Week Four

I don't quite have the words for my fourth week working as an intern prison chaplains.  I came home and hugged my kids and took them out for pie.  Pie cures everything right?  Well no, it really can't.

I heard a lot of stories today.  I value the healing power of hearing someone's story and holding that in a loving light, but today it was hard.  I heard things that made me feel such grief, such sorrow.  The Divine is really testing me.  I am working with people whose stories I had heard some of in the news.  Awful things.  Things that lead to children suffering, to dying.  Yet, the inmates are nice people.  Lovely even.  Often they have been through hideous experiences themselves.

I don't know how to hold both of these truths at the same time.  I don't know how to hold a crime that I find appalling in one hand, and the funny, kind person I am working with in the other.  After the pie,  I sat and talked to my partner and cried for a while.  I can not say exactly what brought the tears, but they just needed to be shed.

The chaplain I work under told me once that prison chaplains are sometimes called "chocolate hearts" by the officers because we are too soft on the inside.  I can understand that.  I am a soft hearted person as I should be for this role, but that does not mean that I am going to let my heart get broken by every person I speak to.

This weekend I will be attending the NW Regional Conference for the American Association of Pastoral Counselors.  The topic is Therapeutic Strategies in the Treatment of Adult Survivors of Incest and Child Abuse.  The fun just doesn't stop around here!  Seriously though, I am really looking forward to this conference.  I hope that I will learn some new skills for my tool box.

I guess I found more words than I thought I had.  It is still very much a work in progress.  I know I will be thinking about it a lot while in Seattle.  

Fall Blessings,

Chaplain Holly