As I sit down to write this article I ask myself, “So Brian, What’s on your mind?” I start to type various thoughts and concepts trying to impress myself with my knowledge. However, when I begin to proof read what I’ve written it seems unclear, uninspiring and unimportant. Finally, I leave it alone for awhile and sit in quiet meditation feeling the connectedness with God and to others, a feeling that is not in my head but in my heart. As I return to the keyboard I remember that my faith, my spirituality isn’t something I can make sense of through my mind alone, it is truly an experience of the heart.
This is new to me and maybe to some of you as well. I’m so used to relying on my thinking or intellect, trying to reason or rationalize my faith. So often in life I’ve tried to “figure it all out.” But when I step back and observe myself, I see that my thinking and perceptions of reality are often flawed and unreliable.
Recently, through my part time job at the hospital, I became acquainted with a man that I will call Joseph. Joseph is an older man who lived alone and had suffered a heart attack. However, during the recovery process Joseph began to get disoriented and confused. In his confusion, and being a war veteran, Joseph began to believe that he was in a military facility and that the hospital staff was keeping him against his will. Well the more he believed this, the more true it became. The staff became convinced that it would not be safe to send him home alone with such confusion, so they kept him there for further observation. His confusion continued and his anxiety increased until finally he tried to attack some of the staff. Security and the police had to intervene. The hospital decided to assign an aide to be with him on “one to one” observation from that point on while tests were being run to determine the physical origin of his confusion.
I spent three eight hour shifts with Joseph. At first he despised me as being part of “them” that were plotting against him. But in time, as I showed him kindness, he began to trust me more. I reminded him over and over where he was and what had happened, and assured him that I was there to keep him safe. Eventually he thought of me as an old friend that had come to visit him. He opened his heart to me, telling me of his wife who had passed, his years in the service, the horrors of war, and how much he missed his little dog. Then he just cried and cried.
The hospital determined that he had had some minor strokes after his heart attack that had probably caused short term memory loss and thus the confusion. I don’t know what became of Joseph after that but I do know that our lives touched each other for a reason.
Like Joseph, my perceptions of reality are often determined by my unstable, ever changing, easily altered state of mind. But Spirit is there the whole time reminding me that He is there to keep me safe and that all things are working for my good no matter how I perceive them to be right now. Like it says in Proverbs 3:5-6, “Trust in the LORD with all your heart; and lean not on your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge Him, and He shall direct your paths.”
Then there was another encounter that I had recently with an old friend named Christi who had been diagnosed with early onset of Alzheimer’s a few years ago. She was out for a walk when our paths crossed (what a coincidence). She had trouble forming full sentences and I was concerned whether or not her husband knew where she was. After our encounter I followed her as she walked. She eventually ended up at home greeted by her husband with a warm and loving embrace. He invited me in for a visit.
He explained to me how the Alzheimer’s had advanced but how Christi still remembered her favorite walking route. Christi suddenly grabbed my hand and took me in front of a large full length mirror. She introduced me to her friend in the mirror with jesters and babbling. When I was getting ready to leave I looked deep into my friends eyes and felt that heart to heart connection. I told her I loved her and how good it was to see her again. She smiled with a tear in her eye and said the only full sentence during our whole visit, “God is good!”
It would seem that the only true sanity that we can find is to get “out of our minds” and into our hearts. Sound crazy?
Unity Youth Center for Positive Living
by Brian Gillum
Youth Ed Coordinator