In God's Shadow

Here at The Church Cares, we aim to nurture congregational care helpers. That’s why we’re proud to offer free high-quality support to those who want to pray, care, and engage more effectively with the hurting world around them.

By Luan Sy

Associate Clinical Social Worker and doctoral student in Regent’s PhD program in Counselor Education and Supervision. She is a Church Implementation Liaison for The Church Cares.

“Oh boy. This is like a bad made-for-TV movie: Awake in the OR. I need to let the anesthesiologist know to put me out again…except I can’t move a muscle!”

Apparently, this is how my brain works in the middle of my own code blue.

That morning, my husband and I had gone into the hospital for the routine induction of our second child. After a brief labor, we held our beautiful baby girl and looked forward to a lifetime of adventure as a family of four. About an hour after her birth, however, I suffered a massive, arterial hemorrhage. It led to an emergency hysterectomy, a 10-15 minute cardiac arrest (for which I was conscious - see above), the transfusion of nearly twice my body’s blood volume, and an induced coma on an ice mat to preserve what was left of me.

The short version of the story is that I was miraculously saved from almost certain death, complete with metaphysical experiences and a theophany. My recovery was so unexpected that I was discharged exactly one week later, with a newborn, a two-and-a-half year old, and a husband in medical residency.

Our church community, where my husband and I taught Sunday School and led a community group, became a lifeline. Members gathered in the hospital lobby to pray the night of the code blue. A meal train was set up and lasted over a month, more casseroles than we could possibly keep up with. Friends visited before and after discharge, sat by my bed, brought their children over to play with our older daughter. Our out-of-town friends marveled at the depth of our community.

Then, about a week after returning home, I began having dreams in which I felt paralyzed again, convinced that I could see the piercing brightness of the surgical lights through my closed eyelids. My husband would gently ground me to our bedroom, our bed, and himself. I developed “Picasso migraines,” in which my entire field of vision shattered, because my brain couldn’t process the visual input. Before long, I met the diagnostic criteria for posttraumatic stress disorder.

That’s when I began to notice a certain dualism creeping in from my fellow believers. The medical recovery from the bleed was seen as a casserole-worthy affliction; the PTSD was not. Instead of casseroles, I received reminders not to have a “spirit of fear” and to focus on the miracle God had performed before our very eyes. How could I possibly be sad or scared after that? Had I read this Bible passage, that inspirational book? Once, I was asked if perhaps my symptoms continued because I liked the attention.

Same person. Same precipitating event. Two very different responses to physical versus mental health suffering.

Inside, this is what was really happening: At the age of 29, I lost the ability to bear children. I lived in a state of disorienting shock for months afterward. I was bereft, physically, socially, emotionally, and spiritually.  I went in to have a baby and emerged missing organs and covered with scars. My dreams of a large family were abruptly beyond reach. I was haunted by guilt and shame. Shouldn’t I just be grateful to be alive and have two healthy children? Didn’t others have it worse?

Worst of all, I was disoriented spiritually. How would I trust and engage with a God I no longer understood, a God who allows these utterly traumatic events to happen? Who could help me bear the intensity of these experiences and my emotions about them? Like so many before me, I found myself in a dry and parched land where there was no water (Ps. 63:1). That place in the crook of His wing that once felt so safe no longer did. I was in shadow.

As I wandered that fractured landscape of trauma and loss, certain realizations dawned. There would probably be no quick fix, no immediate cure to my pain. God was unlikely to answer all of my “why” and “why me” questions. An hour a week in my therapist’s office and a monthly check-in with the psychiatrist wasn’t likely enough to heal me. I needed companions to walk with me through this desert place.

Over time, with the help of skilled clinicians, my infinitely gentle and patient husband, and a few faithful friends who could hear anything without judgment, I began to notice that God has a certain way of engaging with dry and parched souls. In the slow process of piecing together my harrowing story, I realized that the shadowland in which I found myself was still God’s shadow.

David, who wrote about the dry and parched land in Psalm 63, also wrote in the same psalm about singing in the shadow of God’s wings. Though all I could sense was His shadow for many months, he was near. He had not forsaken me. My grief, questions, and pain were in relationship with him. And somehow, that was enough, to endure, to live with what had happened, and to rise each day and follow his lead. That path eventually led me from a career in architecture to clinical social work and pastoral ministry, and now to doctoral studies at Regent.

I also came to see that our church community had done their very best for us. It wasn’t for lack of love that I felt alone. It was for lack of a theology of suffering, a category for lament, and skills for attuning to and being with another’s pain.

That is where The Church Cares seeks to bridge the gap: with a realistic assessment of the care needs within the Church, a robust philosophy of ministry, and practical training resources for carers. So that together, we can learn to bear one another’s burdens and reflect the divine empathy of Christ.