By Renee Owen, CBF Director of chaplaincy and pastoral counseling

Jesus said, “Everyone who drinks this water will get thirsty again
and again. Anyone who drinks the water I give will never thirst—
not ever. The water I give will be an artesian spring within, gushing
fountains of endless life,” John 4:13-14 (The Message)

My first full-time ministry position was as a clinical pastoral education (CPE) chaplain resident at Duke University Medical Center. I was 25-years-old and ready to live out God’s call for my life to be a chaplain. I was excited to be in a place that welcomed me, people who were teaching and mentoring me and trusting me to care for patients, families and staff. I was loving every moment.

And then, about two months in, the exhaustion hit after multiple overnights and in-house on-calls. There were 36-hour days going from overnight on-call, responding
to trauma calls, codes, supporting families as their loved ones died. I was also caring
for staff who had experienced a tough day. Then I was going into a day of training and
group processing.

“How am I supposed to do this? How can I keep up this pace?” I started to question
myself. “Is this really what I want to do for the rest of my life? God, what in the world
have you called me to do? Surely you can’t think that I can do this, at this pace, forever.”

Thankfully I had a wise, experienced chaplain supervisor, Claude Deal. Not only was
Claude wise, experienced and had the ability to call you out and hold you accountable
when needed; Claude also had one of the most caring hearts I’ve ever known.

One day as I was sitting in one-on-one supervision with Claude, I confessed to him my
overwhelming, cumulative exhaustion. Claude listened as I unloaded the account of my
most recent on-call and shared the heaviness I was carrying after the death of Richard,
an 11-year-old boy I had been visiting for weeks in the hospital who had died after a
long battle with cancer.

Claude, in his wisdom, with a gentle smile on his face, asked me if I had ever seen a
water well. He began describing to me a beautiful well, deep in the ground, with the
stone that surrounded the opening to the well, the bucket that hung overhead by a
rope, ready to be lowered into the well to draw up fresh, clean water. As I pictured this
well in my mind, Claude invited me to imagine that I was using the rope, lowering the
bucket into the depths of that well, then pulling on that rope, bringing a bucket of fresh,
cool, clean water back up to the surface of the well. He then invited me to imagine that
I was then using that water for good, sharing it with others and even drinking from that
water myself when I needed it.

Claude asked me to imagine that I was continuing to come back to that well, again
and again, to lower the bucket, pull it back up, full of beautiful, clean, cool water, using
that water for good. He then paused, looked at me and asked, “Renée, what’s going to
happen when you go to that well one day, and it hasn’t rained?” I thought for a moment,
started to answer, then paused and said, “It’s going to be completely empty.” Again, in
his most compassionate voice, Claude looked at me and said, “Renée, it has to rain.”

For the past 28 years, this image of a well has sustained me through many tough days.
Claude’s words of wisdom and invitation to imagery gave me a lifeline to sustain my
ministry and to live out my call to serve. How are we refilling our wells? When we lower
our buckets, into the depths of our wells, are we pulling up life-giving water? Or are our
wells bone dry?

Jesus once invited a Samaritan woman to drink from the life-giving water of a well. God
invites us to care for one another, to uplift, encourage and empower one another so that
together we can “make it rain,” refill our wells, live out our call to serve, and continue to
share God’s love and the hope of Christ to renew God’s world.

Go now and make it rain.