Secrets twine through us like the bones of trees that support the darkness.
On a lovely afternoon in May, 1963, my doctor sent a cloud across the sun. "You have an incurable disease," he told me. "You might not live to age 40. You're five times more likely to contract cancer. Your prognosis is not good."
If I wanted to beat his prediction, he said, I would need to live a careful life filled with as little stress as possible.
"But, I'd like to be a lawyer," I told him. "I'm also considering a career in politics."
"Out of the question," he said. 'That kind of work will kill you."
In the spring of '63, President John Kennedy still lived. Millions of young women and men, including me, were inspired by his example. Politics seemed like an appealing choice back then.
I was nineteen years old and a sophomore at Northwestern University. And I was ambitious.
What my doctor told me remained a secret for much of my life. I had contracted an auto-immune illness called Crohn's disease in that awful spring. And I kept that news to myself. I didn't want people thinking I was disabled, a sort of cripple. I didn't want anyone's pity. I didn't want this disease to control my life. So, I struggled with this secret by myself.
Of course, my parents knew. But, they didn't understand. Back then, you couldn't just Google Crohn's disease and get a sense of what that illness was about. Eventually, I told my fiancee who became (and still is) my wife. She carried the secret with me, sharing my burden through the long nights when my body was inflamed as it attacked itself.
Fortunately, I ignored my doctor's advice and became not just a lawyer, but a trial attorney. During law school, I had a brief flirtation with politics when I became a staff aid to a prominent Congressman.
Fate, in the form of a kind old fellow named Bruce Trumm, drew me into the strange world of hospital leadership. Meanwhile, I told no one else about my secret struggle for many years.
Don't all of us carry on some secret struggle within us? A difference between acute pain and a chronic illness is that we may develop some level of amnesia for a specific episode of agony. Chronic illness, on the other hand, provides a daily reminder of life's discomfort. It can help us stay present to the pain of others.
Every patient who comes to the hospital or a charity with an obvious affliction is treated by a caregiver who has her or his own secret struggle churning within. These secret struggles can awaken within us the compassion we need to express when caring for the vulnerable patients before us.
We need to be in touch with our own pain in order to relate to the agony of others. At the same time, we need to maintain our strength so that we can bring aid to those who need our help.
The source of our strength rests in the endless power of Love. It is Love which provides our light and our salvation. When we let Love shine through us, our secrets depart from the shadows and dissolve in the light. In the presence of Love, secrets lose their power to frighten and terrorize us.
How do your secret struggles inform your caregiving?
Erie Chapman
Journal of Sacred Work 
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