"Chaplain"
Rev. Audrey Martha Rammelkamp Brady

As an orphan with no name and no birth date from Seoul, Korea, I was adopted as an infant by an extended family of "Dutchmen". I grew up eating "sneja bonjnas" (green beans) in the Knoll, Rammelkamp, Kalsbeek, De Jong family clan of Hawthorne/ Los Angeles, California --lifelong members of the Dutch Reformed Church in California. We learned to read by reciting the Psalms at suppertime.
My journey as a daughter of the Church began immediately with my father's tragic car accident and death. When my mother died at fifty-three from cancer, I was only seventeen and no longer anyone's daughter. This was my deepest crisis of faith. My mother was a faithful servant of the Lord, known for her sweet spirit and love of church. Why would God take her away? This wasn't the loving God that I was taught. If God is all-loving, all-powerful, then why is my mother dead? I ranted, I raged, I cried for days, months, years. The haunting question, "Why would God take her away?" became a bitter cry from my own soul, repeated many times over in hospital intensive care units, burn units and neo-natal intensive care.
Years later, I arrive at the trauma unit and put on all the protective clothing from head to toe and wait for the helicopter to deliver the patient: a sixteen year old female, serious head trauma, vitals unstable, driver in motor vehicle accident, no other passengers, no other information at this time. The fourteen member medical team rushes her unconscious into a trauma bay. I begin my search to bring the family together. As I look for clues and find the identity of this beautiful girl, I am eventually able to get hold of her parents and ask them to come to the hospital. While I wait, the trauma doctor informs me she didn't survive. As he bows his head, he tells me he has a fifteen-year-old daughter. He answers all the parent's medical questions and leaves the room. "May we see our daughter?" the parents whisper through tears. The now silent bay holds just the parents and their daughter. And I hear through deep sobs those haunting, painful bitter words: "Why did this happen to our little girl? Why did God take her away?"
I have no words, but as I hug them, pray with them, and shed my tears with them, they seem to know that I too, have been in a similar place of deep pain, shaken to the core of my being. All we can do now is honor the sacred silence that surrounds us, offering ourselves to God, awaiting the healing that will come, just as resurrection came after that Friday and and a new hope was give to each of us for eternity.

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