Only God knows

As you may or may not know, I work at Bellin Hospital as a chaplain and part of that job is being on call one wknd ea month. This was my weekend. Last night I was called in to be with a pt who was dying. The pt/family were Roman Catholic & requested that the pt receive the sacrament of the anointing of the sick. FYI - this is when the priest comes and anoints the pts head & hands w/ oil and prays. I've experienced this & it can be very powerful.

Anyway, I make the appropriate phone calls, get a priest to come in, and follow up with the family. They were very emotional. Turns out, the pt although elderly and battling cancer, wasn't expected to die as quickly as he was. He & his wife had met when she was 16 and had been married for 49 years. Well, based on my limited knowledge, I assumed the pt had a day of so to go. Therefore, I offered a little final encouragement and headed back home. No sooner had I turned on my street when my beeper proceeds to go off again. The pt had just died.

The nurse told me, as I called in, that the family requested me to return and so I did. His wife & kids, along w/ the rest of the family were devistated. You may be thinking, well, they knew he was dying... why were they so upset???

If I have learned anything over the past two years it's this: no matter how prepared you think you are for somebody to die, you're never really prepared for how final the death really is. And no matter how hard you try to predict when it will happen, only God knows the moment of our death.

I know this blog may sound kind of morbid, but I'm trying to express the comfort I have in the knowledge that only God knows. Whether it may be a birth or death or anything in between, only God knows what each day holds and I don't have to be consumed with anxiety or worry. He's got it covered. And that's a beautiful thing.