How Pastors Practice Priesthood

The Dismal Trade of Ministry

This past week I conferred the absolution and commendation on a congregant who had become a friend. A fellow cancer sufferer, his death was both expected and all too swift. That his wife had been reading my book made me feel somehow culpable for his mortality. Time will tell if his sudden leave taking was a mercy. Standing vigil with his family as his time ran out, I thought of this short piece I wrote years ago:

I spent the day with a couple nervously standing vigil by their boy's bedside in the PICU. Their son, confirmed by me years ago, is only a few sizes and grades ahead of my eldest. I can’t say much more than that, pastoral privilege and all.

What I can reveal:

Right after I left that family, I collected my youngest son, Gabriel. We got in the car. Closed the doors. Buckled our seat belts (‘I beat you Daddy’). I turned on the ignition. Looked in the rearview mirror at Gabriel behind me; he was wearing my faded UVA hat and smiling. And I started to cry, suddenly feeling like I’d gotten into my car wearing someone else’s shoes.

Life is so infuriatingly fragile.

This isn’t something my boys have taught me.

My boys have no notion that while God may be good and gracious, life is seldom fair or forgiving.

It’s not a lesson my boys have taught me. It’s more like a lesson my job has taught me, a lesson I wasn’t in a position to learn until I had children. It’s more like now that I have skin in the game my vocation won’t let me forget just how fragile are my boys’ own skin and bones.

They’re here today…(down in the basement playing Legos, actually).

But tomorrow? The day after tomorrow?

I bring my work home with me.

I watch my boy turn his bike out the cul de sac for the first and I close my eyes to wait for the inevitable sound of screeching brakes.

I can’t drive by a car accident without imagining my own impending, parallel nightmare.

Standing in line at a roller coaster with my son, I can’t look at the twists and turns of the track without imagining my boy in the statistical margin for error.

Death is a big part of what I do.