After You’ve Been in the Hard Room

You just came from somewhere hard.

The grief of someone else is in you now. The crisis you sat with — the loss, the fear, the devastation you were present in — doesn’t stay in the room when you leave. It travels with you. And before you go into the next room, you need to attend to what you’re carrying.

Read this passage slowly.

Let that sit for a second before you move.

He refreshes my soul. The shepherd attends to the sheep that has been in difficult terrain. The refreshing is not optional — it’s the provision that makes the next stretch of the journey possible.

Compassion fatigue is real and it is occupationally common in chaplaincy. The accumulation of other people’s crises, without adequate processing and recovery, eventually produces a diminished capacity for the care that the role requires. The chaplain who doesn’t attend to their own soul after hard pastoral moments becomes less able to be present to the next one.

What does the soul refreshing look like practically after a hard pastoral care moment? For some: time alone to process what was carried. For others: a conversation with a trusted person who can hold the weight with them. For others: a physical practice that reconnects them to their body. For most: some combination of acknowledging what was carried, setting it down deliberately, and returning to the source that fills the well.

You are not required to carry what you were just in without attending to it. The shepherd leads to the quiet waters. Find them. The next hard room needs you to be refreshed before you enter it.

Permission to name actual need. The honest answer is more useful than the expected one.