One of the goals I articulated for this chaplaincy training, was to expand my understanding of the human experience. Even before the five of us left the classroom where we spend every Tuesday, to embark on our overnight shifts, that stretch began. The other four interns come from three continents, and speak multiple languages. They are all men, most of them Catholic, which is new for me. My best friend in eighth grade was Catholic, and struggled with the guilt she felt when breaking any number of rules. But these men embrace their religions wholeheartedly. 

The aperture of my world view has widened. It has been my privilege to listen to the regrets of a woman whose life was devastated by drugs. I have sat with people who wept because their grandmother was dying, and others who were indifferent to see them go. One patient in trauma was reckoning with the life altering spinal cord injury she had from a fall, yet still praised God without restraint.  A frail, homeless woman knew passages of scripture by heart, and recited them with me as if all God's promises to her had come true. 

Each Thursday morning when I climb on the train home after sixteen hours of walking the hospital, I am grateful. My body works. There are no tubes attached to bleeping monitors invading my arms. There are no withdrawal symptoms keeping me captive to choices that wreck me. No one is charting my personal breathing, beating, and peeing, because my body is managing those efforts just fine. 

Which is the miracle I get to discover all over again.