I stood there beside my husband in the strange silence of the Neo-Natal Intensive Care Unit (NICU). I was staring at the gray-white tile floor and the brown, black, and cranberry Merrell hiking boots on my feet. Interiorly, I felt undone. My own grief was threatening to spill over onto my cheeks as we stood, waiting to speak with a young couple who were standing beneath the Cross on the other side of the room.
My husband and I decided a few months ago that we should serve in hospital ministry together. It became difficult for me to continue in hospital ministry on my own on Wednesdays due to chronic health issues and the needs of my primary vocation. We decided that I would join him as his intercessor, to answer thorny theological questions, and to minister in any way I am called on the Sundays he is assigned. He would serve as the lead in our ministry together.
Our first Sunday serving together proved to be the most difficult I have faced. I have encountered many suffering people, most of whom are far from Christ and His Church, but the brokenness this time was everything I read about being opened in front of me in real people’s lives. As the nearly 4.5 hours of pastoral ministry progressed—the longest either of us had ever spent in one hospital visit—the Lord took me into the depths of my own powerlessness in the face of so much suffering, darkness, and spiritual blindness.
One woman threw us out of her hospital room; another refused prayer; one was so blinded by political ideology that all we could do was talk past each other no matter how much we tried to focus on Christ. We encountered language barriers and people utterly exhausted from years of agonized suffering. For the first time in years of hospital ministry, after visiting 8 people, we did not give out a single consecrated host in Holy Communion because none of the people we visited were practicing Catholics—despite being registered as Catholic (which is extremely common today).
The ninth person we visited was a pre-mature baby. This is the reality on the ground, and the sooner the Church understands this, the sooner we can get back to the business of evangelizing and saving souls.
The way my husband and I serve is deeply difficult. It means encountering people who want nothing to do with us, people who carry deep wounds from the Church or from the messes they have made in their lives. It means entering their hostility, afflictions, and woundedness by engaging them for more than 30 seconds. It requires hours at a time.
This type of ministry requires a willingness to go into places where we are utterly powerless to help people. They need Christ, and we are His witnesses pointing the way home. We can’t fix it. Only Christ can. He sends us into the crosses in people’s lives, so that He can invite them to freedom and redemption. We must be willing to go into painful, messy, and dark places.
It is this very place that the Lord led me to as I stood there in the NICU with my husband after visiting 8 patients who needed us to plant seeds in various types of soil. We planted seeds by praying with those who allowed us to, giving resources, words of encouragement, and even gentle admonishment when necessary. More than anything, we were there to issue an invitation to return to Him. He does not force. He invites. All we can do is the same. The Holy Spirit will sprout, nurture, and grow the seeds He wills.
After ministering for hours, I could feel the swelling of my own grief, loss, and pain welling up inside of me standing in the NICU. We stood there silently waiting for 30 minutes while the doctor met with the parents we needed to speak to. There was a moment when I almost ran. For a split second, I wanted to turn to my husband and say that he should take this one. It was too much for me. The Lord let the weight of my own grief weigh heavy in my heart while I stood there. He let those broken places within me open and well to the surface. I felt powerless. I did not know what to say to these grieving and sorely afflicted parents.
The Lord placed my husband and me there at that moment for His Divine Plan. He sent two parents who knew the grief of loss. Two parents who spent 11 years dealing with the repeated loss and agony of losing child after child. The Lord chose us because our own broken hearts were exactly what He needed to reach out to their broken hearts. It was the torrent of tears I was holding back and the inward bleeding I felt within my heart that would allow me to approach them with gentleness, hope, and understanding. I had to surrender my powerlessness to Him because there were no perfect words that I could ever come up with to say to them. I had to walk into the situation completely powerless and let Him, along with Our Blessed Mother and St. Joseph, take over.
The nurse finally walked over to us and told us the couple was ready for us. He had prepared them for our visit. We walked over to the curtained nook where two young parents sat with their tiny daughter in the blue glow of an incubator. They looked utterly shell-shocked. I knew that look well.
My husband introduced us and asked them a few preliminary questions. The father shared that they had had twins, but one of the baby girls died the day before. Their other baby girl was fighting for her life at 26 weeks old. My husband then moved towards the father and started to talk to him while I turned to the mother and began to speak to her. It was all orchestrated by the Holy Spirit. We never spoke a word to each other and kept our attention fixed on the couple and the baby the entire time.
I handed the stunned mother a rosary and told her that Our Blessed Mother was close to her. That She knows the grief of losing a child more than anyone. I then did the most important thing I could do. I listened to her story. The death of their other daughter had been sudden. They had to race back to the NICU after taking a break in order to be there in her final moments. They were able to hold their tiny daughter as she breathed her last breaths on this earth. She was worried that the baby wasn’t baptized before she died (a grief I also had carried for years), but I was able to speak words of hope to her from what I had learned of God’s mercy.
I shared how our daughter was a twin too and how painful it had been to lose her. I told her that their family now has an intercessor in heaven waiting for her twin sister and her parents to come home. I could not hold back the tears that welled up in my eyes, so I let a few fall for this mother who could not yet shed tears for the baby girl she’d lost.
We then explained to the couple that their baby girl needed emergency baptism and that we would get them a priest as soon as possible. As soon as my husband spoke to the priest, he took off immediately to minister to this grieving, wounded family. The Lord is close to the broken-hearted. He wanted them to know that He was there in their hour of loss and need. This was made possible because we said yes to His call to enter our own powerlessness and grief in order to move outwards in charity towards their suffering.
Afterwards, I went to see my spiritual mother. I needed to shed those tears that had been welling up. She and I knelt on the hardwood floor of her living room and prayed the Divine Mercy Chaplet during the 3 o’clock hour for this family, all those we had ministered to that day, and the priests who minister to the suffering. During that prayer, the Lord reminded me where He needs me to be. He reminded me why there has been so much suffering in my life and why I cannot flee from the difficulties He allows. My place is beneath the Cross.
The Lord cannot use the proud, the strong, and those who have not suffered to minister well to the broken-hearted. He needs people who know they are powerless to save in the face of immense suffering—people who are willing to let God work through their interior poverty. It is precisely because I have suffered immensely that I am able to walk into cross-filled rooms. It is because I know the grief of loss, the agony of a seriously ill spouse, the frustrations of chronic illness, and the pain of rejection, betrayal, and abandonment that the Lord can send me into dark places.
I have fought against this path every step of the way. I often wonder why my family and I are not given many breaks. Why we don’t have the good things that others do, but that is the enemy trying to turn me away from Christ and His mission for me. The suffering are my people. The lost are my people. They are my spiritual children and my treasure. This is because they are Christ’s beloved people.
The Lord came for the broken. To be with Him is to be with the suffering. To be powerless is to be strong in Him. Don’t waste your suffering. The Lord wants to use it to unleash His love in the souls of the lost and afflicted.
Photo by Christian Bowen on Unsplash
