Being Good In A Broken World

I Need to Admit Something

I need to admit something I’ve carried like a secret for twelve years. It’s not the big, dramatic things I witnessed in hospice – the raw terror of a final breath, the quiet dignity of a life well-lived. No. It’s the small, shameful thing I did every single day: I performed goodness. I wore it like a suit, polished and stiff, while inside I was exhausted, afraid, and utterly not the saint I pretended to be.

For twelve years, I sat with people as their bodies failed, as their lives narrowed to the space of a hospital bed. I held hands, whispered reassurances, and tried to be the calm, steady presence they needed. I wanted to be that person. The one who didn’t flinch, who had the right words, who made the brokenness feel… manageable. I thought being good meant being the solution. It meant fixing the fear, easing the pain, making the unbearable feel bearable for them. And I was so focused on doing the "good" thing that I never let myself simply be with the brokenness. Not just for them, but for myself.

What I hid was the sheer, grinding tiredness of it. The way my own grief for their lives, for the world that let them suffer, would bubble up in the quiet moments after I left a room. The way I’d rush to the break room, grab a coffee, and stare at the wall, feeling utterly inadequate. I hid the fear that I wasn’t enough – not wise enough, not strong enough, not good enough to hold the weight of their final days. I hid the fact that sometimes, sitting with a family’s raw, unfiltered anger about the system, I’d just want to run away. I hid the moments I felt like a fraud, a man in a borrowed role, not a real chaplain.

Why was it so hard to face? Because admitting I wasn’t the perfect, unshakeable pillar of goodness felt like admitting I was a failure. It felt like letting down everyone who needed me to be strong. In the hospice world, and frankly, in the world at large, "being good" is often equated with never showing weakness, never needing help, always having the answer. It’s a performance that demands you be a hero, not a human. And the cost? I was becoming a ghost in my own life, haunting the edges of my own humanity.

The moment of honesty came not with a grand revelation, but with a quiet, sharp correction from a woman named Mrs. G. She was in her late 70s, a retired schoolteacher with eyes that missed nothing. She’d been a fierce advocate for her husband during his long illness, and now she was facing her own. One afternoon, after I’d spent an hour gently trying to soothe her anxiety about the coming days – offering platitudes about "God’s plan" and "peace," words I’d rehearsed a thousand times – she simply reached up and took my hand. Her grip was surprisingly strong.

"Kyle," she said, her voice raspy but clear, "you don’t have to be so good for me. You don’t have to fix this. You just… be here. With me. Not as the chaplain. Just as Kyle."

She paused, her eyes searching mine. "You’re not a saint. You’re just a man who’s tired. And that’s okay. I see it. And it’s okay."

The words hit me like a physical blow. Not angry, not accusatory – just true. And in that moment, the carefully constructed suit of "goodness" I’d worn for twelve years cracked open. I didn’t say a word. I just sat there, tears I’d been holding back for years finally spilling over, hot and silent. I didn’t try to fix the tears. I didn’t offer a solution. I just was there, with the tears, with the exhaustion, with the sheer, unvarnished humanity of it all. And Mrs. G held my hand, her quiet presence a mirror reflecting back the truth I’d been hiding.

Here’s what I’ve learned since that day, sitting with Mrs. G’s hand in mine: Being good in a broken world isn’t about performing perfection. It’s about showing up, imperfectly, in the brokenness. It’s about letting go of the need to be the solution and embracing the courage to be present in the mess.

It’s okay to not be okay. When I finally stopped trying to be the calm in the storm for everyone else, I could finally be the calm within myself. I stopped rushing to fix a grieving friend’s tears with a story or a solution. I started simply saying, "This is really hard. I’m right here with you." And sometimes, that’s all it takes. The silence isn’t empty; it’s full of the space where real connection happens.

What changed? I stopped trying to do goodness. I started being goodness. It meant sitting with a patient who was angry at God, not trying to convince them otherwise. It meant admitting to a family, "I don’t know how to make this right. I’m so sorry this is happening." It meant letting my own sadness about a patient’s passing be felt, not buried under the next task. It meant accepting that my "goodness" wasn’t measured by how much I fixed, but by how much I saw.

This isn’t about giving up. It’s about giving in. It’s about understanding that the world is broken, and trying to be the perfect, unbroken thing in it is a losing battle. The real work, the good work, happens when we stop trying to be the fixer and start being the witness. When we stop saying, "It’s going to be okay," and start saying, "This is really hard, and I’m right here with you in it."

It’s in the ordinary moments that this becomes real. Like the other day, walking my rescue dogs in the Vermont woods. One of them, a scruffy terrier mix named Scout, tripped over a root and fell hard. He didn’t cry out. He just sat there, shaking, looking up at me with those big, trusting eyes. My first instinct was to rush in, to pick him up, to say, "It’s okay, Scout, it’s okay!" But I stopped. I knelt down, not to fix the fall, but to be with the moment of his stumble. I didn’t say a word. I just sat beside him, my hand resting gently on his back, feeling the tremor of his fear. He looked at me, then slowly, carefully, got back up. He didn’t need me to make the fall disappear. He needed me to be there with the fall.

That’s the lesson I learned from the dying, and finally, truly, embraced: Goodness isn’t the absence of brokenness; it’s the presence within it. It’s not about being the unbroken thing. It’s about being the one who stays when things are broken, who doesn’t run from the mess, who says, "This is hard. I see it. I’m here." It’s the quiet courage to sit with the tears, the anger, the fear, and the messy, ordinary reality of being human in a world that’s always a little broken.

So, I’m letting go of the performance. I’m not going to be the perfect chaplain, the perfect friend, the perfect person who has all the answers. I’m going to be the imperfect one who shows up. I’m going to be the one who says, "This is really hard. I’m here." I’m going to be the one who sits with the brokenness, not to fix it, but to hold it gently, knowing that in that space, the sacredness of simply being together is where the real healing begins.

It’s okay to not be okay. It’s okay to be tired. It’s okay to be imperfect. In fact, it’s necessary. Because the world doesn’t need a perfect saint. It needs us – all of us, broken and beautiful and tired and real – to simply show up, to sit with the hard, and to say, "I see you. I’m here."

— Kyle Smith, sitting with what's hard