Visiting and Connecting
As a pastor, I do a decent amount of visits to homes, nursing homes, and hospital rooms. I find the one-on-one meetings meaningful, though some visits are arguably harder than others. I find visits especially hard when the person I visit doesn’t have family nearby to visit them. Loneliness is a very real emotion, which is why it’s so important to me to at least let a person know that their church thinks about them and loves them. Families are complicated, and the reality is that visits aren’t always feasible. It gets even more difficult when the visitee (my word. Feel free to use it!) struggles to communicate. Long-distant family members may have a hard time reaching out to loved ones that can’t talk on the phone. Some loved ones don’t even know what a phone is anymore. Not every person I visit knows who I am, even after I introduce myself. I have visited my own family members who no longer know who I am. But they always appreciate the visit in their