TW/CW. This is about a deathbed confession that left me shaken.

My elderly patient, as he died, confessed to the murder of my ancestors.

“Forgive me” he says. He grabs my shirt with both hands. Terror in his face. “Are you Korean? Japanese? Vietnamese?”

Before I can answer, My patient says, “Chaplain, I need you to forgive me. I need you to absolve me. I did something horrible. I did something to your people.”

Suddenly, I notice that I throw his hands off me & step back.

“Please,” he says. “What I did to them … I can’t stop hearing their voices.”

There is a look sometimes in a patient’s face when they’re sharing their abuse & pain & trauma.

It’s an anxious hesitation:

They are sure that I won’t believe their story.

They’ve suffered a form of *betrayal trauma* in which all their trustworthy people have let them down. ➡️ This form of betrayal trauma goes like this:

They’ve tried to tell their painful story to their closest friends. Or reported it in their institutions. And what they got back was disbelief. Ridicule. Shame. The law & the media & HR turned them away.

Why is this so common?
➡️

A ghost story.

My patient needs to find her husband. She has no phone or number. She says, “I was just with him, I bet he’s worried sick.”

I do a NOK search. Find a number. But his brother answers.

He tells me, “I’m sorry. My brother died years ago. His wife keeps forgetting.” I decide not to tell my patient.

And I think she was signaling something true about grief: By forgetting her husband died, wasn’t she somehow remembering him?

Her mind couldn’t recall, but wasn’t her body grieving the way it needed to? By remembering through the loss of memory?

I’ve seen this story too many times:

My patient’s daughter has to decide how her father will die. Continue resuscitation or sign the DNR, Do Not Resuscitate?

She wants her father to die in peace. Her family wants to keep trying.

Then she asks me, “What would you do?” ➡️ Even when the family knows there is no chance, it’s an impossible decision.

Who wouldn’t want to keep trying? What if this is the *one* miracle story? What if just one more minute of compressions?

But 2, 3, 10 attempts later: When is it time to let our loved one peacefully die?

There’s one patient I still think about all the time: Kyrone.

I was the very last person to see him. When I remember him, he reminds me what we really need from each other. What this is all about.

Kyrone is young, unhoused, trying his best to smile. He is dying. He tells me, ➡️ “They think my kind is tougher. Like we can just take it. Sleeping under bridges, eating from dumpsters. You can’t imagine it, right? I didn’t get any tougher. I feel all of it, like anybody would. I can’t bear it, chap.”

Kyrone sees my face. He says,

I need to tell you this story. It sounds unbelievable (and I’ve altered details to protect privacy). It taught me we can never really understand until we’re up close.

My patient was dying, but their family kept insisting on resuscitation. For weeks. It became an ethics case. ➡️ There is a point when resuscitation becomes cruel. The compressions, chemicals, shocks—it irreparably harms the body. It is almost torture.

But I noticed something about this family. They understood their loved one was dying. Still they did not give up. What were they hiding?➡️

Here’s a quick list of religious phrases that get abused. Can you add to this list?

🚩 “God is in control.”

✳️ Even if true, this can sound as callous as, “It’s not my problem.” And it does not absolve you of accountability, rolling up your sleeves, doing the hard work. ➡️ 🚩 “This happened for a reason.”

✳️ I know it’s comforting to think that everything has a plan. It’s hard to think otherwise. But things can happen for no reason, or a bad one. Knowing this is when we are free to confront it head on.

I’ve been a hospital chaplain now for eight years at hundreds of deathbeds. I want to tell you something I’ve witnessed.

Most people, at the end, realize they’ve spent a lot of their life hiding. Sometimes by choice, or because they could not safely choose to be themselves. ➡️ At a deathbed, if my patient can communicate, they show they’re dying two deaths: the one they’re dying & then the death of the life they really wanted to live.

But in their dying, some are also free. To tell me who they are. What they wanted. Who they had to hide. Finally free.

I need to tell you this story about “accountability partners.”

About 15 years ago when I was more involved in the evangelical church, I had an accountability partner. We vowed to check each other about behaviors, “Bible reading,” prayer life, etc. It blew up & I lost a friend. The issue was my “accountability partner” got really carried away with his newfound power. He had permission to call me out. This can do funny things to a person. He started calling out EVERYTHING. Moralizing even the way I entered a room or spoke “too loud.” On the other hand,

A few years ago, a pastor took me out to coffee to tell me about his church. He said two things that assured I would never attend.

The first. As I had been a pastor, I told him how hard it was for me to write sermons until I learned it was a way to love people. He disagreed. ➡️ The pastor told me that sermons were a way to direct people to obey God’s Word. I got that, but I brought up how people like me were seeing suffering all time at the hospital, and that each of us were dealing daily with hurts & life. He said “The Bible will fix that.” Hmm.

I was at a deathbed of a young patient surrounded by family he had cut off—my patient had been radicalized into alt-right rhetoric. His family kept trying to reach him. The man was too far gone.

I’ve seen this play out more than once. At least once, the cause of death was covid. Saw a tweet that was basically “If you don’t cut off conservative/alt-right/Republican friends, you’re not serious about change.”

I get this 100%. We each choose boundaries & none of us want to be complicit. But I have family who are deceived. I can’t let them die in deception.

A patient was yelling at someone, then at me. I had a few options.

1) Call security.
2) Keep walking.
3) Go confront him.
4) Go find his nurse. (The RNs love this. But really. They don’t.)
5) Ask him what he needed.

You might have guessed I picked 5. Here’s what happened: I got up as close to this patient as possible—now my patient—an arm’s length. Just out of striking distance. I asked, “What do you need right now?”

No kidding, his mouth hung open. He stared at my hair. Back to me.

“Hungry,” he said. “I’m hungry. But I mean, I need real food.”

I snapped at the doctor’s office today. After rescheduling 3 times & having to bring in my 2 year old on my day off bc I couldn’t get a sitter, at her naptime because it was their only open time, then 3 people after me getting in before me, I politely but firmly said I was upset. I never ever make a public scene & I wouldn’t have even cared to wait for hours, but being told this was a 5 minute visit & seeing my daughter softly tell me she was tired but was okay waiting for me: I was more upset she was exhausted bc of this office’s poor communication.

I really believe the deconstruction movement is important & needed. I’m always 100% supportive of the wounded, abused, abandoned, & survivors.

But I largely stay out of the online discussions on deconstruction. Here’s why. ➡️ As usual, important discussions like deconstruction are getting taken up by privileged popular platforms. Mostly white men & women have made it one-dimensional. Black, Brown, Asian, LGBTQ+ are wounded by the more insidious elements of evangelicalism. Privilege can’t shield us.

I am a member of a Korean UMC church which had the vote to stay or leave. We were given turns to speak. I was surprised & encouraged to see two elders want to stay to love our LGBTQ neighbors. But no one else wanted to speak. I spoke at the last second. Heart is still pounding. The context: The Korean church in the US is very conservative. My father-in-law presented the case to leave the UMC. The cases were the same: no to the LGBTQ community. To speak up, I was essentially painting myself as a target. I don’t say this to brag. I almost didn’t speak.

I visited a Korean patient, but my Korean speaking is lost from trauma & assimilation. I can understand a bit, but I have a verbal block. When I saw this patient in their crisis, something unlocked. So much of my language flooded back. I understood her. I even spoke with her. My Korean patient knew I was trying hard to understand. Maybe just seeing a familiar face was a very small comfort for them. My patient was able to process their feelings freely, no longer behind the loneliness of translation. And I understood the untranslatable. I remembered.

For Lent, I read the whole Bible in 40 days. It’s my 7th time through the Bible. Not easy. But reading it this way gives a big sky view.

Some things jumped out to me more this time. Not new things but mainly this: Scripture really, really cares about the poor & exploited. A LOT. Most if not all the Scripture passages on judgment are against those who amass inordinate wealth, subjugate others with state powers & weaponized authority, hide behind pious religion, or abuse both the church & the vulnerable. Sound familiar?

So my wife & I attended an evangelical megachurch for the 1st three years we were married. We tried hard, but after Trump got elected it got worse. But one of the main things that bothered me was “The Banter,” the impulse to improv outwit each other. Please allow me to share: In Bible study/small group, every single attendee would make the quickest rapid-fire joke until it formed an out-of-control joke train, building steam until the last one-liner got us rolling. I admit I enjoyed it. But those who didn’t care for banter, like my wife, were left out.

I worked at a nonprofit for the unhoused for three years. We partnered with many churches. I grew certain if church leaders do not learn about trauma, it is impossible to fully love people. Churches often measure in morality, through a lens of “sin” but hardly ever suffering. When I led the spiritual trauma-informed care for churches, I’d see pastors get upset. At least one walked out. One told me “that’s enabling these poor people.” And, “These homeless just need a Bible in their hands.” And, “I’ve been pastoring forty years, I know what I’m doing.”

I have to tell you this weird wild story from about ten years ago when the Korean American church I served at merged with a white church. Ended with racial hostility & a shocking Sunday praise song & a bad split. It began when the Korean church needed a new building. ⬇️ A big white church across town was about to close its doors permanently. But our Korean church decided to buy the building & then invited any white church members to please stay & join our English speaking service. Many of the white members stayed. Much rejoicing. But …

After 15 months in therapy, I’ve found
1) my therapist can’t do the work for me.
2) It can’t change systemic forces. It helps me to tolerate a system that shouldn’t exist in the first place.
3) It gives me energy to fight that system too.
4) Without therapy, I wouldn’t be here. 5) Digging deep into trauma is traumatizing. Therapy requires self-care.
6) Therapists can be wrong. A good therapist will know that.
7) Therapy is difficult to schedule & pay for. It’s a privilege & should be subsidized.
8) Sometimes it’s just one line that changes everything.