March 7 weekend 2025 spirituality column

God's Not finished With This Chaplain, Yet

 

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

 

The worst occasion happened during my USAF deployment to Saudi Arabia in 1999. That's when my supervisor, Col. Mike Bradshaw, told me I wasn't being promoted to the rank of Major.

 

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

 

So, I guess it was appropriate that a few mornings later, I walked into the chapel men's room to evacuate the constipation of my disappointment. Before entering the stall, I followed military tradition and tucked my hat into the beltline at the small of my back. 

 

Before taking my place on the porcelain throne, I noticed the toilet brand name, "Norris." I shrugged. It fit the "career" I was having.

 

I stayed for much longer than I should have. I didn't want to go to the office. How was I supposed to be a supportive chaplain to the deployed troops when I felt so low?

 

Finally, however, I stood to do my "paperwork." As I discarded the paper into the receptacle, I noticed that some careless fool had 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 affixed on it. That fool was me! 

 

I almost cried looking at my hat in the flusher. Was God using a metaphor to tell me that my chaplain career was in the toilet? If so, was the military my only path of ministry? Or were there other ministry venues? I wasn't sure. 

 

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, Master Sgt. Steve Carothers folded his 6-foot-5-inch frame in half, overcome with near stroke-inducing laughter.

 

He then made a comical demand. "If you want me to give you a new hat, you are going to have to give me just one good reason why I should overlook such a blame fool mistake as that." 

 

"Well," I admitted, "there are some foolish officers in this Air Force who seem like they operate with a head full of crap." 

He shook his head with large, agreeable nods. 

 

"But" I said, "don't you think it takes a really good officer like me to admit that he has a hat full of crap?"

 

Hearing my logic, he dropped to the floor, hysterically beating the tile 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 emailed my "hat-full" story to a Florida friend, a newspaper editor named Tom Clifford. Tom thought it was riotously funny but too inappropriate for a newspaper.

Still, he saw through my "crap," and 10 months later, he invited me to begin this syndicated newspaper column. 

 

Col. Bradshaw had asked me to trust him. Trust is best left to God, not man. Now, almost 25 years after the famous toilet week, I look back over a long and rewarding career as a healthcare chaplain.

 

Better yet, I managed to finish a career in uniform. In 2002, I transferred to the California Air National Guard and was twice promoted, retiring as a lieutenant colonel in 2014.

 

So, now I know that if I ever meet up with Col. Bradshaw again, I'd like to tell him one thing: "Trust me, God's still not finished with me."  

This column was excerpted from my book "Thriving Beyond Surviving."

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