by Rune Marie Nielsen
When I moved back to the US after years abroad, I took a job as a hospital janitor. At first, I had hoped it would be a temporary position while I searched for pastoral roles. What I didn’t expect was that my custodial work would become a fulfilling, unofficial micro-ministry.
My primary duty at the hospital was to clean patients’ rooms. Sometimes the patients would start a conversation with me or, if a patient seemed lonely, I would ask how they were doing. I didn’t think of it as a ministry. I just thought I was showing I cared and providing a listening ear for anyone in need of one.
That all changed when I met a patient with a rare prophetic gift. As I was talking to the middle-aged woman, she asked if I was a pastor. I was beyond surprised. When I answered yes, she said she could tell right away when I entered her room. She told me she could feel it in my presence. Then, this woman of immense spiritual insight asked if I would pray aloud with her. I prayed for her path ahead, for her to feel peace no matter what health situation was thrown her way. With a fervent “Amen” stronger than my own, the woman told me she appreciated that my prayer was not expecting God to grant her complete healing. That patient didn’t want the anxiety of pleading for her body to get better. She wanted support to face an uncertain future.
Though most conversations with patients did not involve religion or prayer, I began to see that the patients were awakening a new spiritual conviction within me. Their challenges were teaching me about my own, both present and future. Little did I know that within a year of my visit with the patient who identified me as a pastor, I would be diagnosed with fibromyalgia, an incurable, though not deadly, condition. I too would be set on a rocky path navigating a new health situation.
Another patient I learned a lot from was a man undergoing heart treatment. He told me about his frustration with hearing the loud noises of the machine that monitored his heart. The beeping happened every few seconds, intentionally set to a high volume so that if irregular heartbeats occurred, he could quickly press the emergency button to summon a nurse. For that patient, the beeping was a constant reminder that he may have to be rushed into surgery at any time. I told him about a patient next door I’d just spoken to who also was listening to the beeping of their heart monitoring machine, and how they had told me they felt much the same way. The man’s spirits lifted immediately. “I had no idea,” he said as his eyes lit up. “It’s good to know I’m not the only one.” His response taught me that I don’t have to be the one to know what his situation is like. The knowledge that there was someone else who understood was enough to bring him peace.
A few months later, my supervisor at the hospital informed the team that management was desperate to fill the role of an operating room (OR) janitor. Many of my coworkers felt repulsed by the idea of working while live surgeries happened around them, but I was fascinated by the prospect of seeing surgeries unfold. I took the new assignment, and to my surprise, found myself once more in a situation where I would be conducting unofficial ministry. This time, however, my support would not be for patients but the surgery staff.
I worked alongside surgery technicians who grappled with seeing death frequently. In fact, on my first day, multiple OR workers told me that the “first unwritten rule of the OR” was “no crying allowed.” I saw this acutely when a surgery technician who was a single mother of three learned that a patient being operated on was also a single mother of three. Throughout the surgery, the surgery technician needed to hold back her emotions to assist the surgeon as much as possible. Afterward, the surgery technician needed a place to cry. The patient survived the surgery, but her likelihood of survival was still very slim. We talked in the storage room, just outside the operating room unit. I’ve never been a parent and I don’t know what that’s like, but I know what despair and loss feel like.
I felt I had just as much purpose in the OR as I had in the standard patient wards. But switching where I worked in the hospital was far from the last change to happen in my career. Seemingly out of the blue I was hit with symptoms of immense joint pain that prevented me from carrying out my physically intensive cleaning position. A fibromyalgia diagnosis confirmed my dreaded fear that for my health’s sake, I must quit the janitor job I’d grown so attached to.
The twists and turns of life didn’t stop there, either. Just a couple years later, I was diagnosed with a very different yet just as hindering condition called Conversion Disorder. I once again had to quit a job due to health issues, this time leaving a pastoral role at a campus ministry. For some with Conversion Disorder, symptoms are physical, such as paralysis. For others such as myself, the symptoms are cognitive, dampening my ability to think clearly and recall words.
During my year-long struggle to regain higher-level thinking, I remembered a coworker from my time working at the hospital. A middle-aged janitor named Debbie had once been a brilliant sixteen-year-old who graduated high school a full year ahead of her peers. She had received dozens of acceptance letters from prestigious universities. It seemed obvious that she had a bright future ahead in the world of academia. That is, until a devastating accident robbed her of her intellectual talents.
Debbie could recall a time when her mind worked faster and with greater depth, but that didn’t define who she was. Debbie had a genuine cheerfulness that lifted our spirits. No matter where she was or what she was doing, Debbie wanted to make people happy. She shared with me how God’s love meant more to her than anything else.
Unlike Debbie’s condition, my intellectual impediment improved over time. I no longer feel the brain fog constantly but rather in temporary bursts. Regardless, Debbie will forever be my role model. She didn’t have to be intellectually gifted in order to be her true self that brought light to the world. She didn’t need any restoration of her previous genius abilities in order to feel healing in her soul.
I’m not fighting my medical conditions. I’m living side-by-side with them as I feel a heightened sense of how uncertain each person’s future truly is. The miracles I’ve experienced won’t be reported as big events of a groundbreaking cure in the news. They’re also not breakthroughs recorded in medical journals. The miracles I see are seeing hope, courage, and love in the people around me.
