Visiting you when you are hospitalized is a primary concern for your pastors. The only things given a higher priority are funerals and member emergencies. However, government intrusion and HMO policies have made our job difficult. We used to go each week to Yale - New Haven Hospital, the Hospital of St. Raphael and Middlesex Memorial Hospital and check the patient registry to see if any of our church members were there. We always discovered one or more. HIPPA privacy regulations have made this practice illegal. There is no way for us to know if you are hospitalized unless we are told. Furthermore, rare is the patient who stays for more than a day or two. To catch someone in the hospital we need to know right away and in advance is even better.
Therefore, we need your help to do good pastoral care. When you check into the hospital you will be asked if you are a member of a particular church. If you want to be visited by Susan or me, please indicate that you belong to First Church Guilford and ask the department of religious ministries to contact us. If it is a planned admission, please call us and let us know. If it has been an emergency please have a family member or friend call us. We do want to be with you in your time of need. Also, if you know of someone going into the hospital that we should know about please don’t hesitate to call us. We would rather be told twenty times, than let someone fall through the cracks out of our lack of knowledge.
We want you to be aware that many members of First Church are attending physicians, professors of medicine and nurses at the area hospitals. They are also glad to visit, to answer your questions or work as a liaison for you. Pre or post admission their medical knowledge and faith can be a wonderful resource. Susan and I can make these contacts for you.
Consider bringing a Bible with you. Such readings as the 23rd or 139th Psalm and the assurances of Jesus found throughout the Gospels can be sustaining. Meditation, prayer and reading scripture reduce our anxiety and center us in God’s love. Finally, each one of our area hospitals has a chaplains program. Chaplains are available 24 hours a day seven days a week. Just let your nurse know and a chaplain will be by for whatever you need—a casual chat or an earnest faith discussion. And, of course, Susan and I are eager to do the same.
I leave you with this prayer of Theodore Parker Ferris that may be helpful during those dark nights of the soul:
Cleanse thou me, O God, from my secret fears. Help me to search them out and know them. But they are buried too deep for me; I cannot reach them. Thou alone canst touch them and take them away. As the wind ceased when thou didn’t step into the boat beside thy friends who were afraid, come now and calm the troubled waters of my life. And if this be not thy will, and if my fears cannot be taken away, help me take them quietly, and in them find a deeper faith. Amen.
In Christ’s love,
Kendrick
|
