It was a Beautiful Thing

While the ending of CPE was pretty bittersweet for me, there is something to be said for being done with an incredibly exhausting and intense 3 month internship--and that means some celebrating. I've celebrated with both my CPE chaplains and friends outside of CPE. In this post I'll post only pictures from my CPE people in this post and then use another post to show my other celebrations. We had our offical CPE graduation ceremony on Thursday. It was an intimate and meaningful ceremony with my fellow chaplains, supervisors, a few hospital administrators, and our close friends and family. To steal a frequent said quote of my supervisor--CPE was "a beautiful thing." There was much growth, tears, joys, and prayer poured into the last 3 months...an experience I'll never forget! Here's a picture of my group including my supervisor Cheri sitting "around the table" during our celebration lunch after graduation. This is the table in which all of the hard conversations, conflict, sharing, and breakthroughs happened during our group time. The table was definitely sacred space!

My friends Christina and Sarah came to graduation to support me.

This is Cheri--my fabulous supervisor and I. She shared an amazingly calming presence in the midst of all the chaos.

Although with Cheri the chaplain interns were fortunate to have several other staff chaplains to lead and assist us. The staff chaplain I worked with most was Deacon Mike. He is an ordained deacon in the Catholic church. He and I would do visits together sometimes and it was so neat to minister to a patient with both of our perspectives together. He also helped me remember and relearn some of my Spanish, I now have a great cheat sheet of the common Catholic prayers in Spanish to pray with someone.

I formed a different relationship with each of my group members, but I grew particularly close to the two women in the group. Darenda and I often shared meals together. Here we are for one final meal at the Huntington Gardens. Darenda is now back in Austin where she lives with her family. Carol finished up her fourth unit of CPE and was a welcomed and needed voice of experience in our group. She also grew to be a fun friend to have. On Thanksgiving she invited me to join her family for a fabulous meal. Here's Carol and I having a celebratory sushi lunch on our last day of CPE.


Finally, here's a picture of our 3 male chaplains...Magdy, Bruce, and Darren. They are each so, so different--but so much fun in their own ways. There were definitely lots of many laughs and shared memories in these three months--and I am thankful for getting to know each of these people. It was a beautiful thing!