Dan's Thoughts

Trish #30 - July 10, 2004

Today was long and full, the central event of which was a "family" meeting.

All the members of our family who could do so met with Trish's doctors, therapists, nurses, and social worker. Each person commented on his or her perception of Trish's progress. Each asked questions to clarify what was being said. Trish also made comments along the way. The hour went by quickly but it was enough to give a clearer picture of Trish's road to recovery than what we have had before.

Her prognosis is good, by the way. Her neuro-psychologist believes (given her progress so far,) that she should fully recover in a few months. She will need extensive therapy, of course. For the first few weeks, we cannot leave her alone. She still cannot initiate many common tasks. She can feed herself but needs someone from time to time to say something like, "Trish, keep eating." She can walk but she needs someone to remind her, "put you RIGHT foot forward now." As the months go by, her brain will reorder itself. It will recover the ability to initiate and sustain normal activities, or the so called "executive functions." Until then, she needs her family and friends to help her. Today's meeting was about helping us know how to do that.

If all goes as planned, Trish will be released from Barrow's in about two weeks from today. After that, she will be an outpatient, which is to say she will live at home while attending classes and therapeutic sessions. She will do this for five days a week and for several hours each day. This phase of her recovery will last a number of weeks.

Today, I also went to the place where she will likely do her work. It is called The Center for Transitional Neuro-Rehabilitation. In the facility where the center is located, a dedicated team of various kinds of neuro -rehab folk will work to help Trish move from her present level of minimal self-care to one in which she can once again hold down a job and otherwise regain her independence. Through many tried and proven methods, they will help her retrain her brain.

I walked across the street from St. Joseph's Barrow's Neurological Institute and entered the building where the center is located. As I got off the elevator and turned right, I went through the door where I immediately met the receptionist. It was a lady who had once attended our church before moving to the outskirts of the city! She, in turn, introduced me to the woman who does the admissions. As we began to talk, she suddenly said, "Hey, aren't you and your wife the couple in the e-mails? I have been reading them!" What a "coincidence." Evidently God has been preparing the way for Trish to get the next level of care that she needs. So, even though the center has a six week waiting list and even though Trish must meet certain criteria -- including the willingness of our insurance (United Health Care) to pay -- I was encouraged. I am confident that God will make a way for her to receive care from the capable team of CTN and continue her journey to total restoration.

It was also wonderful to hear that these e-mails had made their rounds to such a prestigious place.

I learned today that nearly 5,000 people have downloaded the e-mails from our church website. That doesn't include those of you who read copies forwarded from friends, so the people who read these messages must now number in the many thousands. THANKS to all of you! Please help me pray that Trish will get admitted to the center and that the insurance company will be favorable about paying for it. (By prayer I mean that you just take a moment right now and say, "Lord, please help Trish to get into this center and move upon the people at the insurance to pay for it.") Because united and focused prayer has already made a difference, I ask you to help us once more by praying with us for this new phase of Trish's recovery.

My spiritual reflection of the day centered around the "process of discernment."

The health workers met with us to discuss and to plan Trish's care. In the family meeting, each team member listened to the other as he or she talked. Each one shed light upon what all the others were saying. The rehab workers showed respect for the family members and for the intimate and intuitive knowledge that the family has of Trish. They listened carefully to Trish herself. Each one wrote down ideas that surfaced from the diverse spectrum of knowledge presented in the meeting. Each seemed to process what was said through the unique training and experience that he or she brings to the healing process. The implications that each drew from what was presented will guide his or her contributions in the days ahead.

I don't know how other institutions and disciplines function; I know more than a little about church work. I am sorry to say that the kind of respectful interaction I witnessed today is rare in Christian ministry. I can't imagine a youth pastor, a theologian, a music minister, a director of pastoral care, an administrator, a food bank worker, a missionary and a mystic all sitting down together to reflect upon what each has to say about the needs of a sick city or of a sick church, for example. In Christian work today, the theologian too often gets dismissed as a hopeless egghead. The food bank worker gets dismissed as a well-intentioned but impractical bleeding heart. The youth minister is often seen as a crazy person whom the church kids like for some reason and who at least keeps their parents coming back to church. The missionary is often viewed as basically a moocher who learns languages no one wants to hear and who wants to show pictures no one wants to see. The poor mystic is thought of as the one person in the mix who has no practical utility whatever. The administrator meanwhile is just some one who counts the money in a back room and who keeps busy writing rules to keep him happy and to make everyone else miserable. To get such a crowd to focus upon hearing one another and gaining enough insight to do some great work is difficult in our ADD afflicted church culture. (And you can apply these same dynamics to many other kinds of disciplines and enterprises.)

So many churches have lost any real purpose beyond than that of maintaining their own existence. Few of them have leaders who really listen to their workers or even to their people, for that matter. This is why when church workers "burn out" they are so often just replaced with fresh meat. Meanwhile, the patient -- a society hungry for meaning and for love -- gets lost in the dissonance and the disconnection among the people who are supposed to be serving them. In too many of our work places we run so fast and furiously -- for what we are not exactly sure -- that we can no longer feel our own souls, much less the souls of those around us. So we entertain ourselves and keep moving. We find it increasingly difficult to stop, share, reflect and discern. In fact, reflection and discernment is increasingly viewed as a corporate sickness in many places. No wonder we can't seem to heal.

One thing more: what happened today in our family meeting gave us some tools to discern the difference between science and pseudo-science. As I have learned, the Internet is full of information about stroke recovery. There are sites that offer the equivalent of avocado pits and medical marijuana. Others claim that Trish can learn to enter an alternate healing reality through induced trance. Yet others will sell me magnesium strips to line the inside of her hat or tea from an exotic leaf found in the Himalayas to realign the centering vortex of her chakras. Because we have become such a militantly low-brow culture, we tend to despise serious research and scientific process in favor of such foolishness. We are often as apt to trust cousin Billy Bob's five hour training seminar as a Health Vibrational Maintenance Coordinator as we are to listen to a trained and experienced physician. There is a reason why the National Enquirer is the nation's best selling newspaper! (It isn't our wisdom and prudence.)

Don't get me wrong, I like all that stuff as much as the next guy. I'll swap stories with you any day about UFOs and the potential of planetary vortex energy. But right now I want my wife to get well. I can't trust her brain to Billy Bob. I need sober and scientifically minded health workers. Thank God I have found them.

That's why I asked questions today at our family meeting. I wanted to know what the others in the room thought about the various kinds of therapy I have heard about. I want to do all we can for Trish. But not once did the doctors or rehab workers ridicule me. Not once did any one of them put me down. On the contrary, they respectfully answered my questions from their experience and training. They also pointed me to places where I could get further information. In the community we have formed around Trish, the main consideration is to help her regain her health. To do this, the doctors and other care workers have done all they can to earn the trust of her family, which includes the need to respectfully consider our ideas. That's why they took the time to help me separate potentially helpful therapies from what is more likely to be "snake oil" quackery.

St. Paul says, "let the prophets prophesy but let the congregation judge." Vision, even outlandish vision, should be heard -- provided there is a careful and measured way to judge its merit and potential. Without judgment, however, the prophesies provoke us to entrench behind ignorance. This path leads to disappointment and disillusionment. And what is true for the church is also true for every institution that cares for human beings. A recovery of health requires the cooperation of a multitude of gifts and a myriad of perspectives.

Since there is no human being wise enough (or saintly enough) to have no need of discernment, we must above all thing cultivate humility of heart. Only humility can lead to wisdom. Only humility teaches a person to listen deeply enough to the experience and perception of others that he or she can create an informed insight of his or her own. Since arrogance disdains discernment, it destroys the possibility of science or, for that matter of finding healthy faith. "God resists the proud but He gives grace to the humble." If we need grace we must find humility.

Today I saw well-educated and experienced health workers manifest humility of heart. They did this to facilitate my wife's healing. Tonight I am wondering how the rest of us, who may have more reason to be humble but who are so often less inclined, might possibly learn from them.

Dan