Pastor Mark E.

Sell

The Emotional Tsunami

You might have experienced yourself. The doctor enters the room and looks down and

then up to meet your eyes. It seems like hours, but is only seconds and you hear, “I’m sorry, the

news is not good.”

She pauses. Her lips begin to move, but you hear nothing. Like a delayed echo, the sound

begins to hit your ears but in slow motion. Finally, clarity strikes, “There isn’t anything else we

can do.” Deafening silence. The doctor looks directly into your eyes …, “This might be a good

time to look into hospice.” An emotional tsunami hits you.

Hope and Mercy abound in the End

As a pastor and former hospice chaplain, I experienced the emotional tsunami with

congregational members, the community, and with my own parents (both died of cancer and

were on hospice). Hope and mercy multiplied a hundred-fold when hospice cared for me and my

family when facing “the end.”

In the tumultuous waters of the emotional tsunami, we feel shock, hurt, relief, anger,

sorrow, and denial all at once and in cycles. Tears slowly well up in eyes and gently roll down

cheeks. Some people are angry. Others (often the patient) are relieved though saddened. The

thoughts uncomfortably hang in the air; “Now what?” “Are we giving up?”

Facing life’s end, or being on hospice does not grant victory to disease and death. For

Christians it is a blessed time, especially once we understand hospice.

What is Hospice?
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Hospice care neither prolongs life nor hastens death. For Christians, it is about

“Thy will be done.” Hospice benefits those whose life expectancy is six months or less (and is

renewable every six months as needed). If things turn around, the patient can withdraw from

hospice. A doctor's referral is required, however, anyone involved in the person’s life may

initiate the possibility of hospice and/or palliative (comfort) care. Most hospice care takes place

wherever the patient calls home.

Hospice’s goal is to improve the quality of a patient's last days through comfort

(palliative) care. It is specialized medical care, and, most importantly, pain management. As a

hospice chaplain and a caregiver of my parents, I learned that there is no reason why anyone

needs to suffer from pain and discomfort as they await the fulfillment of their baptism sleep in

Christ.

The hospice team is physicians, nurses, social workers, a chaplain/your pastor, nurse’s

aids, and volunteers. They compassionately serve the patient and family. They deal with the

emotional, social, and spiritual impact of the disease on the caregivers and then offer

bereavement services to families afterward.

Hope and Mercy in a Decision

Lutherans understand sin, death, and resurrection. On earth, we are the church militant and

suffer all the vagaries of war physically and spiritually as did Christ. Considering hospice at

life’s end is not giving up. It’s acknowledging and rejoicing in God’s gifts and the possibilities of

a new call, a new station in life because our life doesn’t end when the doctors can’t do anything

more.
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Lutherans are unapologetically pro-life, from conception to the grave and beyond. Life’s

struggle at the end is a river of life, a gift from God, to experience His hope and mercy. It

overflows victoriously against pain and disease. The hospice team is a gift of God’s creation. In

Christian freedom, we can say “yes” or “no” to hospice. By grace, we are free to make that

decision.

To make that decision, we don’t pretend to know God’s will when He purposely hides it.

Lutherans are like everyone else. We experience emotional, physical, and spiritual tribulations of

life-ending illnesses. However, we do know God’s will through our baptismal waters that first

created the river of hope and mercy, which flows through suffering and death.

In your baptized thinking you use your reason and all your senses to weigh the pros and cons.

God does not remove this responsibility. We make all decisions in life by grace, through faith,

which clings to the work of Christ. Our best decisions are not sinless. Thus, we decide, repent,

and receive absolution for realized and unrealized sin and enjoy our daily resurrection. Sin has

corrupted our flesh and decays God’s good creation. That is why we find ourselves needing to

make life-changing decisions about our life and death. However, we are born again.

All things do work out for our best (Romans 8:28ff). In the midst of this emotional raging

river, we know that we faced death long before we faced cancer or decisions about hospice. God

crucified us with Jesus in baptism. While we feel like we are going down, the Spirit and water is

the victory we desperately grasp onto and by faith, the raging river becomes the healing water of

eternal life. Our baptism exchanges our sin for Christ’s holiness and the end has already come.

Resurrection is our whole life. Christ died and we live. “For the death he [Jesus]died he died to

sin, once for all, but the life he lives he lives to God. So you also must consider yourselves dead
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to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus.” (Romans 6:10, 11) The baptized child of God dies in

repentance and rises in baptismal forgiveness daily. In the face of decisions about terminal

illness and hospice, death’s sword is already sheathed. We can confidently decide because we

know God’s will, as we sing,

Death, you cannot end my gladness:

I am baptized into Christ!
When I die, I leave all sadness
To inherit paradise!
Though I lie in dust and ashes
Faith's assurance brightly flashes:
Baptism has the strength divine
To make life immortal mine. (LSB 594, v4)

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