and move anywhere if my dad has the smallest chance of finding a cure. I know he would go, too. And I, too, imagine sometimes what it would be like if he did find a cure through a stem cells treatment in Israel or Korea.

I also imagine what it would be like for my dad to relocate to another country and spend all of his remaining time subjecting himself to arduous treatments. Right now he enjoys good quality of life: a comfortable home, good care, and meaningful conversations with family and friends who drop by often. He is spending whatever energy he has on doing things he enjoys with the people he loves. What if all his energy were spent on “fighting”? What toll would it have on his body and soul, on his dignity? What if it costs him and his wife all of their savings and possessions? Call me crazy, but, to me, that is too big a gamble.  (Here is an article that illustrates this well. I would quote some of it here if this post weren’t already humongously long).

It could also be said that one may “fight” terminal illness by utlizing other resources such as complimentary medicine. But truthfully… I’m not sure about this notion that fighting is the thing to do.  It seems to me there is a lot of energy involved in constantly saying NO!! to everything around us by trying to reverse things at all cost. Being in that fight mode may also entail bitterness for how things are, and even more bitterness if things are not reversed as expected. To me, there may be something very courageous and healing about saying YES, this is my life, and I am embracing it rather than fighting against it.

3) And finally… it bothers me that, in a holistic medical practice, there was no mention or discussion of hospice or even palliative care. Not even a palliative care consultation? Guess the Oceanside doctors didn’t read the recent study in the New England Journal of Medicine showing that early palliative care (in conjunction with cancer treatments) prolongs life and reduces suffering.

Cicely Saunders, the physician who founded modern hospice, once said, “We are the medicine.” We have become so enamoured with the drugs, machines and apparatus that modern medicine has given us, that we sometimes forget they are but tools in the hands of healers. They are not the whole medicine. We are.

To the writers of “Private Practice”: if you add an awesome chaplain to your mix of characters, all will be forgiven. 🙂

Photo by Wikipedia.