Following Jesus in Nursing

Welcome to Following Jesus in Nursing, a podcast for nurses and students produced by InterVarsity's Nurses Christian Fellowship. I'm your host, Lara Kay Kaiser, Together, we'll be inspired by our guests' stories, tackle big questions with experts in the field, and walk together in following Jesus at the intersection of faith and nursing.

And so when I thought about being organically prepared for spiritual care, it's like when spiritual care is this natural living harmonious whole part of how we see our nursing and how we see our care and how we do our nursing.

Hey y'all welcome back. This season we're taking a deeper dive into spiritual care. Last episode Kathy gave a great introduction to spiritual care, what it is, and why we think it's so important. I'd encourage you to give that episode a listen if you haven't already. But today we are going to zoom in on preparing for spiritual care.

As nurses, you put a lot into preparing well to give excellent patient care. I have the privilege of working with Nurses Christian Fellowship's student ministry and I see how hard you students work and study and strive to be ready when the time comes to care well for patients. In the same way, we need to be well prepared to provide spiritual care. So our season guest, Kathy, has some wonderful insights on how to do this and do it in a way that's also life giving and refreshing for you as the caregiver. So let's jump into my conversation with Kathy.

Well, welcome back, Kathy. Good morning.

Good morning. Good to be here.

Well, we are kicking off our season on spiritual care with our first subtopic. So today, we've got organically preparing for spiritual care. So we're gonna break that down a little bit. So why don't we start with the word organically? This was a word you'd come up with, Kathy, and I wanna hear a little bit more about what we mean by organically preparing specifically and just how that word came to mind for you.

Yeah. Well, I think this is a great place to start and thinking about spiritual care because kind of at the center of it, it's a beginning, it's at the heart of it. So when you go to the grocery store, you see this is organic and we think of food that's prepared with only natural means. So, you know, there's no chemicals or pesticides or fertilizers. It's sort of prepared in a natural manner. The word actually means relating to or deriving from living matter.

And it kind of denotes the sense of everything fitting together harmoniously as parts of a whole. It's kind of a natural, alive living sort of thing. And so when I thought about being organically prepared for spiritual care, it's like when spiritual care is this natural, living, harmonious whole part of how we see our nursing and how we see our care and how we do our nursing. So it's organic. It's just a natural part and it's not artificial.

There's no chemicals or pesticides added. It's just a part because we're prepared. It's the sense of recognizing that nursing is about promoting, maintaining, restoring health. And so healing is not just a physical process, but it's a spiritual process that whether we recognize it or not, that spirituality permeates every aspect of our nursing and every encounter with those that we care for. And so when we are deeply aware of our spiritual nature, when it's organically a part of how we see ourselves and our work, in our patients, our coworkers, and it's this whole holistic, organic biopsychosocial spiritual being of care.

Yeah. That makes a lot of sense. And that makes me think about plants and how they just naturally grow. Like if you plant a seed, it unfolds and of course that's going to become whatever that seed is, a tree or whatever it might be. If it's an apple tree, it produces apples eventually.

And we don't have to make like, it doesn't have to try really hard or, you know, go get fruit from somewhere and stick it on its branches. Just it unfolds that way because that's what it is.

So if we're organically prepared, then it does unfold. And that'll come out more, I think, as we talk.

Yeah. I love that. Well, let's get into the next word then: preparation. So what all is involved in preparation for spiritual care?

When you look at nursing literature, you know, we think about understanding the spirit and studying. We think about a familiarity with spiritual assessment. What are spiritual interventions? And so it's this idea that you have studied it and you know it and you're doing it. And I 100% agree with that.

There are many spiritual assessment tools. I found over a dozen researched tools that have been published on, that can offer anything from a simple basic spiritual assessment to a full, robust evaluation of someone's spirituality. Basically, we're looking at their spiritual needs and their sources of spiritual help like hope, meaning, love, relationships, what are their beliefs and spiritual practices? And we're going to talk about those things in later podcasts. But, you know, we think about if I study spiritual care, if I study spirituality and I think that's critical. I think we need to grow professionally in our knowledge, and what is being researched and what we understand.

But I want to back up from that, as far as I think what's really at the heart of spiritual preparation, of this organic preparation and spiritual care is being spiritually alive as a nurse so that spiritual care begins with being spiritually alive, and having an awareness of your spiritual self. Are you taking care of your own spirit? Are you nurturing yourself? Do you recognize that you are a spiritual being? What are you doing to nurture your spirit, like friendships, relationships, what's taking away from, you know, hurting you or what's helping you and what are you doing as far as working on that? Are you doing things that rejuvenate you? You know, are you out in nature? Are you doing what you love? For me, at this point in life, I love exercising. So I go to the YMCA every day.

And that really rejuvenates me and I exercise with people that have become really close friends. And we talk about everything. So what are we doing to nurture our spirit? How are we dealing with things that are troublesome in our life as Christians and all religions, all worldviews recognize that and research has continually supported this, that there's something in us that reaches for the sacred, that's been called the sacred source, the higher power, God, we know as God. And as Christian nurses, we're aware that before we knew Jesus personally, that we were spiritually dead, and that because of his great love for us, God made us alive in Christ, before we even knew him.

And so, are you spiritually alive in Christ? How alive or how living is your relationship with God? How are doing with Jesus? Are you spending time with God in prayer and worship of him, in Bible study? That's, you know, people say, well, how do I know God?

How do I hear what God wants me to do? Well, the Bible is literally God's word. It's a message from God to you. What are you doing with that? Are you in fellowship with other followers of Jesus?

Are you part of a community? And how are you participating in that community? And so this organic preparation, I think at its heart, if we think about being spiritually alive, we are spiritually alive in Christ and we are in this organic, growing, natural living relationship. You know, Jesus talked about abiding in the vine. Well, if that isn't a great picture of going to the grocery store and getting organic food.

You know, when you want food that was grown on the vine. I love to get vine-ripened tomatoes, or even the tomatoes that they still have them on the vine because they smell so good. They're richer than the tomatoes that were taken off too early, and they're half dead, you know, they don't taste like anything. So organic tomatoes, you know, am I in the vine? Am I abiding in the vine? Is the richness of the fruit coming out of my life? Because I'm in this living relationship with Jesus Christ. I'm taking care of my spirituality and my relationship with God.

I love that question. Are you spiritually alive? That is a really good question to reflect on. So let's unpack that a little bit more. How does our own spiritual well-being impact patient care?

We can go to work and we can do our work. But if our spirit is in shambles, it really makes it harder to offer myself spiritually, because it's like, I'm on low, low fuel. I can't go very fast, or I can't, you know, I need to attend to my own spirit. And so I would just say, again, keeping that relationship with God fresh. And if you're struggling with that, just just talk to him.

Prayer is just talking to God, telling him how you feel, share your frustrations. If you need to lament, lament, and then seek a way to refresh in that relationship. Go to church, be with others, read your Bible, and keep relationship with others, as good as you can, as much as it depends on us. So offer forgiveness or talk to people about conflict. That's a whole other discussion on conflict and relationships and things.

But, you know, I think if we're not alive and we don't have the living water, then it's hard for us to offer living water. And for me personally, what revolutionized my life and my caring spiritually. About 30 years ago, I was already a nurse. I was a mommy. I had three little kids and I was trying to be committed and involved in nursing. And I became very aware that I needed to commit to deep dive Bible study, not just, oh, I got up and I read Psalm 23 this morning. Which Psalm 23 is a great psalm. But I needed to get into a fully accountable overview of Scripture and in a community.

So I joined a Bible study and we explored whole books of the Bible and these big chunks of Scripture. And I began to see the bigger story of the Bible. For me, it was Bible Study Fellowship. But there are other options and opportunities: Community Bible Study, Precepts, there can be Bible studies with your church. Intervarsity Press offers Bible study guides. But I think a critical piece of it was, Okay, I'm doing personal Bible study on my own.

But I'm also studying the Bible in community. And for me, that was huge to fuel accountability. You know, if I needed to do my study so that I could be ready for the meeting, but it was also hearing how God was speaking to others. How did they see it? I'm chewing on it. I'm meditating on it. I think that's critical too. It was just this deep dive into Bible study. It really revolutionized my life. I began to see how Scripture applied to my life as a whole. And so I'm reading Scripture and Scripture's reading me.

Scripture is opening up my life and showing me who I am and guiding me and giving me direction. You know, I don't know what you want to add to that, especially about the community piece of it.

Yeah. I think that's so true about accountability, but also what you said. I loved what you said about hearing how other people are applying Scripture to their lives, how they are seeing it. I think we get so much insight when we study Scripture in a diverse setting of folks that just come at it differently because they're in a different stage of life. It makes me think about things that I never would have thought about on my own if I'm just studying it just for myself.

Yeah. And I actually started having these experiences, where talk about the Bible reading your life, I was studying the Old Testament and the life of Moses. And, I was actually in the book of Numbers. And that's where the people of God are wandering, you know, they're headed to the promised land.

And this is just a great story. I was in Numbers 13. And that's where they send 10 spies to go in and explore the land and the spies come back. And most of them say, you know, it's a great land. It's gonna be so fantastic, but there's too many challenges.

There's giants in the land and I don't see how we can do it. And good old Caleb stands up, Caleb and Joshua, and he said, we should do this. God is with us. We can do this. Well, at that exact time that I was studying those passages and Numbers, I was asked out of the blue, to me it was out of the blue, if I would become the editor of the Journal of Christian Nursing. And what was interesting was my first response was, That's too hard. There's too many challenges. There's too much. I don't know what I'm doing. Where would we get the articles? And then how am I going to pull this together? And, it hit me that my response was like the Israelites. You know, there's giants in the land. I can't do this. I can't do this. And the Lord just spoke to me profoundly. I am calling you. This is what I want you to do. I am with you.

And yes, there are huge challenges and there are giants in the land, but this is what I am doing. And it was like the Bible was just reading my life. And I knew, how would I make the decision to become the editor of the Journal of Christian Nursing? How would I do that? And the Lord, just because I was in this deep dive in the Word and I was seeing how God was moving and setting up his people, I knew I was supposed to take this job. That was an amazing application of Scripture. And that's happened to me many times in life, but that's just a great one that applies to this whole idea of deep dive into Bible study and seeing the whole of Scripture and letting the Bible guide your life.

Yeah. Well, and it sounds like you were already reading Numbers, right, that came first and then the invitation to become the editor?

Yes. I was in a deep dive Bible study of the life of Moses. And so I was looking at, and we were in Numbers actually like 11, 12, 13 that week. And I got this email about becoming the editor. So yeah, it looks like at the moment I'm studying this Scripture and I'm in a group. I'm in personal accountability, I'm doing the Bible study. I'm looking at, well, what were the people afraid of? Well, what did the people need to do? How could they respond to differently? Like, I'm asking all these questions in the study and then I go to my group and we're like, yeah, how many times do we, when God's calling us to do something, and we get scared and we don't think we should do it because it's too hard. And then this question comes, will you be the editor of JCN? So that, I mean, that was a whole life.

Studying the Bible has changed my life. It also has changed my spiritual caregiving as a nurse. And as a friend, I'm more aware. I'm more in tune with my own spirituality and myself and with others. And I think, you know, when you're spiritually alive, it's in you and it just comes out of you, guides you. the Word, you know, Hebrews 4 talks about the Word of God is living and it's active and it, you know, it cuts to the quick through joint and marrow and it judges our thoughts and attitudes and actions. And that's so true. When you get into deep Bible study, it's like this light shines and that the Bible is living.

So it's not just this dead thing you're reading on a page, and it actively gets involved in your life and showing you things about yourself and then giving you God's instructions and in helping you see things you can't see without it or you have not seen before.

Yeah. Well, I had asked that because I think it's interesting that you were already in the Word. It wasn't like you got this big invitation, and then you had to scramble and try to figure out, how do I make this decision and then, you know, go to Scripture. And, I mean, we can still do that, of course, when we have a decision to make and, you know, the Bible's a good place to go. But it just struck me in your story that you were already prepared. You were already in Scripture before the question came. And so you were already discerning. You were already building the tools you needed to face that decision with wisdom.

Well, and I think if you're looking at the whole of Scripture and understanding God's working throughout generations, Then when something comes up and you're aren't quite sure, you know where to go in Scripture. Or you know, like you're familiar with the Bible and you could say, gee, didn't Joseph have an experience where he was thrown in a well and he ended up going through all this hardship and didn't, you know, didn't Naomi, her husband died. And I mean, you know these stories and you know about God's faithfulness. Wasn't Daniel taken into captivity and yet he's there in captivity for 80 years and God uses him to change nations? You know, so because you're in the Word, you know the Word, you see the whole of Scripture, then it both informs you as you're living.

Like in my situation, I already had seen that. But then I could have also gone back to Scripture and said, when were there times when people were afraid in the Bible and yet God told them to do something? So I think it goes both ways. I agree. If it's organically a part of you and you're involved in the Word of God, then it happens. You get that guidance.

Yeah. That's a good point. Well, let's, kind of bring it back to what this looks like on the ground as a nurse. So can you tell me about a time when you've seen fruitfulness come out of that spiritual preparation for you in nursing?

Yeah. You know, as I became really committed to spirituality and deep Bible study, I really believe my awareness of God of others around me and my awareness of God wanting to work through me as a nurse and seeing God at work. That was growing, that was growing. And as I thought about doing this podcast, I remembered a situation.

So I was working in behavioral health and at the time we still had eight-hour shifts. Some places still have eight-hour shifts, but I worked 3-11. And we had had a crazy shift. And we're a little understaffed. Wow, geez, that a surprise in nursing. And I was working on the adult psych unit.

And about an hour before the end of the shift, you know, you're trying to wrap things up and get your charting done and check on everything. We got notice that a new admission was coming and a woman was being admitted for a suicide attempt and we knew her age, but we really didn't know much more about it. And so like everybody, you're tired, it's late. I've got kids at home. My husband's waiting on me, you know, I'm thinking, I just want to get out of work on time.

But at that particular time, I had been studying the Gospel of John and the life of Jesus. And the night before his betrayal, the night he was betrayed, Jesus told his disciples, he gave him a new commandment. He said, love one another as I have loved you. And I thought, you know, we all say, well, I love you. But then I thought, how would Jesus love in this situation?

And I thought about how would Jesus respond? And I decided to volunteer to do the admission. And I knew I wouldn't get off work for an hour or two, at least a couple hours late. And I had stuff to do the next day, but I just felt so compelled. Love one another as I have loved you, like go extra.

And so I was trying to love my colleagues. And so this woman came in, and I'm not sure I would have done that if I hadn't been thinking about loving, I'm going be honest, you're tired and you got three kids at home, you can come up with 800 reasons about why you should go and someone else should do the admission, but I volunteered. And so the woman got there and she had breast cancer. She had a double mastectomy and she was undergoing severe, like intense chemotherapy. She'd lost all her hair. So she had been alone at home and was so sad. She went into her garage and she started her car and she was trying to die from carbon monoxide poisoning. And then she began to feel sick. She got frightened and she called her husband And he immediately he comes to rescue her. This was in the evening.

And of course, he took her to the emergency room. So this woman was so sad. And this was such a difficult situation. And I realized that this needed to be a gentle, slow, careful admission, you know, like this isn't end of the shift, got to get home. Okay, let's rush through this, that I needed to just be fully present. I needed to slow down and this woman needed gentleness, she needed care. And so I started doing my physical assessment and, know, we do a full thorough bodily assessment. She began to relax and at first she wouldn't talk, but she started responding to me and I'm trying to touch her gently. And I'm asking her questions about physical issues and things. Well, I discovered that she worked at a church and that she was feeling so terribly ashamed, so ashamed.

And she said, I just, I should never done this. I feel so ashamed. I shouldn't have done this. And then she also talked about that since she had the double mastectomy and was going through all this, that she and her husband felt very estranged from each other, that she was afraid, you know, it was hard for her to talk to him. She felt as a woman totally incomplete now.

And I'm just listening and she's she's facing death. And as I'm talking to her, and I'm trying to be present, this thought came into my head that Jesus knows what it's like to face death. And I thought, that's so true. Jesus faced death in a horrible, physical, cruel way. This woman, her breasts had been cut off. Her hair is gone. She feels awful. And I really felt prompted. Okay, this woman told me she goes to church. She's involved in a church. She knows Scripture and so this was an appropriate situation.

And I said to her very gently, you know, Jesus knows what it's like to face death. He knows. I think he understands what you're feeling. And she just started sobbing. And it wasn't those kinds of sobs where like, she's afraid or she's angry. It was just sort of this gentle surrender kind of sob, like, Oh my gosh, you're right.

You know, and maybe this sense of Jesus unconditionally loving her, that someone else understood what it's like to face death, to be in the immediate facing of death, and to have lost so much and to be in so much pain. So then I just said, could I just ask Jesus to be with you right now? I don't have to, but would you like me to pray? And she nodded her head? Yes.

And so I just said this short prayer. It wasn't anything long and detailed, but I just asked Jesus to be with her right now. And to show her how much he loved her, to be with her in the coming days, for her to know that he was walking beside her and for her to know that he understood what she was going through. And so in all of this, it's getting pretty late, probably after midnight now. And so she felt she had a sense of relief.

Well, I had asked her husband to wait, he had to wait outside in the waiting room. It's a locked unit. So I went to her husband, talked to him, and he's terrified, you know, he didn't know what to do. You know, your wife is going through all this. What do you do? What do you say?

And now she tried to kill herself. So I brought him into the room and I explained the hospitalization process, the visiting hours, you know, different things. And I'll never forget-- he was standing in the corner of the room across from her, but you could just sense the distance between them was like the Grand Canyon. And he keeps his eyes down and she's keeping her eyes down. And this awkwardness was so thick between them.

And I looked at him and I just felt so compelled to help these people connect. And I said, it's okay to hold her. And he just started bobbing like bawling. And he, I said, you can sit on the bed and you can hold her. And so they embraced each other. He sat down and they just grabbed each other full frontal holding. And I knew that was such a sacred moment. I just said, you guys take as long as you need and let me know if you need anything. I left the room. I felt like they needed to just hold each other and cry and do what they needed to do.

And it was probably about 45 minutes later, I told him he could stay as long as he wants. He came out and she had fallen asleep. I will never forget the sense of relief on his face. And he thanked me and here's what I thought about this, you know, by being spiritually prepared, being organically prepared, being ready to sacrifice and stay late. Being ready, I got to be a part of this incredible sacred experience. I got to be part of Jesus telling this woman, I know your pain. I am with you. I want to help you. And I got to be a part of helping this woman and her husband just physically hold each other, emotionally embrace each other. And I'm not sure I would have been ready for that if I hadn't been in the Word, if I hadn't been prepared.

So it changed everything. I think that's part of being organically prepared. That's part of being spiritually alive. That's part of getting to be in those sacred special moments where we get to give extraordinary spiritual care.

Wow. That's really beautiful, Kathy. I'm tearing up over here. Well, on that note, any closing thoughts for today's topic?

You know, we've talked a lot about us doing this, us doing that, you know, being in the Word, deep dive Bible study. And I pray that God will show you and help you understand and figure out how to really engage in his Word. But I'm reminded that spiritual care is a work of God's grace. Grace is a gift from God. It's a spiritual blessing that can be found in Jesus.

You know, like Paul told Timothy, his protege, the Apostle Paul told Timothy in his letters to him, he said, bB strong, be strengthened inwardly in this spiritual blessing, this grace that you find only in Jesus. So I want to say, yeah, we need to be strong and embrace and engage in that grace of Jesus. But when we're in our nursing, when we're caring, like there's two of you working, it's you and it's the Holy Spirit. It's grace. It's God's grace.

You don't earn it. You know, he gives it as an amazing gift to us. And so there's two of us working with the insight, the wisdom, the strength, the power of God, and there's two of you working together. And so I just want to say, receive God's grace and be fueled by him. As you do this work, be empowered by grace. Grace isn't one of the ABCs of following Jesus. Okay, I do this. I gotta do that. A, B, C. You know, it occurs to me that grace is the A through Z. Grace is it. That receiving God's grace is all of it and him working through us. And he longs to give that to us. And we have it. We have it as Christians.

Love it. That is a great spot to pause on and come back the next episode. So thank you so much, Kathy. This was lovely.

Yeah. Thank you.

Kathy and I will pick this conversation back up in the next episode as we continue our season two deeper dive into spiritual care. We'll also be trying something new this spring. We'll be hosting a couple of Zoom calls for you all to join me and Kathy, to bring your questions and reflections on spiritual care to have a conversation together about what we're all learning this season. So be on the lookout on our social media, website, or show notes for more information about these Zoom gatherings, or just stay tuned for announcements in our next episodes. In the meantime, I would be absolutely delighted to hear from you about your own experiences of navigating spiritual care in your nursing practice.

Do you have a story to share, advice based on your own learning. Or maybe questions about how to practice spiritual care better? Message me on Instagram JesusNursePod or email me at ncf.intervarsity.org using the subject line 'podcast'.

Hey, thanks for joining us for another inspiring episode of Following Jesus in Nursing. We hope you've been encouraged and equipped in integrating your faith with your nursing practice. Be sure to check out our show notes for info about connecting with Nurses Christian Fellowship, as well as links and resources mentioned in today's episode.

Don't forget to check out NCF membership at ncf-jcn.org and use the coupon code 'following' for $10 off. And remember, as you go about your work as a nurse, you are not alone. Jesus is right there with you, guiding your steps and using you to bring healing to those in need. Thanks for listening to Following Jesus in Nursing, and may your faith continue to be a light in the world of healthcare.