a hallway in psychiatry

I'm enjoying my psych rotation a lot. I've seen some crazy things. Something interesting happened last week. I had a patient with PTSD and major depression. When I talked to him wednesday and thursday he would continually talk about his past and how he was so ashamed of the things he had done, ex: beating his wife/kids in the past. I found out he was Catholic and he said he knew about God ever since he was a kid and would never leave Him but didn't go to church or anything. He was very glad to have me pray for him for those first couple of days and said he needed all the help he could get. He would talk about how he is very different now and can't believe his wife stayed with him but was very thankful for her and was amazed that she could forgive him.

I could tell that he carried a huge burden of guilt and shame. A couple weeks ago my Pastor quoted some psychiatrist who estimated that over half of all psychiatric patients could be healed if they understood true forgiveness. I started praying for my patient and prayed that I would have time to talk to him alone friday. So Friday i went into the hospital especially early, but when i tried to find him, he was nowhere to be found. I circles the unit 4-5x and went into his room and all the bathrooms only to be perplexed at his missing. I finally walked down some random hallway where I found him sitting alone in a chair in a small opening staring out the windows. I sat down next to him and we had a good little conversation about how he was feeling. i asked him if he still felt a lot of depression over the things he had done in the past and he affirmed it. the conversation went something like this:

me: have you talked with you wife about this?
him: oh yes, she knows I'm different now and she's so good to me.
me: So she's forgiven you then?
him: yes, i know it.
me: What about God? Do you think He has forgiven you?
him: No, God could never forgive me.
me: But you've known God since you were a kid. You think He's here to help you, right?
him: yeah, i know about God, i went to church growing up,,(etc conversation about his experience)
me: yeah, I grew up in church but i wasnt until later on that I understood some really important things, like Why Christ died. I carried a lot of guilt and shame and didn't know what to do with it. when I found out, it really changed my life and helped me a lot. Would it be helpful if I shared about my experience ?
him: yeah, I'd like that.

So that was the intro and the next 10 minutes or so I shared the Gospel with him. He really understood about all people being sinners and deserving death. He didn't know why Christ had to die so we talked about the penalty for sin is death and separation from God- and that Christ died to pay for the death penalty on our souls. For us. In our place. That he could be forgiven because Jesus was killed to take our punishment. that we could not make ourselves clean, but that only Christ's death could clean us and allow us to return to God.

He thought it was too good to be true.
but he thanked me for sharing. Maybe he was too depressed to hear good news.