The other day, I met up for a casual coffee with a lovely friend who is not in the healthcare realm. As it goes in catching up with friends, I was trying to give the summarized version of how life has been this past year on both a personal and professional level. I briefly alluded to a two-month period in the early Fall when the intensity and volume of hugely traumatic cases and deaths at work were at the highest peak I’d ever seen, and then mentioned the stresses of now moving into a busy respiratory season where nurses are also getting sick and calling out from work. I said these were a challenging overlap with my husband’s ongoing recovery from his spinal cord injury.

This friend, in their eagerness to understand and comfort, began to rapid-fire questions about the patient cases, our work structure, and my typical schedule as a nurse. I tried to explain the complexities and ever-changing nature of healthcare as succinctly and clearly as possible. My friend weaved additional questions in about the emotional nature of the work, and I found a deep sorrow springing up as I again tried to answer clearly without excessive detail.

With clearly good intentions, this friend then commented about how this work must feel heavy, but we can always trust God’s sovereignty over all things in the world.

Mind you, I am a Christian nurse, and I approach this issue here with a lot of sensitivity. I have wrestled and thought deeply about why I still trust and love God. I also sit with a considerable amount of tension around the mysteries and spiritual questions for which I don’t think those who suffer the deepest will ever have fully sufficient answers – certainly not easy answers.

I found a deep sorrow welling up inside of me, as I tried to graciously accept my friend’s well-meaning attempts at understanding and comfort, and then sought to move on to other topics.

The best I can explain my sorrow is by way of a crude and imperfect graph:

I was on a certain trajectory of readiness (black line) to try and get to some idealized version of comfort, symbolized by the red heart. My friend was trying to walk with me (red line) but perhaps out of overeagerness to move to comfort, jerked the conversation up a trajectory that I simply wasn’t ready for, and my heart felt the disconnect immediately. I couldn’t move up so fast on this trajectory with my friend, and we needed time in the conversation for them to also catch me up on their life, so I had to shut down this portion of the conversation.

I don’t blame my friend for any wrongdoing per se. It’s just a potential peril of rushed listening and overeagerness to comfort that we are all prone to. I am certain I have been guilty of this, and I learned from this exchange how important it is to pay closer attention to signs that we may not be meeting people where they are in their readiness for quick comfort. A quieter patience and a willingness to sit with the discomfort ultimately help us listeners to better understand what is actually most helpful for healing, but they are not easy to cultivate.