Hospice Volunteering

In my quest to return to the field of counseling, rooted strongly in the Christian faith now, I have taken a step in working as a Christian with hospice patients.  I have signed up to become a volunteer for a year in a hospital hospice center near me.

It will require that I train for my role and commit to volunteering for one year.  I am comfortable with this, having trained and been a volunteer years ago for a nonprofit in Sacramento California for a year.  I kept my promise and was never absent from working on a crisis line for victims of domestic violence and sexual assault.  I still remember those days of being early in my counseling career.

But returning now gives me pause for thought as I recall how I had problems with other employees in some of the nonprofits and hospitals I worked for.  Mean-spirited people become counselors and mental health clinicians.  Not all are capable of doing the work well, and some were not the right people to work in the field, having close-interpersonal contact with clients.

I know now that God has chosen for me to live with a block in my heart with the bad experiences I have had, yet he knows I have a compassionate, mature and caring heart with patience for people who struggle and are hurting.  I can do that and will do that to the best of my ability.  It is diagnosing people in the wrong way – I believe – that has me concerned.

To work in my field at the level I was entailed diagnosing people according to man’s diagnoses, without God and Christ as part of the equation.  Never will determining treatment, diagnosing people and writing assessments be the same for me if I ever return to that part of working in mental health.

I am a Christian, and I will obey my Father, returning to a heartfelt concern for people who may want to know Christ Jesus in their last days of life.