#BlessedAreTheCrazy: No Longer Protecting Secrets

On October 7, 2014December 1, 2014 By Stacy N. SergentIn Depression, Love for Neighbor and Self19 Comments

This is Mental Illness Awareness Week, and I’m proud to be participating in this synchroblog to celebrate the launch of Sarah Lund’s new book, Blessed Are the Crazy: Breaking the Silence About Mental Illness, Family, and Church. I come from a family in which mental illness — especially depression and anxiety disorders — and addiction have had a huge impact. As a little girl, I remember the great lengths my family went to in order to protect the secret that my mother had been hospitalized for depression. I felt the shame of it, even before I understood what it meant. I was afraid other kids at school would laugh at us if they knew, and any time a group on the playground was whispering, I was sure it was about me and my family. Continue reading “#BlessedAreTheCrazy: No Longer Protecting Secrets” →

E is for Emergency Room

On September 30, 2014December 1, 2014 By Stacy N. SergentIn ABCs of Hospital Chaplaincy, ChaplaincyLeave a comment

(This is the fifth in the series ABCs of Hospital Chaplaincy.)

It is the beating heart of the hospital. It’s also the only place I’ve ever seen a human heart beating (or struggling to beat) inside someone’s chest, up close and personal. I never know quite what I’m walking into when I get a call to the ER. Chaplains are part of the trauma team, automatically paged in the event of a trauma call. (More on that when we get to the letter T.) But there are many other reasons we get requests to come to the emergency room. It’s one of the units where I spend the most time. My closest friends on staff at the hospital are those who work the ER. (Incidentally, it is more appropriately called the emergency department, since it comprises many rooms. But thanks to those pharmaceutical commercials, when I hear ED I can only think of erectile dysfunction, so it remains the ER for me.)

Here, it’s all about crisis. Almost nobody wakes up in the morning planning on being in the ER later that day. The things that bring people here are sudden and surprising. Continue reading “E is for Emergency Room” →

D is for Death

On September 17, 2014September 17, 2014 By Stacy N. SergentIn ABCs of Hospital Chaplaincy, Chaplaincy, Grief11 Comments

(This is the fourth in my series, ABCs of Hospital Chaplaincy. Read other posts in the series here.)

“He then greeted Death as an old friend and went with him gladly, departing this life as equals.”

Sometimes I forget how different my perspective is from that of most “normal” people. Then my roommate asks me, “How was work last night?” I reply, “Not too bad. Just two deaths and a trauma.” She laughs and I look at her quizzically. “Sorry,” she says, “but you’re the only person I know who would call two deaths in one shift ‘not too bad.’ Your job is so weird.” I guess she has a point. Working in a hospital, encountering death on such a routine basis, is more than a little weird. Continue reading “D is for Death” →

ABCs of Hospital Chaplaincy: C is for Charting

On September 9, 2014December 1, 2014 By Stacy N. SergentIn ABCs of Hospital Chaplaincy, Chaplaincy2 Comments

When I began my first unit of CPE, way back in 2006, I remember the awesome sense of responsibility I had each time I got to document one of my patient visits. I can’t believe we get to write in the patients’ charts, I thought, just like doctors do! Over the next several years and hundreds, maybe thousands of visits, charting became much less exciting. It was part of the routine, something to check off the list of tasks that must be done. “If you didn’t chart it, it didn’t happen,” my CPE supervisor told us. So I charted my visits, over and over and over again. Every job involves paperwork, I suppose, and this is ours. (And yes, when I started out, most of the charting we did was still on paper, writing with an actual pen on a form in a binder. It’s all electronic now.) Continue reading “ABCs of Hospital Chaplaincy: C is for Charting” →

ABCs of Hospital Chaplaincy: B is for Bible

On September 5, 2014December 1, 2014 By Stacy N. SergentIn ABCs of Hospital Chaplaincy, Chaplaincy6 Comments

I’m sure it’s not true everywhere, but since the hospital where I work is located pretty securely in the Bible Belt, we chaplains get a lot of requests to bring Bibles to patients. Our office also contains copies of other sacred texts — the Quran, the Book of Mormon, the Torah, and more — but rarely do we get a request for one of those. Instead, we regularly get calls from nurses whose patients say they left their Bibles at home when they were hospitalized and would like to borrow one. We have a steady supply of Gideon Bibles, so it’s okay that we almost never get them back. One patient told me not long ago, “I just can’t fall asleep without reading God’s word!” I wondered which parts she wasn’t reading, since I have found a lot in there over the years that would keep me awake nights. Continue reading “ABCs of Hospital Chaplaincy: B is for Bible” →

Hope Is Stupid

On August 23, 2014December 1, 2014 By Stacy N. SergentIn Depression, Prayer, Suffering15 Comments

I’ve always considered myself something of an optimist. But lately, it sure is hard to stay one. The other night, I had a very emotional conversation with my roommate, and she told me, “You can’t give up hope.” I blurted out, “But hope is stupid! You just keep wasting time hoping for things that never happen and then you feel like an idiot, and all the realists get to say they told you so.” I was, admittedly, in a pretty bad place, in the midst of all the terrible news in the world and a big disappointment in my personal life. Sometimes I just want to be miserable for a while and not have anyone try to talk me out of it. Continue reading “Hope Is Stupid” →

When Game of Thrones Came to Sunday School

On July 2, 2014December 1, 2014 By Stacy N. SergentIn Prayer1 Comment

This was the second week of the Sunday School class I am teaching on Anne Lamott‘s book, Help, Thanks, Wow: The Three Essential Prayers. This week we finished discussing the “Help” chapter, and things got really interesting. Lamott writes about her past experiences of prayer, even as far back as her childhood, and in class we talked about our own prayer histories. One thing I love about the author is her honesty; she doesn’t sugar-coat the hard stuff. She admits that it is sometimes very difficult to connect in prayer with a God who is so mysterious, whom we can’t see or touch and whose descriptions in the Bible can be both comforting and troubling. That’s why, she says, God gave us imagination. It can sometimes lead us astray, but it can bring us closer to God, too, and she writes about how we can know the difference: Continue reading “When Game of Thrones Came to Sunday School” →

More Illustration Than I Wanted

On June 23, 2014December 1, 2014 By Stacy N. SergentIn Gratitude, Peace1 Comment

Today I began teaching a Sunday School class on Anne Lamott’s book, Help, Thanks, Wow: The Three Essential Prayers. My pastor, Don Flowers, asked me if I would do a six-week course to go along with a summer sermon series he wanted to do on the psalms. Having liked the book (and heard the author speak about it when it was first released), I agreed without hesitation. Last night I spent some time going over the introduction and Help chapter one more time, making notes and preparing, before I walked my dog and went to bed early. I am housesitting and cat-sitting for some friends of mine, and knew that it would probably take me longer to fall asleep in a bed not my own. But I was exhausted, and drifted off quickly. A couple of hours later, Hurley, my dog, woke me up to let him out to “go potty.” This is unusual for him, especially since he had just gone before bedtime, but I obliged. Continue reading “More Illustration Than I Wanted” →

Up In the Air

On June 16, 2014December 1, 2014 By Stacy N. SergentIn Chaplaincy, Depression, Grief, Love for Neighbor and Self, Peace, Suffering2 Comments

I’m typing this at 30,000 feet. Actually, that’s a guess; I’m not sure what our cruising altitude is. But anyway, I’m on an airplane somewhere between Charlotte, NC and Boston, MA. Since I have a window seat, I’ve been passing my time peering out at winding rivers and geometrically plotted parcels of land and cars the size of ants making their way to somewhere important. The rest of the time, I’ve been reading Pastrix: The Cranky, Beautiful Faith of a Sinner and Saint by Nadia Bolz-Weber. A Lutheran pastor with an irreverent wit and punch-in-the-gut honesty, Nadia makes for a great traveling companion. She is just what I need, as I look down on the world and think, inevitably, about God. Continue reading “Up In the Air” →

Living Up to My Name

On April 21, 2014December 1, 2014 By Stacy N. SergentIn Holidays, Love for Neighbor and Self3 Comments

I’ll never forget the day I got called out in my Greek class. My mind had been wandering as the professor went over the vocabulary words on the white board, and I thought he had caught me when I heard him say my name. “Stacy! Did you know,” he asked, “that your name is the diminutive form of Anastasia? And that name comes from anastasis. So the root of your name is -” He tapped the board where the Greek word was written, and I read the English translation next to it. “Resurrection,” I said in wonder. No, I definitely had not known that that’s what my name means. I’m certain my parents didn’t know either when they chose the name. But all these years later, I’d like to think it fits. Continue reading “Living Up to My Name” →