Central Maine Medical Center Chaplain Amanda Chacko stands Thursday afternoon in the hospital’s Spiritual Care Department on the 3rd floor of the Lewiston hospital. Russ Dillingham/Sun Journal
LEWISTON — Amanda Chacko’s spirituality and faith in God came early in her life and, with it, a calling to guide others who find themselves stuck in dark places.
A chaplain at Central Maine Medical Center, Chacko’s job is to minister to patients, their families and hospital staff.
She is assigned to cover the hospital’s intensive care unit, the labor and delivery maternity unit and general medical care.
Growing up in the Catholic Church, she was told she was a good listener.
“How are you going to use that gift to serve others?” she pondered. “Amanda, you know there’s suffering in the world, how are you going to be part of answering that suffering? How can you use your skills in that way?”
Working in chaplaincy felt like an effective way she could fulfill that need and calling, she said.
She studied divinity in college and pursued a graduate degree that taught her skills in clinical pastoral care, including a stint at CMMC as student chaplain more than a decade ago.
Chacko was hired in September 2022 as a non-denominational chaplain at the hospital.
Central Maine Medical Center Chaplain Amanda Chacko stands Thursday afternoon in the hospital’s Spiritual Care Department on the 3rd floor of the Lewiston hospital. Russ Dillingham/Sun Journal
Her education and training taught her how to support and counsel people of all faiths as well as those whose spirituality can’t be defined by religious convention.
“Occasionally, I will speak with people who are not really sure they want to talk to a chaplain,” she said. They don’t think of themselves as being spiritual.
“We talk about what is moving them forward in life, what is giving them strength and we kind of look towards some of the spirituality of family or of home or of ways that they’ve lived that have given them strength to get through each day,” she said.
At any moment on any given day, she may be celebrating in prayer the birth of a new baby with its parents. She might be ministering to a patient who is struggling with a chronic health condition. Or she may be attending to a patient or the family of a patient at the end of life.
“My heart says that I’ve been so strongly called to be working in ministry to be working in chaplaincy and that I feel very gifted by God and being willing to sit in the dark places, the scary places, the bad places with people,” she said.
She describes her job as having conversations, much like a therapist. For those whose faith stems from a particular church, she can provide guidance, having learned about a variety of denominations, she said.
Her counseling focuses largely on spirituality.
“Times in those moments when we are most challenged, it’s helpful to see that, ‘Oh, wait, I do have this spirituality that maybe has guided my life and I didn’t even realize that and how do I find strength in that right now?'” she said.
A large part of her job is to provide support to hospital staff.
“Hospital work is hard,” she said.
“There’re really beautiful things that happen here. Babies are born, but people also pass here when it is their time,” she said.
She praised the nurses and the other hospital workers for their compassion for patients. But she pointed out that they also need support both in their work and, often, in their personal lives.
“So, I offer prayer with them sometimes or sometimes just listening to this hard day that (they’re) having,” she said.
Chacko wasn’t working on Oct. 25, the night of a mass shooting in Lewiston.
But, in the days that followed, she sat with staff as they sought to process the grim events to support them as they grappled with a range of emotions in the shootings’ aftermath, she said.
They were trying to get back to “normal” and wondered if that was possible, she said.
“So, chaplaincy is both about spirituality and also just about living. How do we live right now? And so I think the 25th calls to a lot of that piece of chaplaincy. How do I continue living when life changed pretty drastically after that? So, particularly that next week, was very heavy with a lot of staff care,” she said.
There are times when Chacko herself struggles with life’s challenges, she said.
“For me, personally, a lot of where I go in terms of how my spirituality is helping me is continuing to practice my faith,” she said.
“One of the best things I was taught throughout various moments of ministry is the idea that we can continuously be praying through our day,” she said.
“It doesn’t need to be a specific prayer and it could be just: ‘the Holy Spirit, help me. God be with me. Guide my words.’ like the quick little ways that … I allow myself to pause to offer that word of prayer that kind of pushes me through the next thing.”
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