Years ago I was training to be a chaplain. That’s a pastor who serves in secular settings, especially hospitals, the military, prisons, and hospice agencies. It’s a special kind of ministry, working with people in the midst of some life crisis, and the focus is less on a ministry of word (like you see with pulpit pastors) and more on a ministry of presence. We’re there. We’re present. Most of the time we listen. Sometimes we talk. Sometimes we offer a shoulder. Sometimes we share Coke and pork rinds. It’s a more fluid ministry, one that allows chaplains to live into their own creativity and outside-the-boxness.
I was a resident, and my supervisor and I got along grudgingly. I’d like to say he was invested in my improvement, but it so often felt like all he was invested in was breaking me as a chaplain, finding fault in everything I did so I’d quit and give up the calling. I’m made of sterner stuff than that, though. One of his constant gripes about me was that I “wasn’t in touch with the richness of my emotional life.”
I was telling my therapist about this, the therapist who’s seen me crying and yelling, cussing and laughing. I told Jen about that supervisor telling me I wasn’t in touch with the richness of my emotional life, and she said, “What the hell does that even mean?”
It comes down to trust. Neither that supervisor nor that group felt like a safe place to share my emotions. It’s not that I didn’t have them. I also expressed them openly and passionately–just not there. I let my feelings loose at home with my husband.
There were also other trust issues. I had been taught from an early age that expressing my emotions publicly was “making a scene,” and this was vehemently discouraged. Even when my grandma died, I was shushed in the hospital corridor so as not to disturb other patients or make a scene. So expressing raw, naked emotions in front of people I didn’t really know or trust was simply not going to happen.
I’m happy to say to that former supervisor, “Up yours!” as I live fully into the richness of my emotional life. I’ve poured emotion out in my counseling journey. I used my feelings about having anxiety and how I’m managing it as the basis for my first book. And now, the emotion is coming out, sometimes in trickles, sometimes in floods, as I write about what it was like raising my firstborn and the pain she caused us.
So what does “living into the richness of my emotional life” look like? It looks like having the bandwidth to deal with emotions. It looks like daring to say the hard parts out loud. It feels good and liberating and relieving.
