Trust me, God isn't finished with me yet

When a recent reader left me a voicemail suggesting that I wasn't worthy of my chaplain title, I shrugged. That's OK, I thought, I've heard that before.

One of those occasions happened during the infamous "toilet week" of my 1999 Saudi Arabia deployment. I call it that because it's the same week my deployment supervisor told me that I didn't make the major's promotion list.

"You'll be reconsidered next year," promised Col. Mike Bradshaw. "But trust me," he added in his signature truism, "it's really a one-chance-mistake-Air-Force.' You won't remain active duty."

For the next few weeks my mind wasn't in the game. I felt like I was a terminally ill patient who'd been told to get his affairs in order.

Then, one morning as I entered the men's room stall, I completely lost it – my hat that is. I'd forgotten how I'd stored my hat in the traditional military manor, tucked into my beltline at the small of my back. When I stood to do my "paperwork" I noticed that "some careless fool" ditched his hat in my toilet.

First, I wondered, why hadn't I previously noticed this? But my second and more sober observation was that this fool's hat had a Christian cross on it. The fool was me.

Looking at my hat with the Christian cross affixed, I wondered if God was telling me that my chaplain career was in the toilet. If so, was the military my only path of ministry? Or were there other venues? I didn't know that answer.

I had no choice but to go to the chapel office and ask our NCOIC (office manager) for a new hat.

As I unfolded my story, he folded himself in half with stroke-inducing laughter.

He then demanded I give him "one good reason" why he should issue me a new hat.

"Well," I admitted, "yes, there are a few bad officers with a head full of crap. But don't you think it takes a really good officer to admit that?"

Hearing my logic, he fell, hysterically beating the floor with his fist. "I give up, Chaplain," he declared. "You got your new hat."

The Bible says in James 5:16, "Make this your common practice: confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you can live together whole and healed."

I confessed my mistake -- my sin -- and got a new hat. But better than that, I got a new ministry.

For you see, despite my sinking feeling that my career was flushed in the crapper of chaplain careerism, I had a creatively hysterical moment in which I sent an email about my hat-full to dozens of friends. One of them was a newspaper editor who thought it was riotously funny.

In October 2001, the editor invited me to begin writing this column, Spirituality in Everyday Life. Now after writing nearly 650 syndicated columns about my life as both a hospital chaplain and an Air National Guard (Lt Col) chaplain, I can only say, "Trust me, Chaplain Bradshaw, God was never finished with me."

Norris Burkes is a syndicated columnist, national speaker and author of No Small Miracles. He also serves as an Air National Guard chaplain and is board-certified in the Association of Professional Chaplains. You can call him at 321-549-2500, email him at about:ask@thechaplain.net , visit his website thechaplain.net or write him at P.O. Box 247, Elk Grove, CA 95759.

Fishing trip tests sometimes fragile faith

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Salmon fishing season opened last week here on the Pacific Coast, but I'm not going.

I tried it seven years ago, but I can't say I really did any fishing. I spent most of the time hugging the rail contributing to the caloric intake of the fish. Perhaps that is what is meant by the Biblical admonition to "cast your bread upon the water?" Or perhaps not.

Nevertheless, my fishing attempt did add a great deal to my prayer life as I bent over the railing watching the waves rise to meet the ever-varying distance to my mouth. "Please, God, please," I prayed.

In an attempt to re-create the miraculous boating experiences of Jesus I prayed "Oh, God, could you please calm these winds? Or at least could you show me how to walk on the waves to get home?" I begged God to give us our limit as he'd done for the disciples so that we might quickly return to shore.

Nothing happened. The fish weren't jumping in the boat, and there was no way I was walking home. The waves sustained their strength — and my stomach sustained its weakness.

Yet, despite the unanswered prayers, I kept my faith. After all, what kind of faith would I have if it could be jettisoned by a temporary illness over the ship railing? The irony of my struggle was that I had planned my fishing excursion as a stress-reliever from the past month when I'd seen too many families experience an erosion of faith.

I'd seen too much that month in my job as a hospital chaplain. I'd watched the faith of more than one family disintegrate before my eyes. And I don't mind telling you that getting that close to imploding faith can be hazardous to your own faith.

I was in the grips of compassion fatigue. When you watch someone hold the hand of their dying child or spouse and you can see the anger fill their grieving eyes, you begin to wonder if you might become collateral damage.

I watched their faith explosion come quickly as they enumerate the things they'd done for God and then demand to know why God wasn't performing in a prescribed contractual manner. Their unstated contract was one in which they saw "the god of the first part agreeing to bless, expand and replenish the worshipper of the second part if said worshipper agrees to all conditions implied therein."

Contractual faith like this is something that will often resemble a life insurance policy as it assumes that strong faith will be free of calamity and suffering. The problem is that those who buy into that kind of contract will usually see their faith do a header deep into the hard ground of reality.
Out on that boat, I was humbly reminded that a contractual faith would always be shattered by reality. While we may hope for a faith that keeps us from harm in the midst of waves that threaten to sicken us with terror, we'd best choose to pray for a competent faith that sustains us and keeps us afloat.

In the meantime, on the other side of the boat, that's exactly what my son seemed to be praying for. And God seemed to be answering. Having caught his limit, his simple prayer went something like, "God, help me catch my dad's limit, too."

Norris Burkes is a syndicated columnist, national speaker and author of No Small Miracles. He also serves as an Air National Guard chaplain and is board-certified in the Association of Professional Chaplains. Call him at 321-549-2500, email him at ask@thechaplain.net, visit his website thechaplain.net or write him at P.O. Box 247, Elk Grove, CA 95759.

Vet takes his final flight

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Vet takes his final flight


The man dying in one of our hospital beds last month was nearly 90. He was old enough to die, but the question his family was asking when I walked into his room was whether he was ready to die.

"Hi, I'm Chaplain Norris," I said to the octogenarian.

"A chaplain?" he asked with the lilt of delighted surprise. Then with a toothless smile he added, "Hi, Norris."

"Hello, Sir," I said, hinting at his naval years in the Greatest Generation.

It was the type of conversation I don't have too often in my role as a hospital chaplain or even as a military chaplain. It was different because our patient was lucid enough to see what lay ahead while still able to acknowledge where he was now. In hospital language, he was "oriented to time and place."

His children and friends surrounded his bed as one of them began humming a favored family hymn. Soon, the rest of his visitors took their cue and music filled the sacred space. As their lyrics spilled into the open hallway, our staff gathered for the moment we knew was coming.

Some glad morning when this life is o'er,

I'll fly away;

To a home on God's celestial shore,

I'll fly away

A slanted smile found its way through the man's pained expressions as he made an attempt to join the chorus.

I'll fly away, Oh Glory

I'll fly away;

When I die, Hallelujah, by and by,

I'll fly away.

More humming. More quiet and then a request.

"Will you say a prayer, Chaplain?" asked his daughter.

The invitation to pray for a dying patient brings unspoken questions: What shall I pray? Do I pray that the patient will live a few more years? Or do I pray that his dying comes without pain?

In a clinical setting these prayerful questions are often rendered: What would the patient want? Aggressive care? Or a painless passing? His family reluctantly decided to pray for the latter.

In my prayer, I brought the words of the psalmist to reassure his family that there was no place that their dad could go without the comforting presence of God:

"Where can I go from your Spirit?

Where can I flee from your presence?

If I go up to the heavens, you are there;"

My prayer prompted a question from a family member that I hear almost weekly in the hospital — not a question really, more a confession looking for absolution.

"I feel so selfish," they often say. "I don't want him to die, but I know he hurts too much to stay here."

It's a plea I frequently answer with some reassurance. "No, that's not selfish at all. That's just a good indication of how much you loved him and how much he loved you."

The real truth in the moment was that their dad had earned the privilege to die in these supportive surroundings. Committed to the woman he'd married, he'd raised his children and loved them with his last breath. He'd watched his wife die the previous year and now he was the last to go through death's portal. He was ready to die and he expressed no regrets.

After my prayer, the man seemed to look into a place that none of us could see. Then, as his chin came to repose on his chest, he confirmed the reservation he'd heard in the song and took his final flight.

Norris Burkes is a syndicated columnist, national speaker and author of "No Small Miracles." He also serves as an Air National Guard chaplain and is board-certified in the Association of Professional Chaplains. You can call him at 321-549-2500, email him at ask@thechaplain.net, visit website thechaplain.net or write him at P.O. Box 247, Elk Grove, CA 95759.