Happy Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Day

We were asking our girls about MLK today, what did they know or understand about his legacy. They brought up the well known talking points: the sitting on buses, different water fountains, and separate schools. While these are accurate descriptions, they often help mask the real issues of the Civil Rights movement.

King was fighting against the systems that made black folks second class citizens. Jim Crow and Black Codes led to treatment of black people being treated as subservient to white folks. It separated them from sitting at the tables of power. It left them out of economic opportunity. It isolated them from the protection of the justice system.

These problems could not be wished away. They could not be simply undone and Then everything would be alright. To undo the damage done by these systems of injustice and evil, they must be proactively addressed. Damage has a legacy, just deciding not to do more damage doesn’t heal the old wounds.

Sadly, in the 60 years since MLK’s Dream Speech [and the 1964 Civil Rights Act and 1965 Voting Rights Act] have seen much of the progress made halted and undone, but also, we’ve decided that we can wish the problems away and believe that everything is now alright because … well it makes us feel good to say that Jim Crow is bad; even is we allow a new soft Jim Crow to continue to be in place. We’ve fallen into the trap of believing that celebrating MLK Day and not being personally racist is enough. Sure, we don’t have segregation in our schools, water fountains, and busses, but we’ve never undone their legacy. Sadly, King’s dream is still in many ways just that.

Dealing with the real issues can only be done when we ask real questions of power and wealth. It will only happen after we decide that greed is not good and fighting for our own self-interest only ever creates systems of inequality. It will only happen when we ask and answer tough questions about the real issues, coming to terms that too often our decisions lead to a peace that lacks justice.

Until then, Dr. King’s Dream will continue to wait to become reality.

2022, a reflection

2022 almost broke me.

I started the year in the deepest canyon of COVID loss. The excess mortality from the pandemic led to January being the 5th month in a row where I had responded to ~30 deaths. One month in that range is tough — and rare for our team— but 5 in a row felt overwhelming.

I found out a few months later that I had – during the pandemic (March 2020–February 2022) – responded to over 500 death; not all were COVID, but the number was definitely inflated by it. I still cannot wrap my head around that level of excess mortality. Those were crazy nights…. I would chase one emergency to another. Having patients die minutes apart; night after night. ICU nurses would look at me and say, I guess you should just stick around, we’ll keep you busy. One RN co-worker noted that they had a 3-month stretch where all of the patients they were assigned to care for did not survive. It was a crazy, horrible time. Looking back, I don’t know if I could’ve gone much longer…

I would get home at midnight and fall asleep,  get up with the girls to get them off to school, and then try to go to do church work…. Some days, I would find myself unable to think or process… I would just lay there, exhausted. 

Sadly, many of people in my world — family, friends, etc. — had no frame of reference for this. I don’t think that they could understand why suggesting that the pandemic wasn’t that bad — or worse that it wasn’t a thing — would be so offensive to me. They weren’t seeing all the suffering from it that I was. They could move on with their lives, I couldn’t….

I’m professionally forgetful. I most often cannot tell you what I did the day before…. And I’ve tried to take advantage of this for the pandemic, instead of writing down 5 or 6 situations to remember so I can forget the rest. I have been forever changed by the work I did over the last two years. I worked with other chaplains and nurses and doctors who walked those steps, we did hard work; work I’m proud of.

The last 8 or 9 months have been a time of trying to allow myself to breathe….not wearing masks in the hospital brought up a ton of emotions that I wasn’t expecting. Going back to masking with the onset of respiratory virus season also brought up feelings for opposite reasons…Going back into a COVID room to provide pastoral support after a few months without doing that was surprisingly hard.

I didn’t realize, during the fight what emotions had been buried inside… but it was when the weight of the pandemic fight moved on, I began to feel it. At our staff retreat, I was invited to make a personal memorial piece, acknowledging the patients I responded to through the pandemic…. I couldn’t. This isn’t a topic that I want to dwell on, but realized the traumatic experience I had walked through had impacted me.

I think that my last year moved me into a new space. The associations and institutions that I associated with years ago, seem to have paled. I am committed to the people and relationships that I’ve built, but the ceremonies and liturgies — after watching so many proclaim their good news, then act in ways that disregarded all the pandemic guidance — have lost any attraction to me. “Faith over Fear”? No thank you, that Good News proclamation is so heavenly minded it is divorced from doing any earthly good.

I guess I’m writing this because this year because I want to renew my focus, to live my life in such a way that proclaims that we’re/you’re loved. If you struggle to believe that a divine being loves you, perhaps you’ll know that I do. Cause I believe, you’re not alone AND you’re loved! 

I don’t know what 2023 will bring. I know that I’m glad 2022 is behind me. I love my work and the people I work with. If 2022 was a chance to catch my breath for 2023, let’s go. If 2023 is a year of peace, may peace be with you.

Grace + Peace,

Dan

Birthright

The 1997 football season has been my favorite Michigan football season, until this year. 2022 is now my favorite. 1997 is beloved to me as it was the first year I took the initiative to follow the team — as opposed to asking my dad who they’re playing and when they’re playing. They went undefeated and won a National Championship; it was amazing! Like I said, before this year, it was my favorite season.

I made a rule for my girls that you needed to be 7 to go to a Michigan game; those tickets are expensive and I don’t want to waste my money. Mal turned 7 during COVID and then last year, I didn’t go because I was still not comfortable going to games. So this year was Mal’s big year. We started planning this summer to go, we picked the game (against the horrible U-Conn Team), made plans on what we were going to do pregame (meet the team, walk with the band, get a pretzel) and bought tickets. Mal was hooked. She walked into the stadium in awe, insisting she come back for another game!

I didn’t expect what happened next, we got home and she described a dozen plays to Steph. She remembered players names and numbers and had favorites! She started asking questions about the team, players, and updates. She would watch games with me, one Saturday friends were over and she left them to come watch the game with me.

I wrote the schedule down on a chalk board in our dining room and crossed the games off after Michigan won. Mal kept track of this board — bugging me when I didn’t keep it updated — and it led her to asking more questions about the games. She became a Michigan fan in front of my eyes!

She wasn’t just watching the games because I was, she watching the games because she wanted to.

The final game of the season, The Game is always stressful for me. I think about that game for the other 364 days of the year. I’m a nervous wreck…. Mallory was the opposite. She kept saying, “Daddy, Michigan’s gonna beat them. I believe!”

During the game, I couldn’t wait to talk with her about what had happened! I was at work and ended up sending messages over Alexa when great things happened! After Michigan won, Steph sent me a video of Mal crossing off Ohio State on the board. She exclaimed, “they won all the games!”

2022 is my new favorite season not because they went 13-0, or that they beat Ohio State, or won the Big Ten Championship, but because, for the first time, my kid found her fandom!

Go blue!

You’ll be proud…

“365 days since that godforsaken day (against) the team up north. For 365 days, we’ve heard them talk. For 365 days, I had to watch them attack our head coach, attack our quarterback and attack Buckeye Nation. Instead of getting loud and trying to respond on social media, we got quiet. We circled a date on the calendar: Nov. 26, 2022. And we went to work. We went to work. And we knew what we did in the dark, what we did in the quiet, will someday come to light. Today is that light.”
—Brian Hartline [Ohio State Football, passing game coordinator]
@ the OSU Skull Session prior to Michigan’s bludgeoning of OSU

On January 18, 2001 Jim Tressel changed the tenor of The Game when he stood in front of the gathered Ohio State fanbase shortly after being announced as the Ohio State football coach. His predecessor — John Cooper — had success at Ohio State, but consistently got embarrassed playing against Michigan; going 2-10-1*. Tressel quickly made one thing clear, Ohio State fans would be “proud of our young people in the classroom, in the community and, most especially, in 310 days in Ann Arbor, Michigan, on the football field.”

During his tenure — and that of Urban Meyer’s, who followed him as coach Ohio State — Ohio State came into The Game with confidence and bravado; filling their fans with pride. They played bigger, faster, stronger than Michigan. They had better game plans and when their starting quarterback (and their back up in 2014) went down… the back up also blew Michigan away. Ohio State, like a cyborg, had a super human obsession with destroying Michigan… and did. They went 16-2** from 2001 to 2019.

But something has happened that once again shifted the series….

What caused this shift? Perhaps it was the year off in 2020 allowed a reset to happen or maybe it was Harbaugh being forced to take a pay cut and reassess things… but probably it was when Ryan Day and Jim Harbaugh got into it on a conference call talking about how Ohio State coaches were coaching when they weren’t allowed to and there were Instagram posts showing it…then Ryan Day told his team that they were going to “hang 100” on Michigan.

Since then, the Ohio State players and coaches have not felt bigger, faster, or stronger…. when Michigan has punched them in the chest, they’ve blinked. In 2021, after getting their face beat in***, Ohio State’s Quarterback threw out excuses, like, well we had the flu… fans nothing that well, it was snowing. This season, Ohio State was laser focused on Michigan, they fired their defensive staff and brought in a new group with the point of beating Michigan. Then they got punched in the face and responded like punks — cheap shots, fights, unsportsmanlike penalties, a myriad of horrible penalties.

All season, I’ve been texting Ohio State friends comments about the weather on Game day. Is it going to snow? will it be cold and rainy? Of course, the weather was perfect, but a team needing perfect weather conditions to thrive has other issues. That team is soft, easily flustered.

All season, Ohio State looked soft. To quote my 9 year old daughter,

“they just play fancy…all the other teams just watch them play, cause they’re being fancy. Michigan actually plays. They actually work hard and do stuff, while Ohio State can just concentrate on doing fancy things. They know how to dodge, but doing fancy and that’s all they practices on. When Michigan plays them, like their fancy stuff, their twinkle toes, will get hurt by those hard cleats! They’ll get smashed.”

All I know is that, on Saturday, I was really proud of the way those young men in maize and blue played on the football field in Columbus, Ohio.

Forever Go Blue

Dan

—
*It got so bad that OSU’s President, Dr. Gordon Gee famously referred to the tie in 1992 as the greatest win in program history.
** The also won the 2010 game but had to vacate the win because Tressel is a cheater. Ohio State didn’t care… they brought in Urban Meyer who was incapable of being an ethical person… even though Ohio State had him teaching an Ethics and Leadership class.
*** And quitting

Baal makes it rain and other misconceptions about the world

The ancient people who lived in the Levant (aka Palestine…. aka the land bridge between Egypt and Mesopotamia that today is the countries of Israel, Lebanon, and Syria) needed regular rain to survive. Egypt and Mesopotamia could rely on regular flooding of the rivers that dominated their landscape, but the Levant did not have a major river flowing through it; it was desert hill country, so they hoped and prayed for rain.

The dominant understanding in those lands was the Baals (loosly translated Lord) ruled. Baal was the storm god (in Greek mythology he would have been Zeus). He was pictured with a lightning bolt in his hand and was understood to be the one who brought the rains to the land. In their thinking, rain was connected to Baal having sex with his lady friend. Obviously, this is a classic example of a pre-scientific thinking about the world, but its how they thought. Thus, if they wanted it to rain, they needed get Baal and his lady friend thinking about getting it on. So you could find prostitutes at the Baal temples (temple prostitutes are actually where we get the concept of being holy. these women were set apart for a special purpose….) and large phallic statues on hill tops. Baal’s sex life was a big deal to their survival, so they were very concerned with it.

Baal made it rain, which is why Elijah’s prophesy in I Kings that it would not rain until he – a prophet for YHWH – said so, would have been so crazy. YHWH was not responsible for the rain, everybody knew Baal was. So when Elijah faces off with 450 Baal prophets on Mt. Carmel, its a challenge to the worldview, who is responsible for the rain: YHWH or Baal? Note what the challenge is, the one who responds with fire from the sky is god. What’s fire from the sky… lightning. Elijah is challenging the Baal — the Thunder god — to provide lightning and rain. When Baal doesn’t respond to his prophets, Elijah starts talking trash, “maybe he’s gone?” …. “maybe he’s taking a nap?” …. “maybe he’s taking a giant dump?” but no fire from the sky.

When YHWH does respond with fire, the people recognized that Baal did not bring the rain, they proclaimed that YHWH was great, turned around and killed the prophets of Baal. Baal was shown to be not who they claimed him to be. The understanding that Baal was responsible for making it rain was not reality.

When we talk about the understanding of the ancient world, we often speak in terms of a superstitious worldview with gods and goddesses doing weird things, but it was the best way that they people understood the world to work. The Bible is speaking into these understanding and showing them to be fraudulent. Calling its readers to see the world in a new light.

Today, we live in a world with understandings that guide how they live. Beliefs that need to be challenged. One belief is that if rich people are prosperous, their wealth will trickle down to the rest of us. Another belief is that the only thing that matters is the pursuit of pleasure. And still another is that the world is miserable, horrible place that is going to hell in a hand-basket and our hope is to one day escape to an eternal paradise. We also see people understand that what’s important is our tribe or our country or our people’s prosperity. All of these are perspectives similar to that of the ancients and their worship of Baal; as Christians we must call out these worldviews to be suspect and fraudulent.

Dare to Be A Daniel: Thoughts on Understanding the book of Daniel pt.1

For me and my journey in understanding the Bible, the book of Daniel — what a great name — was fundamental for shaping the way that I read the text. The book is fascinating for so many reasons… not insignificant is the name of the protagonist.

Daniel tells the story of a young Jewish man who was taken into exile shortly before the fall of Jerusalem. The book is 12 chapters: the 1st: 6 stories…the 2nd: 6 visions. The narratives were written in Hebrew, the visions in Aramaic. It’s written in the 3rd person, the 1st person of Nebuchadnezzar, and the 1st person of Daniel. It’s a very interestingly constructed (and well titled) book!

Just as interesting is the content of the texts because it’s explosive.

The first six chapters tell stories about Daniel and his friends in Babylon. In chapter 1, Daniel refuses to eat meat sacrificed to the Babylonian gods. In the second chapter, Daniel is able to interpret the king’s dream when nobody else – including the king – even knew what the dream was. We find the story of Daniel’s 3 friends refusing to bow before the king’s statue in chapter 3. In chapter 4, Nebuchadnezzar (which i just spelled from memory) goes crazy and lives like a cow for several year, just as Daniel predicted. Daniel is brought in to interpret mysterious writing on the wall that doomed Babylon in chapter 5. Chapter 6 is the story of how Daniel refused to stop praying to Jerusalem, and was thrown into a lion’s den.

In each story, there is a question, “to what should we be faithful: The laws, rules, and rulers of Babylon? or to God?” In their vignettes, Daniel and his friends choose to follow God’s law and succeed. In Nebuchadnezzar’s vignette, he choose poorly and loses his mind. What a fascinating collection of writings…

Think about how explosive these stories would be to people living in an empire which believed that the king or emperor was divine. This is subversive literature working to undermine the myths and narratives of an empire. The Empire – and Emperor – is subservient to God. Thus, we should be faithful to God, not the laws, rules, and rulers here.

This is political literature. This is challenging the way that people think about the world. These are not just cute stories, they’re subversive calls for God’s people to see their primary allegiance to God, not the empire. For Daniel, God’s people are not patriotic flag wavers; instead resident aliens, painfully aware that the claims of empire around them are not true.

There is some question about what century these stories were written. Was Daniel written in the 6th Century BCE, when Babylon took Jerusalem into captivity? Or was it written at a later date (perhaps the 2nd Century BCE) at a time when God’s people were called to give up on their faith in order to fit in? This question is the one that altered my thinking about the Bible as a whole because the difference speaks to the nature of the text as a whole.

Do I think that the texts are primarily historical stories detailing the story of God’s people?

Or

Do I think that the texts are prophetic works written to call people to see the world differently?

I know I don’t need to set those two up in opposition like that, but its helpful to see the different perspective. One perspective leads these to be cute children’s stories, the other creates texts that ask deep things from us. One perspective challenges our worldviews and our loyalties. One perspective can be used to support Christian nationalism, the other can be used to call it out.

It was when I started to explore the thought that the Bible is not just a collection of historical stories written to detail the events of God’s people, instead, these texts were written to subversively call into question the worldviews and predominate myths of that day, the Bible changed for me. It changed the way that I see myself and the church in the world…. I (and we) am not just here to hold unto a particular cultural expression, instead I am have been called to live differently in this world, like Daniel and his friends did. Sometimes that will get me into trouble… but my call is to be faithful to God.

Reflecting on MLK, 54 years later….

April 4, 1968

54 years ago, this week, Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was murdered as he stood in solidarity with the Memphis City Sanitation workers. Lately, people have been using his words and teaching to attack people continuing his fight for equality and justice.

Dr. King did not preach a message of color blindness, instead a society where your race wasn’t a hindrance to your participation in society. He worked to end institutional segregation (aka: Jim Crow laws) that targeted African Americans in the American South. To suggest that MLK taught it’s racist to note color, misses his message. Instead we should understand his message to be that it’s racist to discriminate against someone for their skin color or race.

There have always been prejudices in our society (FWIW – this is not an endorsement of prejudice). Irish, Jewish, Italian, Chinese immigrants (among other ethnicities) were treated poorly upon their arrival to the New World, but none as poorly as the enslaved Africans (they were not immigrants, fwiw) when they were brought here in chains. It was actually the codified prejudices against these slaves in which the concept of white people was originated. These looked down upon peoples may be of a less desirable ethnicity, but at least they’re white and not dark skinned. White people (en mass) agreed that they were better than black people, who should be held back out of proper society. They believed that society should be segregated, black people should be kept separate from white people, and wrote laws to keep it that way. These laws kept the black community secluded and on the outside of opportunity.

The work of Martin Luther King was to work to reconcile this mindset. He taught that people should not be judged and excluded because of their skin color. Everyone of every ethnicity should be included in society. We MUST remember this was not spoken in a vacuum. He worked in a time where black folks were excluded from society, understood to be inferior (including their culture), & persecuted when they stood up for their equality.

This shows the danger of taking words out of context. Kings words were problematic to many people in the 50’s and 60’s because of their context. Today, as we’ve grown – often as a result to his words – there is a chance that we hear these words differently. But we must continue to ground his words and teachings in the contexts that they were originally spoken in. The greatest way we can honor his life and teaching is to work to understand his words, so they can move us.

Thus, honoring his legacy means we must continue to ask ourselves:

Are we ok with people being excluded and being treated as less than equal?

Are we still creating communities where everyone is included?

Are we working to undo laws and codes that pick one group over another?

Are we participating in actively standing against progress, even if our stand finds its footing on the most significant laws in our land?

Will we stand up against injustice? even if it costs us our lives?

I think about Kobe Bryant every day…

I’m a hospital chaplain, death is a part of my everyday experience. You could consider me a professional death expert. Hundreds of times I have walked with families as their loved one has passed away. To say that I am familiar with death would be an understatement.

….which makes it a little odd that I — a professional death expert — find myself thinking about the death of Kobe Bryant every day.

Tragically, Kobe died in a helicopter crash with his daughter on the way to a basketball camp on January 26, 2020. He was one of the greatest basketball players of all time playing for 20 years in the NBA. He won several championships for the Los Angeles Lakers and gold medals in the Olympics for the USA Basketball team.

Not just those accolades, but his #8 Lakers jersey was the first jersey I ever owned. He was just a couple of years older than me and was the biggest basketball star in my coming of age years. Later, he had embraced the role of being a girl dad, constantly being seen in public with his daughters. Whether I knew him or not, there are several layers of connection that I have with this perfect stranger, whom I watched from afar, play basketball. When I learned that he had died, it impacted me in a very strong way.

I was connected to Kobe. I mourned his death, and still do. Whether or not it makes sense to me — or anybody else — does not matter. Grief is not a logical thing, it has some blurry edges to it; edges that we don’t have control over. What losses impact us, aren’t in our control.

Recently, I was talking about someone dying, when somebody added a detail: the person’s parent. Instantly, with that relational connection to the situation — I’m a parent — I felt something inside me react. I had been talking about the situation for several minutes and felt no emotion, but the addition of the parental relationship to the situation cause me to emotionally react.

I’m a professional death expert, dealing with people dying every day, yet thinking about a parent losing their child still created an emotional reaction inside me.

I connect with that.

I relate to that.

I fear that.

Often we feel the need to justify how or why we feel a particular way. As if we control how we feel. As if our feelings are logical or justifiable. When I am with families, I often talk about grief as waves in the ocean: sometimes the waves are at your ankles, sometimes they’re over your head; you never have control over them.. they just happen.

Grief is something that happens. You have no control over it. It’s not something that goes away or gets better with time. You might learn to live more comfortably with it, you might get more used to holding it … but it’s not a linear thing that goes away the farther along you are from the source of your grief. It comes and goes as it pleases.

I’m writing this to say to you, if you’re grieving (as if that’s something optional for humans… perhaps I should have written “as you’re grieving”) someone or something in your life, be gentle with yourself. You do not need to justify or rationalize what you’re feeling or why you’re feeling what you feel.

If you are grieving a loved one, a time in your life that you miss, a failed relationship, your kids getting older, missed opportunities, that your life isn’t what you dreamed it would be, losing your job, or something as insignificant to your life as the death of a basketball player: it’s ok.


Know that it’s okay to feel what you feel. Know you’re not alone. Know that there are people out there who can and will stand with you on the beach as you experience the waves of grief coming up out of the sea.

Grace + Peace,

Dan

Rhythms and Seasons

This could be my kids drawings, this could mean somebody is dying….. I don’t know

One of the craziest superpowers that medical workers have is to look at somebody’s heart rhythm and be able to tell what’s happening with the patient. There are these telemetry screens throughout the hospital; they look indecipherable to me, but the staff can tell when that rhythm is fatal.

It’s crazy our lives are designed to be in rhythm. Sleeping and waking. Eating and fasting. Work and play. We need rhythm to live and thrive. Being in rhythm leads to sustainable practices and health.

You can tell when you’re out of rhythm. It feels exhausting. You can do the same amount of work — or even less — than when you are in rhythm, yet be 10x more exhausted.

I believe that there are times where rhythm isn’t possible, where you need to be out of rhythm because of a circumstance that you cannot control. The danger is when this new out of rhythm becomes a permanent rhythm. We can be out of rhythm, but only for a season. A season is a time period that has a beginning and an end. A season does not go on indefinitely, it ends. We can do things that are unsustainable, as long as we know that this too shall end.

One of the hard parts of this pandemic — and why so many people have just given up caring about it — is that it feels like there is no end in sight. It stopped feeling like something we’ll get through and more like something we’re just going to have to live with. People have gone back to a normal rhythm because they couldn’t withstand the pandemic season anymore. The consequences of ignoring COVID are outweighed by the consequences of their out of rhythm lifestyle.

I think this is a lesson for us all. How are we staying in rhythm? What are you doing to find balance and sustainability in your life?

Here’s what I’m working on to keep my rhythm:

1. Say No: I’ve found that the only way to keep a healthy rhythm is to learn to say no to things. In our world, there is so much out there. Saying no to things gives you the freedom to say yes to things you want to say yes to. If you like to get up early and run, you’re going to have to say no to staying up late. It’s not sustainable to do both.
2. Keep a regular schedule: I try to go to sleep at the same time, wake up at the same time, and eat at the same time. This isn’t always possible, and for me, my schedule being off is the biggest sign that I’m off rhythm…
3. Sabbath: Monday mornings are my sabbath. I don’t do work for the hospital or the church on Mondays. I read, relax, sometimes I’ll nap, I play with my dog, read, write, or surf Youtube for interesting things to study. (I’m writing this on Monday morning)
4. Balance friendship energy: This is the hardest thing I’ve found to work on. We all love family and friends, but I think it’s important to balance the interest others show you. If somebody constantly doesn’t respond to your texts or calls, then why are you continually trying to text and call them? Now we all have a friend who is bad at calling/texting [Here’s looking at you, Mr. Delong….] That doesn’t mean they don’t value my friendship… they just suck at communicating.
5. Curate my interests: I love sports, I realized in college that I was paying attention to EVERY sport and that was taking up so much of my time. So I made a decision to only pay attention to a few sports and mostly ignore the rest. I only pay attention to a few sports now and rarely watch games that don’t involve my teams… so I mostly watch Michigan, Chelsea FC, and NBA games. I try to do this in all the things in my life. This leads me to my next point….
6. Only include things that bring me joy: I have no problem saying no to things that don’t bring me joy. If one of my favorite teams isn’t playing well, I don’t watch them. I listen to a lot of music, but I don’t really listen to the radio. Instead, I have playlists of music that I like, that brings me joy. I don’t want to waste my time listening to music that I find annoying.
7. Identify Seasons: When I am in a season, identify that I am in a season and work to find when that season will end. Giving yourself an end date will help you find a way to manage the stress of that season.

How are you working to find your rhythm?

Things I Don’t Say to People In the Hospital.

A large portion of my job at the hospital is responding when people die. Its my job in these situations to provide emotional and spiritual support to the people involved, whether patients, families, and staff.

Sometimes we are involved with the patient throughout their time at the hospital, responding when they come to the hospital, being there as the family decides to move towards comfort measures/hospice care, vent withdrawals, and providing prayer as the family is around the bedside.

Other times, we are only involved with the family after their loved one has passed.

Sometimes people are emotional and frantic, sometimes they’re not. Sometimes they’re in shock and need to leave the hospital, sometimes they just want to sit with their loved one for a little bit longer. Sometimes they want to talk, sometimes they want nothing to do with us.

In providing emotional and spiritual support, we often help people process their experience. I don’t have a formula of what I say to people in processing, I think we all respond differently to trauma and tragedy, often I find the fewer words I use, the better. But there are things that I just flat out don’t say; I have a list of 5 things that I don’t say to people who have just lost a loved one.

[This is my list of things that I avoid saying, I am not looking to call anybody out if you’ve said these things or believe these things. This is just my list.]

You’ll be ok.
I find this one to be problematic, because they have just lost somebody they loved, forever. To suggest that its ok or they’ll be ok, is to diminish the trauma that they’re in. Their person is dead, they’re not ok. Grief is not something we get around, its something you live with, which means for the rest of their lives, they’ll be carrying this loss around with them. Suggesting that they’ll be ok, is underestimating how big of an event that they’re experiencing.

So I just don’t tell people, “You’ll be ok.”

Its God’s plan.
I’ll be honest, I hear this one almost every day and its one of the sentences that makes me the most annoyed. I hear somebody tell their loved one, “(The death of your loved one) is God’s plan” and I think, “God’s plan was to kill their child? their mother? Their spouse?” Why would I want to follow, serve, or love a God who planned the deaths of people? How can we call God good if God is responsible for the tragic and untimely deaths of people? It grates against my ears.

I get why we say it, its a euphemism for saying that things are out of our control, there’s nothing we can do about tragic things. Yet, in saying it, we block out what I think God is actually wanting to do in our lives: provide comfort and support and strength for people walking through loss. It also misses the fact that the tragic situations that we walk through, upset and anger God just as much as they do us.

So I just don’t tell people, “Its God’s plan.”

Here’s how you should feel
Often, people providing support to those going through loss, try to coach people through their feelings. They give suggestions of feelings that should be felt. They set benchmarks and expectations for how people should feel. I stay out of that business.

Everybody processes things differently. Some people are dead inside and others are emotional. Some people have walked the road of grief, some have expected their loved ones loss, others emotional and in shock. I don’t want anybody to have an expected feeling that they should feel. I often tell people to remove the should from their vocabulary, what you feel is ok. You don’t need to feel bad for how you feel, because your feelings are not things you can control, they’re your natural response to those situations.

So I just don’t tell people how they should feel.

God just needed another angel
I hear this one frequently, God need another angel. This is often said in tandem with comments about God’s plan. When I hear it, I often think, “Well, why’d God need that person to be an angel? Why not somebody else?” The suggestion that God decided it was time for “my” person to be taken away doesn’t seem to align with a God who loves us. I don’t think God needs anybody, let along my closest loved ones. And if they were needed to be an angel, perhaps God could have waited a few decades
I think again, this seems to be a comment which is looking to provide a grief support for people, that doesn’t actually provide comfort. Instead, it seems to be an empty attempt to compliment that person who just passed — they’re good enough to be an angel — but leaves us questioning how that decision making could be made by a loving God.

So I just don’t tel people that God needed their loved one to be an angel.

I know what you’re going through.
I don’t know what you’re going through. My life and my situation is different than yours. Even if we go through similar experiences, I don’t think I can truly know what anybody else is going through. Even if I did have the exact same experience, this statement doesn’t necessarily provide support. This is what we’re attempting to do for people going through loss, we’re looking to provide support and comfort and care.

So I just don’t say, “I know what you’re going through.”

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I wonder, have you ever been in a situation and said something, you thought would be helpful, but it turned out to not be helpful? Are there things that you just don’t say to people going through loss?