While in the pub this afternoon (I know, this student life is so hard) my friend and I started talking about pastoral care. Well, actually, it began about smoking and sort of developed from there.
I hate smoking. Hate may be a strong word, but that is how I feel. I really vociferous detain of smoking. Not helped by the fact, by non-smoking Great Uncle died of lung cancer, caused due to passive smoking. During the 6 months he took to die I was not allowed to visit him. In retrospect, I'm glad, but it was very difficult at the time, as I was very close to him.
So, as my friend and I were talking, I mentioned how I would struggle with pastoral care where a life-long smoker was suffering from lung cancer. If fact, I would struggle no matter what was wrong if they were smoking while I was there. And then I started talking about my Mum (there is a connection, honest!).
My Mum probably dislikes smoking more than I do, but she had to watch her Uncle die and have every breath snatched from him. Yet, in her work as a care worker, she has had to help the people she works with smoke. She has been able to set aside her issues with smoking to meet the care needs of those people and treat them with the dignity and respect they deserve.
So that is what I have to learn. To set my own feelings aside and be with a person where they are and where they need me to walk with them, as Christ would. I'm not saying it'll be easy, but I must do this. Smoking is an example of struggles, but there are many, many more I will have to deal with and they, no doubt, will be much more challenging.
Several years back was chatting with a wise mentor and friend about pastoral care 'stuff'. The conversation had come up in connection with a proposed visit with several elderly women at various stages of living with dementia. I was wondering how that might trigger off stuff for me, as my beloved Gran ended up with a form of dementia... and also had lung cancer. Uncomplaining all her life, she was in utter agony and about every 20 or so minutes would ask me why she was in so much pain... and so I would quietly tell her again about the cancer that was killing her... and then she would forget... and so it went on.
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And so I wondered if the proposed visit with the 3 women at various stages of dementia would trigger stuff for me re. grief etc... would, if you like, make me feel uncomfortable.
My wise friend looked at me very kindly and noted the following:
what makes us think that we have the right to be 'comfortable' when visiting folk in their own places of discomfort?
Kinda helped me get my own perspective/ way to cope re. the process.
And... when I did go visit, I was so immersed in lives of the people I was visiting, that it didn't even come up.
Funny old world, eh?
Mind, it's after a visit when you have to come home and throw your clothes in the washing machine and yourself in the shower that's a bit of a pain.... Small price tho.
Yeah, it's not about me being comfortable, but managing to set aside my own issues to be where people are. I suppose I have done it before, when I worked in the care sector and that has trained me for where I need to go. Besides, if my Mum can do it, so can I.
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