"And if love's encounters lead us on a way uncertain and unknown, all the saints with prayer surround us. We are not alone." Hymn, "We Are Not Our Own," by Brian Wren (1987)
Years ago, my friend Rhonda Swanson endured an especially savage round of chemotherapy designed to attack the tumors growing within her. As her journey became more and more harrowing, the toxic drugs left her sick and weak, stole her hair and ravaged her sense of well-being.
On top of that, she was subjected to what so many of the ill experience. "If one more person tells me they know exactly how I feel I think I'm going to scream," she said to me one day. "It's so lonely down here, Erie. All you have left is God."
It was then, that Rhonda found herself amid "love's encounter" falling into the "uncertain and unknown." Prayers surrounded her. She felt God's presence in a new way.
Rhonda, a wife and mother, stared into her own mortality. She experienced the excruciating isolation that always accompanies deep suffering. As she was coping with the news of her breast cancer she was advised that her doctors had discovered a second tumor in one of her kidneys.
Rhonda taught me that the only thing she wanted to hear from people during her agony was that she was in their thoughts and that they were praying for her. "Most other comments and advice don't help," she said. Quiet presence by those she loved was the most helpful.
The shunning that patients feel when they are ill and vulnerable can be profound. We know this from our personal experiences of pain and often forget to live our learning when we regain health. Loving caregivers always remember how to be present to the sick.
On his night in the Garden of Gethsemane, Jesus begged his disciples to remain awake with him during his distress. Instead, they fell asleep leaving Jesus alone with God. During Jesus' forty days in the desert, he was accompanied not by friends, but by the Devil.
There is a strange gift hidden in our hardest experiences. Sometimes, it is pain that drives us into the arms of God.
One of the greatest poets of the 20th century, Rainer Maria Rilke, lived most of his final three years (1923-1926) dying of leukemia in a remote chalet in Switzerland. In the midst of his daily and nightly pain, he continued to write beauty. God sent Love through this poet in words that inspire our hearts to this day.
Today, dear Rhonda survives and thrives. Her courage and grace draw others to her for the comfort she brings them in their illness.
Rhonda knows what to say…and what not to. She remembers her encounters with God during her darkness. Now, her light shines into the lives of all who know her.
Rev. Erie Chapman
Journal of Sacred Work 
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