July 24, 1998, 6 o’clock p.m. — Waiting in the local emergency room, I am not particularly comfortable despite the gentle attentions of the nurses and my wife.  In fact, I’m in a great deal of pain from having broken my left elbow a couple hours earlier.  I’m hungry from having missed lunch and supper, but can’t eat anything until the upcoming repair surgery is over.  And I am cold, too, sitting in my underwear and a hospital gown on a cold metal cart.
     The nurse comes in with a hot blanket.  She asks if I’m still wearing my contacts and tells me I need to take them out.  Grumbling, I manage the task one-handed.  She wants to know if I’m comfortable.
     The doctor and his assistant come in and introduce themselves.  Without my contacts in, I’m not sure who is who.  They explain the surgery — cut through the skin and muscle of my arm, clean out the bone chips, line up the remaining pieces of bone, drill holes and cut notches, insert pins and wire, and staple the whole thing shut.  And, of course, a heavy plaster cast to hold my elbow at 90 degrees for the next six weeks.  They say I’ll be just fine.  I think I’m gonna ache real bad when I wake up.
     Doctors leave; nurse comes in with an IV bottle on stand and a couple of syringes.  She sticks the IV needle in my good arm.  Ouch!!  By now, I’m a bit discombobulated from the adrenaline, pain, and nervousness, and I let her know in neither uncertain nor considerate terms how much that hurt.
     I lie down on the cart.  Whew, that’s cold.  More hot blankets.  Better.  After a while, the nurse rolls me into the operating room and leaves me next to the operating table on my left.  Now what?  Several people dressed in green come in.  They want me to slide myself over onto the operating table.  They have got to be kidding, I say.  Aauugghh, they’re not kidding.  I gruffly explain I can’t do that in my apparently not-so-obvious condition.  I slide off the cart and awkwardly climb onto the operating table.  The smelly rubber mask goes over my face and I fall asleep.
     Now I’m waking up, but I’m too tired to open my eyes so I just lay there and moan about how much my arm hurts.  (Later my wife will tell me I also complained how heavy my arm was.)  I want to sleep, but I want more to go home so I keep trying to wake up.  I ask for a drink of water.  The few swallows I get down, I throw up (on my mom, they tell me later).
     Midnight, I think, and I can go home.  The nurse lets me leave wearing the hospital gown and some hot blankets and doesn’t make me try to get dressed first.  Someone pushes my wheelchair out to the car.  Finally, we get home and everybody who waited for me at the hospital eventually leaves the house.  I fall asleep in my big chair, my bed-to-be for the next couple of weeks.
     Several weeks later, I’m finished with the casts and the brace and I can bathe myself again.  Now it’s just a matter of the bone healing so in December the doctor can cut my arm open to the bone again and take out the pins and wires.

     Several years later — Looking back, I see that properly helping someone with a bodily injury or disease often increases pain momentarily for the sufferer and also makes discomfort for the helper at the moment.  Likewise, I think trying to help someone with spiritual injury or spiritual disease will often add a degree of pain and discomfort for those involved.
     The spiritually ill, even as they ask faithful Christians for help, are flustered from the pain, emotions, and consequences of their situation.  They are in no mood to be either patient, rational, or cooperative with our efforts to help.  Their responses may strongly express the pain they feel.  The teaching, advice, or other assistance we provide may make them feel vulnerable, exposed, sensitive, and even embarrassed.  They may “vomit” what comfort we offer as they recover.  They may need a longer commitment from us for aid and “clean up” beyond our emergency assistance.
     When will we feel the discomfort?  If they angrily refuse our offer and our desire to help them.  As they respond to our help with agitation and resistance.  As we try increasing our efforts to aid while others seem to stagnate or cut back.  When we realize the shortcomings of our abilities to aid.  When we see others trying to help more while we’re bemoaning what little we’ve done.
     And perhaps we feel the discomfort most sharply when we ourselves struggle with someone else in the congregation who is simply trying to help us overcome our own spiritual ailments.