This
is the client story shared at the Pastoral Counseling Centers of Tennessee’s
Fundraising Concert Last Night. It
includes a few more details that time allowed last night. Dan’s story reflects some of what is so
meaningful about the work of Pastoral Counseling.
Dan was one of the first clients I ever
saw when I came to the Pastoral Counseling Centers of Tennessee (PCCT) as a trainee.
I saw him regularly for several years. At one time, Dan had been a fairly successful
musician, but that was before he was diagnosed with a pretty serious mental
illness. When I first met him, Dan was
receiving medication and case management from another agency, but he had come
to the Pastoral Counseling Center because he had a strong sense of faith and he
wanted counseling that would reflect his love of God. He had had seen at least two counselors
before me at PCCT. Early in my work with Dan, he was very focused
on his own needs and had a very limited way of looking at the world. He had a very simplistic and concrete way of
seeing the world; almost childlike in many ways. He
sometimes still had delusions of being attacked by Satan and being burned by
the fires of hell. He would call me in
between our sessions sometimes when he was feeling anxious about
something and tell me that he was being burned from the inside out by the fires
of hell. I had no way to make sense of
this, but I would listen to him and talk with him about the various anxieties
in his life, and I would pray with him.
As we talked through the years, he would sometimes tell me of a dark
time in his life when he was not medicated for his mental illness and when he
often used illegal drugs and alcohol. He
told me of other things that he had done that he was ashamed of and we would
talk about those things. Dan had a
guitar, but he had not played in a long time because he associated the guitar
with those dark times in his life. He
said he missed playing and so I began to help him think of ways that God could
redeem his guitar and take it back from those dark places. We talked about how his guitar could be a way
of mediating God in his life and the creativity of playing could connect him to
God’s creativity. He began playing his
guitar regularly and reported that it was a soothing activity. He would play when anxious and found some
relief in that. Though he had very
little money and resources, he began to save money and periodically he would purchase
other guitars until he own at least four different types of guitars. He grew to enjoy finding the various sounds
and tunes he could get from each of these guitars.
Over time, Dan had moved from being focused
more on himself to telling me that he really wanted to figure out how to show
love to others. He really wanted to find
a way to share the gift of his music with others. He developed an amazing sense of
gratitude. In the past few years he had
been getting “meals on wheels” and he expressed gratitude for those meals every
day. He would describe to me the content
of the meals in detail to me and then would say, “I can’t believe how lucky I
am that I get this great food every day.”
At Christmas he would sometimes receive boxes from a local church and he
would become tearful as he would describe to me the contents of those boxes and
he would say, “I can’t believe people are so good to me.”
When Dan would feel overwhelmed by the
things of his life, he would come and talk things through with me and he would
always come back to an affirmation that he knew that God loved him and things
would be okay. I tried to work with him
so that his experience that God would provide him could help him avoid feeling
anxious, but he seemed to always have something that he was concerned
about. Dan took the bus to our offices
and he would sometimes arrive an hour or more before his appointment. I would apologize to him that he had to wait
to see me and he would say, “It’s okay Chris, the people here are so nice and
it is so peaceful here, I can just feel the love of God when I am here.”
Throughout the time I knew him, Dan would
sometime wind up in the hospital with various medical issues. A year or so ago, he was in the hospital and
had a pretty serious condition that he feared would take his life. Because he was so afraid of dying, he called
the office and asked if I would come to visit him. I know it is not in the counseling rule book,
but I went to visit him in the hospital.
He was panicked as he told me that he was afraid to die because he was
afraid of going to hell. I told him, “Dan,
I don’t know anyone who has loved God more than you. I cannot imagine why you would wind up in hell.” Dan told
me that there were three things that he wanted to tell me that he had never
told me before. There in his hospital
room, Dan confessed to me the secrets that he had never told me in the years
that we had been visiting. I have to
confess that there was nothing in that confession that shocked me and nothing
that I thought was that bad. However, for him, these were the dark things
that made him feel ashamed – things he had feared confessing to anyone and
things that he felt would keep him from God’s grace. We
talked that day about scriptures of forgiveness that he knew and I prayed with him
that God would forgive him and comfort him.
Dan was released from the hospital a couple of weeks later and moved to
a skilled nursing facility. I got a call
a few weeks later that Dan had died. I
felt sure that Dan had died with a bit more peace than he had lived with in his
life. Dan was one of the more
challenging clients I ever had and I know we gave him help and comfort in his
life, but I learned so much from my time with him. In the later years of our relationship as he
would find joy in the simple things in life and as he would be grateful for the
smallest of gifts he challenged me to deal with my own materialism and to
appreciate all that I had. Dan was
grateful to God though he did not have much of what we generally might think
brings happiness. He did a great deal
with very few resources. Dan did amazing
things with his limited resources. He
carefully budgeted his money and he would pay me $15 cash each time at each
session he had with me. I am grateful
for the donors who support the work of PCCT with their time and money because
they make it possible for people like Dan to be seen by our counselors. It is truly a blessing to be a part of this
work.
