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With Jackie Whyte
100 Plays2 years ago
Today on PEP Talk, Andy and Kristi speak with a chaplain working in a hospice setting. Here, mortality is a daily reality, as are experiences of suffering. What is it like to talk with folks and share the hope of Christ in such an environment? Although most of us aren't in that position, many of us will go through the process of dying with loved ones, and our guest Jackie helps us think through how to approach it.
Jackie Whyte serves as the Chaplain working at Northern Ireland Hospice and Children's Hospice. Having given his life to Jesus as a teenager, he worked in engineering before moving into Christian ministry. Jackie enjoys listening to Deacon Blue, watching football and walking sections of the Camino de Santiago de Compostela. He lives in Carrickfergus with his wife Nicola.
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Transcript
Introduction and Weather Chat
00:00:09
Speaker
Hello and welcome to Pap Talk, the Persuasive Evangelism Podcast. My name is Kristy Mayer and I'm joined by Andy Bannister at this lovely afternoon. Andy, how are you doing? I am doing remarkably well, Kristy. The sun is shining in Scotland. It happens one day a year. So I'm on top of the world. Lovely, on top of the world. I'm glad to hear that,
Moving Woes and Back Pain
00:00:29
Speaker
Andy. What have you been up to today?
00:00:31
Speaker
Well, I'm packing boxes because we have a house move coming up. So I'm all surrounded by boxes and my study shelves are bare and I've always put my back out. So I'm glad I'm sitting down. Well, I'm excited about your
Introducing Jackie White
00:00:45
Speaker
move anyway. But apart from Andy, we're also joined by the wonderful Jackie White. Jackie, it's a joy to meet you. Well, again, we tried recording this a little while ago, didn't we? It didn't quite work. So it's a joy to see you again. And thank you so much for joining us
Role of a Chaplain at Hospices
00:00:58
Speaker
this morning. How are you doing?
00:00:59
Speaker
I'm doing good. The sun's been shining every single day here 365 days a year. Sometimes we don't see it but it's always here. I was in Belfast this last weekend so I happen to know that's not strictly
00:01:15
Speaker
Although it is a wonderful city in all ways. Good, thank you Kristy. Jackie, it's a real honour actually for us to be able to speak with you today because you're a chaplain, aren't you? It's an adults and children's hospice that's based in Northern Ireland.
00:01:35
Speaker
Yes, we're very blessed to have a number of hospices in the country. This is Northern Ireland Hospice and Northern Ireland Children's Hospice, which are local hospices. So yeah, we've married Curie as well and we have Macmillan support. And actually there's a lot of crossover that are working together across those hospices. But yeah, I've been working part-time as the hospice chaplain alongside one of my colleagues for two years and then the last six months I've gone full-time after he retired.
00:02:04
Speaker
I was just going to say, Jackie, that's really hard and heavy work with great responsibility. We'd love to hear what does your work look like just day to day? What does the day in the life of Jackie White as a chaplain look like?
00:02:19
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, there's no doubt that the work is a huge responsibility, but there's a lot of joy and not a lot of joy and peace in both the children's hospice and the adults' hospice. Children's hospice is slightly different than adults in that it's mostly children who are life limited, not necessarily at the end of life. And so it's a lot of respite care, allowing their parents to have some respite, allowing them to have some respite as well, a lot of therapeutic support.
00:02:48
Speaker
So for children's hospice I sit on the floor and read stories and get my face painted by kids who are struggling to communicate in many other ways. I also have the lovely opportunity of speaking to their parents and in some cases where maybe there's some anti-natal palliative care babies with us, I get to do some of the religious support for them like
00:03:11
Speaker
and maybe a naming ceremony or praying for a family and helping. Just giving Mum and Dad a good listening ear and praying with them.
Common Spiritual Concerns
00:03:21
Speaker
Children's is one afternoon a week. The rest of my time is really spent at adults. It means I'm involved in nearly every aspect of
00:03:28
Speaker
the hospice life. That is supporting patients face to face, supporting families, supporting staff through the pandemic. There's been an awful lot of, I would say there's been an increase in the support we give the staff. An awful lot of staff would come to us for prayer. We actually write a daily prayer diary that goes out to the whole staff and quite often they will submit prayer requests to us for that.
00:03:52
Speaker
There's also lovely opportunities to be involved in teaching. There's a thing called pause to reflect where we take one day a month and just reflect on the patients who have died in that month and the work that we've done with them.
00:04:08
Speaker
But actually, more than 65% of our patients would be discharged from hospice. They don't come here necessarily to die. They are all in palliative care. They are all terminal. But we may see a patient three or four times in their journey and can build up a wee bit of a relationship with them.
00:04:27
Speaker
And I also get sent out into the community as well to see some patients in their homes and those patients in their homes would be particularly struggling with some religious issues, some spiritual issues that our nurses as a chaplain can give them some support with.
00:04:46
Speaker
I'm very
Addressing Suffering and Existence
00:04:47
Speaker
well accepted and I think appreciated, I don't mean me personally, I mean chaplaincy is very much appreciated in this hospice as I imagine most hospices. All of our consultants will give us referrals and in fact they include us in every patient's journey and it's only if a patient specifically doesn't want us that we're not involved and that's very rare for that to happen.
00:05:13
Speaker
I mean, I guess it's a broad question, Jackie, but, you know, when often, I think, you know, we live in a culture where people forget, try and push away questions to death and dying, forget about them. Obviously, you're dealing with people who, that should be sailed, really, and reality is bearing down on them. What are some of the spiritual issues that raises for people? Perhaps people who haven't thought about spirituality or religion,
00:05:38
Speaker
now they're facing end of life. Are there some sort of themes that you've seen for things that come up for people that you can perhaps help them think around? It's interesting because people ask us a lot of questions which we would class as spiritual but not necessarily all of them necessarily religious. So we would class a discussion around the relationship with their family as being a spiritual issue about how they're interacting with other people.
00:06:04
Speaker
And so there's really only probably four main questions that we would deal with and everything comes into these four questions. And one would be what is dying like? Another one would be what's going to happen to my family when I die?
00:06:21
Speaker
Another one would be, what is the afterlife like? So most of the questions are not really specifically religious questions, but there are none again questions that will come up.
00:06:38
Speaker
I'm involved in the Alpha Course and I think the Alpha Course teaching that nearly everybody prays. My experience is that's right and here most people will tell us they do pray. Quite a few people will say they don't follow an organized church or religion.
Inspired by Randy Newman
00:06:56
Speaker
but that they pray and so probably part and parcel of what we do is we maybe help them think about well who are they praying to and how can we direct their praying in the right direction. I find myself often and just as I am praying I find myself often praying for both myself and the patient and anybody else in the room
00:07:18
Speaker
for the Lord's forgiveness, for our sin and giving Him thanks for the cross and what it means and just helping all of us to focus our praying in the right direction. In terms of specific questions, I have been asked by one of our patients what to expect in the afterlife and I've tried to learn a wee bit from, there's a great resource called Questioning Evangelism by Randy Newman.
00:07:47
Speaker
And that book takes a thesis that whenever Jesus was asked a question, he rarely answered it with a direct answer. He quite often gave a question and the whole point of that was to lead the question or to think more and to understand more.
00:08:03
Speaker
So on that occasion I thought what would be a good answer here and I shot up a very quiet prayer and I asked the question, well what would you like the answer to your question to be? And he thought for a minute and he said, I'd like to be welcomed into heaven with open arms.
00:08:22
Speaker
And it was an elderly man, he was in his 80s and he was emotional with his answer and it was a tender moment and it gave me an opportunity to help him investigate a wee bit about what he meant by that and to direct his thinking to what the teaching of the Bible is on that.
00:08:39
Speaker
and we went on a journey and that patient was with us for
Methods for Spiritual Support
00:08:42
Speaker
a while. He was then discharged home and I had opportunity to visit him in his home as well and all along that it was an opportunity to support him and particularly to pray with him along those lines. Thank you Jackie. You also mentioned that the question of suffering just comes up quite a number of times and
00:09:03
Speaker
We've been talking to a few people today who said the same, and they have been, of course, working in emergency services. I just imagine that working in a hospice, you're greeted with that question even more powerfully. How do you go about responding to a question like that? How can God exist? I'm currently dying of cancer. What do you say?
00:09:23
Speaker
Yeah, I'm very careful to be very sensitive and to not give an off-pad answer. I have tried to think about that question myself a lot. I've preached on it. I have always avoided
00:09:40
Speaker
giving a very rote answer to that. Because I'm not sure there is one. And if a patient is angry with the situation they're in, I'll agree with them in their anger. I'll agree with them that it's not fair. I'll agree with them that there's an injustice over what they're going through. I'll try to direct people to consider should they turn to God or turn on God.
00:10:06
Speaker
And that actually, even if they turn on God, that doesn't necessarily mean that's the end and that they can still turn to God after having turned on him. I'll try and show examples from the scriptures of that, you know, and even the deep understanding that there is in the Psalms over the angst and the lament that there is. And I try to help patients find Psalms. We read Psalms together, which try to give words to patients' struggles.
00:10:37
Speaker
I'm not sure I've had too many people who have wrestled in the hospice with the philosophical question of suffering, which therefore becomes the reason for not believing in God. It comes up now and again. Again, I'll just be very respectful, very willing to listen. I think it shows, if somebody is angry with God, I think it shows a good starting point. At least they believe there is a God to be angry with.
Stories of Suffering and Faith
00:11:03
Speaker
And there has been a rare opportunity to do this, but if there's an opportunity to show them the suffering God Himself and to direct them to how God Himself went through the suffering He went through on our behalf, then I certainly try to do that.
00:11:23
Speaker
It is interesting. A lot of people will talk about their own suffering and then they will temper it and say, but it could be worse. And they'll give me an example of how it could be worse. So yeah, I think that we certainly must listen to the question behind the
00:11:44
Speaker
the objection. My father died when I was 20 and my younger brother was 17 and my younger brother told me at that point that he said, how could I believe in the God that allows that type of suffering? And there was a degree of my younger brother probably using that as a
00:12:03
Speaker
A reason for slipping away from God that had started to happen before my father died. But there's no doubt there was a reality in his questioning. And thankfully he did make a return to the Lord later on in his life. But he was hurt. He was broken hearted.
00:12:20
Speaker
And I think we have to really care for the brokenhearted and not just try to give an answer, but whenever we have opportunity to give an answer, I think in a winsome way, the way it talks about in Peter, if we can give a reason for the belief that we have, the hope that we have.
00:12:36
Speaker
And my own personal journey into faith is one that's rooted in suffering. My parents had never crossed the door of a church until they were 39, 40 as far as I had ever known. But through my mum's illness of Huntington's disease and my dad's mental illness, both of them came to faith.
00:12:58
Speaker
And then both of them died within about six or seven years. They were both dead by the time I was 20. But both of them, and I came to faith through the change I saw in them. And I'm very, very thankful for it. So the suffering is a reality. But that sense that what Satan means for evil, God means for good, that's been my personal experience. And I try my best to help folks see that.
Supporting Those in Suffering
00:13:27
Speaker
One thing happened recently when I was sharing with someone, it was actually not, this is not a hospice patient, this was someone I'd been asked to visit in hospital who had had a near-death experience and she was very aware that she was having a near-death experience and she told me that she cried out that God would save her and not let her die and yet she was still angry with God because
00:13:52
Speaker
somehow or other she hadn't noticed that three weeks later she was still living and she hadn't died and simply in asking the questions I went through that whole process again of asking leading questions she came to the realization in her answer she said actually God has answered my question and I am alive
00:14:11
Speaker
And I thought it was a great example of people living in the state that they have got themselves into at one point, but not being able to see beyond that, not being able to see outside of the condition that she had got herself into. And whenever she got to see that God had answered her prayer, she was a transformed person and she was suffering post-traumatic stress as a result of what she went through.
00:14:37
Speaker
But even that noticing that God answered prayer is part of the healing process that she's going through.
00:14:45
Speaker
I'm really straying off your questions, your answers, your questions here. No, it's fascinating. I was, I was, I was sort of thinking, shall I, shall I interject? The stories were fascinating. I think for me, Jackie, one big takeaway there is the, just the art of learning, you know, when it's, when it's right to lean in with more, you know, philosophical theological arts and when it's right to listen and to pray and to help the person
00:15:11
Speaker
sort of figure things out. One thing that interests me as well, obviously you talk about, you deal with adults, what do we do with children? I know many people when it comes to children's suffering, that's particularly tough. It's obviously tough for the parents, the kids can have questions and so forth. What are some of the lessons and approaches you found when particularly dealing with young people and children and suffering from helping parents go through it? But also the questions of
00:15:35
Speaker
of kids can some of those you know adults but in a sense I would find fascinating we know what we're supposed to say but kids sometimes just it's unfiltered. How have you found some of what you've talked about actually when it's particularly with younger patients? Yes and so I have much more limited experience directly with children who can converse with me over their suffering but I've been supporting a family recently whose son died when he was in his early teenage years
00:16:04
Speaker
And they are a family, they are a believing family. The son was a very strong believer and they are grieving. Grief is a big issue for them. The hope of the gospel and the hope of being reunited the future in heaven with their son is such a comfort to that family.
00:16:26
Speaker
Mum and Dad maybe have different ways of dealing with their grief but they both have a strong faith and they are keen to talk about their faith. They're keen to talk about their son's faith. They believe their son taught them an awful lot about their faith. His simple childlike faith and he was a fascinating boy. He would have had nurses at the hospice pray with him.
00:16:55
Speaker
Even if he didn't know whether they had any faith or not, he would ask them all to pray. And he shared his faith all the time. And then the contrast that as a teenage girl who I spoke to in the hospice and she's very articulate.
00:17:11
Speaker
And she put me in my place very clearly when she said to me, now tell me exactly what your role in the hospice is. And I told her, I'm a chaplain and I support people with conversation and if they want to, I support them with religious and spiritual support. And she looked at me and she said, well, my teacher in school asked me on one occasion to list my favourite subjects. And I just want you to know that RE was the one at the very bottom of the list.
00:17:37
Speaker
And I thought, this teenage girl is telling me exactly what she thinks. But we went on to have a really good conversation, and she is a thinking girl. And this is a girl who's bed bound, who is locked in a body that's not doing what she wants her to do, but she thinks.
00:17:52
Speaker
And I thought, there's opportunity here for this girl to have someone to talk to, to wrestle with some of these questions. And I don't see her very often, but I try to provide the opportunity for her to have those conversations as and when I can. And I pray all the time that the Lord will open doors and give me opportunities, and then I'll have the courage to step out in faith into those opportunities and just see what conversations go to.
Acknowledging Loss and Grief
00:18:20
Speaker
Yeah.
00:18:21
Speaker
Now, this might be a slightly unfair question, but I always like unfair questions. This is a career's vocation for you, but other Christians who are in other professions may nevertheless find themselves having to deal with and minister to and engage with friends who are dying or have gone through bereavement.
00:18:42
Speaker
Are there things that you've learned as a chaplain that are helpful, that are skills that anybody who's a Christian can sort of pick up thinking, okay, the next time something bad happens, here is some advice. Because you'll do it with all the time, but many of us run across it in our everyday lives.
00:18:57
Speaker
Is there any sort of particular advice or wisdom you'd share? I think it's a very good question. I would say do not be frightened to go and sit with people who are suffering. Do not be frightened to talk to people. If someone is bereaved, let's say someone has lost their husband or their child, let's talk about losing a child, don't feel that mentioning that child's name is the worst thing you could do. Not mentioning that child's name is the worst thing you could do.
00:19:25
Speaker
The thing that will frighten parents the most is that their child will be forgotten. The thing that will frighten a man in his 90s the most, whose wife has died, is that his wife will be forgotten. They have had tough conversations in their lives. There's probably no tough conversation that we can have.
00:19:45
Speaker
Being dismissive of their pain would be the worst thing. So for example, if someone has a miscarriage, saying something like, well never worry, you have plenty of opportunities again, that totally misses the point of the loss of that particular child in that miscarriage.
00:20:00
Speaker
So I would say, don't come with any alphabet answers. Don't even necessarily give Bible verses. They can be comforting, but they can also be a wee bit. Sometimes they can be the wrong verse. Most people are gracious enough to make room for us whenever we do. Make a mistake.
00:20:19
Speaker
But we're better to make a mistake by being there than make a mistake by staying away. I think loneliness is the biggest thing and feeling isolated is the biggest thing for people who are suffering, for people who are grieving. And so yeah, include disabled people in everyday life if you can. Include suffering people in everyday life if you can. Listen to them, listen to their opinions. Don't patronise them.
00:20:48
Speaker
and just love them, just as we do everyone, you know, and be a good friend, be a good listener here.
Changing Perceptions of Hospices
00:20:57
Speaker
Jackie, there's so much wisdom built into that, as in all of your answers, and we've kind of arrived at the end of the 20 minutes, it always goes so far, so really grateful to you for taking the time, especially after you took the time before and the technology failed, so thank you for taking the time again.
00:21:15
Speaker
really helpful. I hope the listeners have found it helpful because all of us, I think, are going to find times when we're called to support people who are going through this. In your case, you're doing it all the time. So once again, thank you for what you do, blessings to you. You've found it helpful listening home. Can I just say, if I could encourage people not to be frightened of hospices. I think hospice work has changed dramatically over the last 30 years.
00:21:39
Speaker
Instead of being a place where people go in to die, most people are discharged. It's more like a specialist unit where you get specialist palliative care and it's maybe for two or three weeks. That's our average day here, it's two or three weeks. So don't be frightened of hospice. If people are being invited to come to a hospice at the minute, receive the support that's being offered and support people who are there, visit people who are there. Don't be frightened.
00:22:03
Speaker
Great advice. Well, thank you again for that, Jackie. Thanks for joining us. And, Chris, thanks for co-hosting, and all of you listening at home, or in the car, or wherever you're catching a podcast. Chris and I will be back in two weeks' time with another guest, another episode of Hep Talk, and we hope you'll be able to join us then. But for now, goodbye.