On Tragedy and the Comfort that Comes from God

I have seriously hesitated to make any comment whatsoever about the tragedy, the very public tragedy that has taken place in the life of Steve and Curtis Chapman. I don't know Steve and Curtis Chapman.

Steve Camp does, and that's the only connection really I have. Many good things have already been said. But as some of you know, I wrote a book a few years ago, a number of years ago now actually, called Grieving, Our Path Back to Peace.

Grief, Hope, and the Limits of Words

And for a number of years, I worked as a hospital chaplain. That shocks a lot of folks. It was the toughest work I ever did. And I have done a lot of study of grief counseling and the process of grieving that all human beings go through, whether Christian or not.

The difference being whether we go through it with hope or not. But I've hesitated to address this issue, because one of the first things that I learned as a hospital chaplain is that sometimes words are the wrong things.

You are placed under tremendous pressure to have magical words to say in difficult situations in the face of impending death or death that has just taken place. And the fact of the matter is there are no magical words.

Sometimes an arm around the shoulder, holding a hand, is all that you can do. And I learned that fairly early on. I hope no one will say to Stephen, I understand what you're going through, if you've never experienced what he's gone through.

I learned early on that's the worst thing you can say. You don't say, I understand, because the fact of the matter is you don't. All grieving is unique. Grieving may have commonalities amongst us all, because we're humans.

We're made in the image of God. Anyone old enough to love is old enough to grieve. But the specific loss is always unique. And you don't say, well, I understand, unless you really do, unless you likewise have lost a young child.

I did not lose a young child. Therefore, I would never say to someone, well, I understand. But I will share a story. It's difficult for me to share, but I will share a story that maybe will at least help all of us to pray for the Chapman family, and especially to pray for that teenage boy that was driving, his son that was driving the vehicle.

Oh, I just pray that God will protect him and bear him up and comfort him. This was an accident. There was no, I just hope he can find the foundation, that he has the foundation to be able to work through this situation.

We all need to pray for him. But I'll share a story, because it changed me. It changed me completely. It was early on in my time at the hospital. There was this sound that to this day, whenever I hear a sound similar to this, it causes me to sweat.

But there was a code bell that would go off in the hospital. My job as a chaplain, whenever that went off, it would go off, and then there'd be a location, emergency room, CCU, wherever it was. There was a cardiac arrest.

And I would drop whatever I was doing and get there. And my job, in essence, was to be the person between the family and the doctors, an avenue of communication. If it was in the emergency room, that normally meant that an ambulance was coming and that the person in the ambulance had coded.

And my job then was to stand near the door. And as they came in, I would activate the motion sensor so they wouldn't have to wait for the door to open. And then my job was to watch the family. There was a tiny little family room.

You could barely get three or four people in it. And my job was to get the family in there and, again, act as the go-between between the emergency room doctors and the family. Now, in an ER, you have the head nurse.

And head nurses are chiseled out of granite. They feel nothing, or at least we think they don't. And one day, the code bell went off, and I went into the emergency room. And I knew immediately that this was going to be a different situation.

Because remember the old emergency 911 television series where you had this radio room? Well, there was a radio room there as well. And as I came into the ER, I saw everyone was gathered around the radio room.

And I also saw more police than I had ever seen and more kept coming. And I was informed that there was a nine-month-old baby girl being brought in who was in cardiac arrest. I wasn't given any more details than that.

There was just a heaviness in the room. And when the ambulance pulled up, I see coming around the corner this gurney. And this huge fireman is riding on the gurney. He's standing up on the gurney. And he's doing little chest compressions like this on this beautiful baby girl who was not.

The Tragedy of a Child's Death

Nine months old.

She was six months old. And so, of course, I activate the door. They come rushing by. He has this horrible look on his face. And I start looking for the family. And here comes an older woman. And that's when I discover this isn't mom and dad.

This is grandma. And this is the first time that mom and dad have left baby with grandma. And the story starts to come out. Grandma put the baby on a mattress on the floor. Didn't have a bassinet or anything like that.

And trying to be as safe as possible, put the baby on a mattress on the floor. And somehow, the baby rolls and rolls off the mattress in such a way that she becomes stuck between the wall and the mattress and suffocates.

Don't know where mom and dad are. Well, mom and dad are at the lake. And they're going to try to find mom and dad at the lake. I never saw mom and dad because I heard it took a full day to even find them.

I figured I'm going to be there all night because the younger the patient is, the longer they're going to keep trying, especially a six-month-old little girl. But I was very surprised at how quickly they called the attempt.

There was just no response. It was way too late.