Yet Another Beginning

Well, I’ve successfully made it through two weeks of CPE and I’m starting to feel more competent with each passing day. I’m still pretty nervous about what the summer will bring, especially as I am on call tonight and there is no telling what might happen. At the same time, I am starting to feel like this is something I can actually do with grace, and I don’t feel like I’m just surviving each day.


Last week was an interesting, stressful, busy week. We had a full day of hospital orientation that was basically just plain exhausting. Then we spent Tuesday and Wednesday doing a lot of CPE-specific orientation. This, too was quite exhausting but at least it was specific to my situation, rather than just about working at the hospital. By Wednesday afternoon, we spent some time on our floors for the summer, which we continued to do through Friday.


I’m going to be working in telemetry, which basically consists of any long-term patients who are in need of heart monitoring. They are not in serious condition, like those in ICU, but they are in varying need of acute care. Many come in for a day or two before heading back home, to nursing homes, or to some sort of hospice care. Others have more long-term needs, especially certain conditions which cause them to be in isolation, whether contact or airborne.


I have several goals for my time in CPE, and I think they are all reasonable as well as long-term. One came out of my time at St. Mark this past year, which is my goal of creating a better prayer life. Although Wes and I are good about praying over meals and at night, I do not feel like prayer is central to my everyday life, but I would like it to be. If the center of my life is God, then the center of each day should be prayer. One piece of this is also my fear of praying for others aloud. It is one thing to read a pre-written prayer on Sunday morning in worship. It is quite another to pray for someone in physical, emotional, or spiritual distress. I worked on this throughout field education, and I will continue to do so this summer and beyond.


My other two goals are probably not too surprising for anyone who knows me. First, I want to learn how to be with people who are in distress without letting my emotions get the best of me. I want to learn how to express my emotions in a healthy way, rather than bursting into tears because someone else is in some sort of pain. I think there is no better place to learn this than in the hospital. So far, I have not had too many problems, but I also have not been at the bedside of someone who is dying or has died, so we will see how I work toward this goal throughout the summer. Complicating my handle on my emotions, of course, is my pregnancy.


Finally, I am working toward being less…anal…about my agenda. I like to make my plans and have everything figured out. While this in itself is not a problem and almost always an accomplishable goal, I also have a tendency to get frustrated when my agenda is not complete. Therefore, I plan to use this summer to become more aware of what causes frustration. As a pastor, I will have to be available to my parishioners when they are in need—I can’t just get frustrated because of some interruption in my schedule. My job is about people, not about the agenda. I especially want to work on this goal in lightof the baby coming in December. My agenda is definitely not going to be the number one priority when the baby is hungry, and I want to make sure that I deal with this in a healthy way, rather than getting upset.


So there you have it. Plenty of goals and a full summer, but it seems to be going well so far. I’m interested to see what the summer brings and how much I can learn from this experience.