In the past two weeks, three of my friends have had baby boys, and another couple just found out that their baby (in-utero) is a boy. So congrats to Alex (Andrew and Tracy), Robert (Amanda and Jack), and Ty (Alyssa and Andy) who entered this world last week. And then I can't wait to meet Joshua (due in February) whose excited parents are Joel and Melissa. Woohoo!
So, I have a request. Would someone PLEASE have a girl? I have all of these cute little girl clothes that I would love to lend to someone. And Susanna wants a girl friend to play with...boys are great, but there's nothing like girl time!
Friday, September 19, 2008
Wednesday, September 17, 2008
Pastoral Care at Riverside: The Cast of Characters
So now that you know what I'm doing, I thought I'd give you a snapshot of who I work with:
Doug is the Director of Pastoral Care and our CPE Supervisor. He's been at Riverside for as long as I've been alive, but he was probably younger than I am when he started. Doug is one of those people who is always surprising you; just yesterday I found out that he drives a Mustang convertible. Anyway, he is the primary reason why I applied to Riverside. He has a reputation as a great supervisor. Plus, he's United Methodist and went to this GREAT college in southwest Virginia. Teeny little place called Emory & Henry...
Judy is the staff chaplain and basically does all the morning and early afternoon work so that the residents and interns can be in seminars and supervision. She gets here at 5:30 a.m., prays with all of the people going into surgery, and then does rounds of the ER and ICU, and takes any pages until noon. She usually goes home around 2:30 p.m. Judy is very thoughtful; she's the sort of person who remembers birthdays (she even got mine!) and provides "survival kits" for us
Helen is the Office Coordinator, and as she put it, "I'm your Mom." She knows a lot about chaplaincy, the hospital, and how the department works. She's pursuing a call to vocational ministry, and plans to take seminary classes eventually. Helen is very cool and is much more than an adminstrative professional. In fact, if a disaster were to happen, she would be leading one of the three chaplain teams!
The other two residents are:
M is in her late twenties, is single (and very attractive, if any of my single male readers are interested), and originally from Dallas (although, thank goodness, she is not a Cowboys fan). She was in the Air Force for several years after college. M is very down-to-earth, thoughtful, and puts people at ease quickly. However, she's also the kind of person you'd love to hate, if it weren't for the previous qualities. She always looks put-together and stylish, even after 13 hours on-call. I'd kill for her wardrobe, but she's about five sizes smaller than me, so it wouldn't do any good. :) She's Baptist, and will finish seminary in May.
S is in his late thirties, is married with a toddler, and originally from Cincinatti. He's a very friendly and welcoming person and currently pastors a church part-time (yes, both my co-residents are masochists). S graduated from seminary a couple years ago and is also Baptist. He's also a Bengals fan, but I'm trying not to hold that against him.
We also have five pastoral interns, who are doing their FIRST unit of CPE. They're mostly here on Mondays.
We all (so far) get along very well, and I can't see that changing much. The staff tends to eat lunch together every day and we have a staff meeting most mornings. We also gather for devotions in the morning, and take turns leading that. It's a very diverse group (although we're all Christian), which is pretty cool.
Doug is the Director of Pastoral Care and our CPE Supervisor. He's been at Riverside for as long as I've been alive, but he was probably younger than I am when he started. Doug is one of those people who is always surprising you; just yesterday I found out that he drives a Mustang convertible. Anyway, he is the primary reason why I applied to Riverside. He has a reputation as a great supervisor. Plus, he's United Methodist and went to this GREAT college in southwest Virginia. Teeny little place called Emory & Henry...
Judy is the staff chaplain and basically does all the morning and early afternoon work so that the residents and interns can be in seminars and supervision. She gets here at 5:30 a.m., prays with all of the people going into surgery, and then does rounds of the ER and ICU, and takes any pages until noon. She usually goes home around 2:30 p.m. Judy is very thoughtful; she's the sort of person who remembers birthdays (she even got mine!) and provides "survival kits" for us
Helen is the Office Coordinator, and as she put it, "I'm your Mom." She knows a lot about chaplaincy, the hospital, and how the department works. She's pursuing a call to vocational ministry, and plans to take seminary classes eventually. Helen is very cool and is much more than an adminstrative professional. In fact, if a disaster were to happen, she would be leading one of the three chaplain teams!
The other two residents are:
M is in her late twenties, is single (and very attractive, if any of my single male readers are interested), and originally from Dallas (although, thank goodness, she is not a Cowboys fan). She was in the Air Force for several years after college. M is very down-to-earth, thoughtful, and puts people at ease quickly. However, she's also the kind of person you'd love to hate, if it weren't for the previous qualities. She always looks put-together and stylish, even after 13 hours on-call. I'd kill for her wardrobe, but she's about five sizes smaller than me, so it wouldn't do any good. :) She's Baptist, and will finish seminary in May.
S is in his late thirties, is married with a toddler, and originally from Cincinatti. He's a very friendly and welcoming person and currently pastors a church part-time (yes, both my co-residents are masochists). S graduated from seminary a couple years ago and is also Baptist. He's also a Bengals fan, but I'm trying not to hold that against him.
We also have five pastoral interns, who are doing their FIRST unit of CPE. They're mostly here on Mondays.
We all (so far) get along very well, and I can't see that changing much. The staff tends to eat lunch together every day and we have a staff meeting most mornings. We also gather for devotions in the morning, and take turns leading that. It's a very diverse group (although we're all Christian), which is pretty cool.
OK Patti, WHAT Are You Doing This Year???
For the next twelve months (until August 31, 2009) I will be doing what is called a "residency in Clinical Pastoral Education." What the heck is that, you ask? When I'm pressed for time, I simply tell people that I'm a hospital chaplain. It's simple and it's fairly true. However, I'm not pressed for time now. I'm on call tonight and am killing time on the computers in the doctors' lounge (to which we have access, strangely enough).
Those of you who have known me a while may remember the work I did at Hospice the summer of 2005. That was my first unit of Clinical Pastoral Education. Simply put, it's clinical (hospital, hospice, nursing home, etc) work combined with supervision, seminars, and reflection. You do pastoral care in a clinical setting, you reflect on and receive feedback regarding your work, and then you put into practice what you have learned. Most denominations either require or recommend a unit or half unit for ordination, and most people do that first unit and move on to bigger and better things.
So that's CPE in a nutshell. I love it, but there are times when it's really emotionally draining. As part of our reflection process (which is mostly done through "verbatims", or accounts of patient/family visits), we have to pinpoint any "hot buttons" that the visit may have touched. For example, if someone had a difficult time providing care for a dying alcoholic because his/her father was an alcoholic and the visit brought back painful memories. That sort of thing. With the right supervisor and the right peer group, CPE can turn out to be a very powerful and healing force in someone's life and ministry.
So...that's what I'll be doing until next August. I'll actually be completing FOUR units of CPE. It's a full-time program, so I work from 8:30-5:00 Monday through Friday, plus four on-call nights a month. I actually get to go home early the day after my on-call shift, so that's kind of nice. When I'm on-call, I stay at the hospital and take pages from 5:00 p.m. to 6:00 a.m. I still have to be at work at 8:30, HOWEVER, I usually leave after our seminars are completed, around 10:00 or 11:00 a.m.
It's a paid position (although considerably less than I was making as a pastor) with benefits. Once I'm done, I can either return to the local church or seek a position as a chaplain somewhere. I don't know what I'll do yet...it's too early to decide. I really love it so far, although there have been some tough times. Example: last week a fifty-something man was brought to the ER in cardiac arrest. He was from out of state, and had collapsed while playing in a tennis tournament. I took the page, so first I had to comfort his three friends (one of whom had been his tennis partner for 20+ years), then return four hours later to comfort his wife when she arrived. I also got to act as a liason between the ER staff and the family, like finding out when and where they could view the body and stuff like that. It was pretty rough. However, it's also very rewarding to be able to provide care for someone and be "Jesus with skin on".
Those of you who have known me a while may remember the work I did at Hospice the summer of 2005. That was my first unit of Clinical Pastoral Education. Simply put, it's clinical (hospital, hospice, nursing home, etc) work combined with supervision, seminars, and reflection. You do pastoral care in a clinical setting, you reflect on and receive feedback regarding your work, and then you put into practice what you have learned. Most denominations either require or recommend a unit or half unit for ordination, and most people do that first unit and move on to bigger and better things.
So that's CPE in a nutshell. I love it, but there are times when it's really emotionally draining. As part of our reflection process (which is mostly done through "verbatims", or accounts of patient/family visits), we have to pinpoint any "hot buttons" that the visit may have touched. For example, if someone had a difficult time providing care for a dying alcoholic because his/her father was an alcoholic and the visit brought back painful memories. That sort of thing. With the right supervisor and the right peer group, CPE can turn out to be a very powerful and healing force in someone's life and ministry.
So...that's what I'll be doing until next August. I'll actually be completing FOUR units of CPE. It's a full-time program, so I work from 8:30-5:00 Monday through Friday, plus four on-call nights a month. I actually get to go home early the day after my on-call shift, so that's kind of nice. When I'm on-call, I stay at the hospital and take pages from 5:00 p.m. to 6:00 a.m. I still have to be at work at 8:30, HOWEVER, I usually leave after our seminars are completed, around 10:00 or 11:00 a.m.
It's a paid position (although considerably less than I was making as a pastor) with benefits. Once I'm done, I can either return to the local church or seek a position as a chaplain somewhere. I don't know what I'll do yet...it's too early to decide. I really love it so far, although there have been some tough times. Example: last week a fifty-something man was brought to the ER in cardiac arrest. He was from out of state, and had collapsed while playing in a tennis tournament. I took the page, so first I had to comfort his three friends (one of whom had been his tennis partner for 20+ years), then return four hours later to comfort his wife when she arrived. I also got to act as a liason between the ER staff and the family, like finding out when and where they could view the body and stuff like that. It was pretty rough. However, it's also very rewarding to be able to provide care for someone and be "Jesus with skin on".
Saturday, September 13, 2008
We're alive...just busy!
I started my chaplain residency program two weeks ago...on September 2. I'm loving it, but of course things have been rather crazy. I leave the house at 7:00 a.m. in order to clock in at 8:30. I leave at 5:00, and usually arrive home about 6:00 p.m. I have one on-call night a week, so I have to stay at the hospital that night and come home the next morning. And then we have all the household chores...James and I spent today cleaning the house and doing laundry. At least it means that tomorrow we can have some fun!
We have Susanna in a great daycare that's actually on my way to work. The daycare is in Chesapeake, so it's close to home. I drop her off in the morning and James picks her up in the evening. So far, Susanna is really enjoying it.
I'll post more later...about Susanna's first b-day party (including pics), more about my program and what I'm doing, and Susanna's 12-month appointment.
We have Susanna in a great daycare that's actually on my way to work. The daycare is in Chesapeake, so it's close to home. I drop her off in the morning and James picks her up in the evening. So far, Susanna is really enjoying it.
I'll post more later...about Susanna's first b-day party (including pics), more about my program and what I'm doing, and Susanna's 12-month appointment.
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