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The Pediatrician and the Weight of Stories

Blog / Produced by The High Calling
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Any parent who has had a sick child can relate to the sense of insecurity and dread that surrounds the illness. From a simple earache to more life-threatening disease, the parent simply wants to change places, to provide a substitutionary figure.

So, to put the fate of a child’s health in the hands of a doctor takes faith --- and trust. Pediatrician Brain Volch hears stories and reacts to them with healing, prayer, and compassion.

“For years, people I hardly know have told me stories of great intimacy in the hope it will help their child get or stay well,” he writes. “Families tell me astonishing things because they trust me to be open, helpful and genuinely concerned.”

The stories aren’t easy – as he cannot separate his faith from the harsh reality of the destruction of innocence. He admits the stories have left him “limping,” and he hopes no one else notices.

Stories like, “the determined mother raising triplets in the wake of her husband’s cancer death, the bewildered parents of a son trapped in a maze of drugs and violence, and the children throughout my career who died before my eyes,”

Others hear similar stories – pastors, therapists, lawyers, and teachers all carry the burden of others, of a world full of sin an humanity’s cruel side.

“Tales do more than convey information; they teach, delight, mystify and challenge,” he writes. “Powerful, transforming stories beg to be retold.”

Read his powerful piece at Faith and Leadership.

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