One Small Way, Lord

A day in the life of a VA hospital chaplain

- By CHAPLAIN MAJOR DAVID MILLER, Marion, Indiana

I walked into my office at the VA Medical Center in Marion, Indiana, that August morning at 7:30 A.M. and glanced at the sticky note on my desk with my current prayer list. I always took a few minutes for solitary prayer before I began my rounds to check in with patients—my congregants.

I went through the list, then finished with the same prayer that I said every morning.

Lord, let me see you work in one small way today.

It was breakfast time, so I walked through the dining rooms on a couple of the wards, greeting my long-term patients by first name or nickname. They responded with their usual friendly banter.

“Hey, Padre, what are you doing up so early?”

“Pastor, do you want my yogurt?”

“Chaplain, I woke up on the wrong side of the bed.”

I chatted with them and noticed that some of my congregants were not in the dining room. I headed to the hospice ward.

My first stop was Steve’s room. He was a long-term resident in his seventies who had been seriously ill for almost a week. I squirted on some hand sanitizer and walked in, calling out, “Good morning, Steve! It’s Chaplain David.” Steve lay in bed breathing slowly, his face blank. He didn’t respond to my greeting.

I’d met Steve three years earlier, and we'd become fast friends. He was mostly paralyzed and struggled with moral injury, the deep psychological and spiritual distress that can arise when a person faces situations that go against their values or beliefs. He had served in Vietnam and carried a lot of guilt and shame over what he’d done and seen in the war. He said he relied on God just to make it through each day.

I would push his wheelchair to the hospital store—the canteen, as the residents called it—where he'd always buy a Dr Pepper. We would sit outside together, sometimes talking, sometimes just enjoying the sunshine.