I was getting all the girls in bed (Starman is in Geneva, yes, Switzerland this week) when I found out that a parishioner I visited a couple of times in the hospital, whom I fully expected would go home just fine, had died. This is the second visit I have made to someone in the past four weeks who has died. And I just started doing visits five weeks ago. It hurts, although I barely knew her. It just hurts to know that those she cares about are grieving, and that someone I prayed with, someone I prayed for, is no longer here.
WisePastor just wrote "Part of the problem with being a "parson" (ME person) is that you work with your heart, and it gets broken over and over again" Ouch.
I am feeling rather raw tonight anyway, with Starman gone, and having to take care of three girls and a dog and two cats all by myself, and, well, just life - figuring out what it really means to take on this mantle of pastor, to be God's representative in the world (that seems too presumptuous anyway!). I need a big hug, but I will have to settle for three little ones - I guess that isn't that bad. My heart is broken, but that means it is also open, open I hope to hear what God has to say to me through all of this.
6 comments:
All I can offer is a cyber hug. (((mumpastor)))
I'll never forget how sad I felt after the first death of a parishioner I had come to love. Bless you.
agreed on the constant broken heartedness....sigh, and (((mumpastor))). I still cry over the loss of my first parishioner. And I remember thinking: "how do we go on losing people we love, over and over?"
My parish is having its fourth funeral in four weeks...this one for a major matriarch. I'm not sure how we go on, but I'm glad we do.
You're in my prayers tonight.
Hugs from here also.
A big thank you to all who wrote - it is so helpful to know I am not alone in this feeling or this calling. Blessings to you all!
So sorry to hear of your sadness - and loneliness. I, too, am discovering in my first year as a pastor that pastoral care is becoming not easier with practice but more difficult.
There is a beautiful woman in our congregation that is dying and I am just not sure how I am going to get through her funeral.
I am doing my best to trust God more and more to give me what we need, for it is he that will mend our broken hearts back together again and again.
Blessings,
Bethany
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