Faith on the Frontlines

Clover Stewart has spent much of the last 14 months zipping up COVID-19 casualties in body bags. At times, she has felt like one of the many living casualties of the pandemic – frontline medical workers who, at the height of the COVID-19 outbreak, have witnessed a lifetime’s worth of gruesome deaths in the course of a typical week.

One night in March 2020, amid the frenzied efforts of the medical staff, the grim sounds of patients gasping for air, and the acrid smell of disinfectant, Stewart’s job got very personal: She recognized one of the deceased as the receptionist she and her pregnant daughter recently spoke with at a doctor’s visit.

“I prayed for sanity,” said Stewart, who works in a critical care unit in Brooklyn, New York, and credits her faith for helping her to cope. That night, immersed in death and full of anxiety that she and her daughter may have contracted the virus, Stewart received a voicemail. A fellow Jehovah's Witness was making a special effort to check on congregants working in healthcare and to share an encouraging Bible verse.

“God was with me,” she said, as she reflected on the reassurance that God sees her tears.

In the year that has followed, spiritual focus has helped Stewart and other frontline medical workers in her religious community battle through the mental and emotional toll of the pandemic.

“What healthcare workers are experiencing is akin to domestic combat,” Andrew J. Smith, Ph.D., director of the University of Utah Health Occupational Trauma Program at the Huntsman Mental Health Institute, said in a press release from his institution.

According to a study conducted by Smith’s group, more than half of the doctors, nurses and emergency responders providing COVID-19 care could be at risk for one or more mental health problems—including acute traumatic stress, depression, and anxiety.

That’s what happened for Josie Rodas, an emergency department nurse on Long Island, New York. In the early surge of the pandemic, she felt the dark shadows of depression descend.

At the time, Rodas was working on the COVID floor of her hospital. Sweating profusely under her personal protective equipment and often without time to eat, she rushed to help one patient after another. Death still won the battle most days. A few coworkers quit under the strain. At home, she slept alone out of fear of asymptomatically infecting her husband. “I was just so low,” she said.

Then her mother, who lives alone, contracted the virus. Desperate to help but needing to stay safe, Rodas constantly monitored a remote camera for the rise and fall of her mother’s chest—a sign that her mom was still breathing.

Even though Rodas dropped off meals and called throughout the day, she felt helpless. “I’m caring for these patients at work, but I can’t even care for my own mother,” she said. “That was heartbreaking.”

But just like for Stewart, Rodas’ congregation of Jehovah's Witnesses mobilized. They sent texts, cards, called, FaceTimed, and Zoomed to help her not to give up. “Talk to God,” one friend told her. “He will help you.”

With their encouragement, Rodas found respite as she continued to worship with them regularly online, joined ministry groups on Zoom, and intensified her prayers.

“If I didn’t have this spiritual association virtually, who knows?” Rodas said. “The amount of depression that has come out of this is horrible. You hear stories of other people who don’t recover. It’s comforting knowing that people care for you as an individual.”

American psychological and psychiatric associations, while not advocating or endorsing any specific religion, acknowledge a role for spirituality and religious faith in coping with distress and trauma.

Lawrence Onoda, Ph.D., a clinical psychologist in Mission Hills, California, noted a number of ways spirituality can help, including giving people “a positive hope and meaning toward life, comfort by looking for answers and strength from a higher power, and a collective shared experience of support and community.”

For Cleveland nurse Tiya Haile, such strength and comfort came through personal prayers and those of others on her behalf.

“I’m a worrier by nature,” she admitted. “The pandemic has been very stressful.”

Some days Haile wouldn’t learn until late into her shift that patients she’d cared for were COVID positive. Clinic protocols required staff to maintain a calm environment to keep patients, many of whom were elderly, as comfortable as possible. “We had to maintain a sense of calmness even though we were not.”

Throughout the pandemic, Haile has been sustained by watching video updates and spiritually themed talks on JW Broadcasting, a free internet television station produced by Jehovah’s Witnesses accessible on jw.org and tv streaming devices. One of the programs encouraged Haile to share her anxieties with others. That advice proved to be practical. “I really felt the genuine love, concern, and direction for us,” she said. “It brought me calmness.”

Although the fear in her severe COVID patients' eyes is etched into her memory, Rodas too finds peace in the Bible’s promise that God will end sickness and pain and even bring the dead back to life. “I imagine all those patients who died, resurrected in Paradise,” she said.

When Stewart is surrounded by death inside the frigid trailer where COVID's victims temporarily rest, she likewise recalls scriptures of comfort, peace, and hope. She never forgets to pray and be thankful for her family of faith.

“God is going to get me through this,” she said.

(For more information on gaining comfort through the scriptures, please see https://www.jw.org/en/bible-teachings/peace-happiness/real-hope-future-bible-promises/)