Jenny Lowry

Columbus Regional Health has offered a Spiritual Support Program for patients, families, and staff for many years. 

Since June 2019, the eight volunteers who are part of the program have been rounding on the hospital floors to provide emotional and spiritual support to patients and family/visitors of patients of Columbus Regional Hospital and provide support to staff as needed or requested.

Due to increased visitor restrictions, including having staff and volunteers who can work from home to do so, volunteers are not assisting at the hospital. However, that has not kept them from continuing to support our staff.

The spiritual support volunteers are writing daily devotions to provide comfort and positivity to CRH staff. The following message was recently written by volunteer Jenny Lowry:

In these trying times, it’s important to focus on acts of help for others. You may not always know what to say, but no words are needed to be present for someone who just needs to cry. 

Allow yourself to be the one who cries if you need to. Remember that in the direst of times there are still things that are worthy of a smile. There is value in doing simple kindnesses.

Think of ways to be kind to yourself, too. Give wide grace to whoever is having a particularly bad day.  What happens today that is good and kind can shape and transform us into better versions of ourselves for tomorrow.

Jenny, who has served as Spiritual Support Volunteer Coordinator for one year and as a volunteer at Columbus Regional Health for six years, said writing the devotions has given the volunteers an opportunity to connect with staff during this challenging time.

“I believe that any one of us can be personally in need of compassion and someone else to listen to us and someone else to demonstrate care. I realize that sometimes I’m the receiver of that, but in this role, we’re usually the conduit of that,” she said.

While we miss seeing the smiling faces of our volunteers throughout our health system, and the support they provide to our patients, families, and staff, we are grateful for these daily messages that provide encouragement to our staff.