In the summer of 2007 I showed up at Brook Army Medical Center in San Antonio, TX for a three-month stint as a Chaplain Intern with the US Army. The hospital chaplaincy experience fulfilled some requirements I had within the Presbyterian ordination process as well as within the chaplaincy process, a two birds/one stone kind of thing for which I was grateful.
(Brooke Army Medical Center)
I arrived, however, keenly anxious. I’d never made a hospital visit.
What do you say to a stranger lying in a hospital bed?
How do you even begin talking with someone who may very well not want to see you?
And what about the fact that they are going through something about which you know nothing?
Those anxieties were accentuated by the fact that the other five members of my chaplain intern cohort were all a few years older than me at that point.
I’m too young for this!
(My cohort, plus our supervisor)
Eventually, the day came for our first round of patient visits.
“Here’s the thing,” our Chaplain Supervisor said to us before we went to our assigned floors. “I know each of you is here as an intern. You are here to learn. Grow. Get your certificate. And all of that will happen if you stay the course. But, when you walk into a hospital room, the only thing those patients and families see is a real live chaplain. They don’t see an intern. They don’t care about our program. Because this is real life for them.”
“So,” he said as he took time to make eye contact with each of us. “In every room you visit, show up as a Chaplain.”
Now I was freaking out.
No grace period! Just show up in all our unofficialness and be… official!?
If smartphones were a thing back then I am confident I would have googled the following immediately:
How do you introduce yourself to people in a hospital bed who do not know you?
Top things people want from a chaplain.
Top things chaplains should not say.
And if I’d had ChatGPT I would have prompted the following:
Provide five brief prayers that can be prayed at a hospital bedside. Please make them empathetic, appropriate for a Presbyterian chaplain, and include a relevant Scripture that can be read.
Now, sure, someone else could have observed my life up to that point and responded, quite correctly,
Bobby, you’ve been a leader in the church since your teenage years. Already you’ve led prayers in small settings, big settings, and with individuals. And you’ve read a lot of the Bible and know some of the more memorable passages by heart.
But funny thing about imposter syndrome - you can’t see yourself. You’re living before a worst-case scenario film screening of your life where the runtime feels endless and the theater door exits are locked.
Ever been there?
That space in which you are certain only of one thing:
You are not ready.
You are not good enough.
Not old enough.
Not young enough.
Not credentialed enough.
Not enough.
Are you there now?
—
After exhorting us to ‘be chaplains,’ we were sent on our way. Vaguely, I recall knocking with trepidation on each door, introducing myself as “the chaplain” (deep breath), and then asking if I might come in to visit. I then riffed from there. And prayed… something. Largely, though, those first few visits are a blur of anxiety in my memory.
What I do remember quite vividly, however, is how I was the on-call chaplain the second night of my internship and a call came to my pager telling me to get to the fourth floor immediately. The fourth floor was the burn unit, and it was frequently filled with the many soldiers who had been significantly wounded in Iraq or Afghanistan.
I knocked on the door of the room about which I had been paged, opened it, and received to my nose and eyes the intense burns covering most of the young soldier’s body. But before I saw the body, I heard the screams.
It was his wife as she watched her husband take his final breath, and she was screaming from a place within I’d not known humans had. Her screams were interrupted only occasionally by deep, gasping heaves as her body rocked back and forth.
Slowly, I stepped through the door because, well, that’s what a chaplain does, right?
Truth be told, every fiber of my body was shaking. My stomach quaked. And as the parents ushered me next to the grieving spouse, I had no words. There are no words. I simply sat. Terrified. Terrified of the screams, the death, and the profound sense of inadequacy. I knew I was too young.
Without thinking, I simply placed my hand on the shoulder of the grieving wife. Was that right? Wrong? Fear? Faithfulness? I don’t know. She kept screaming. I remained. Maybe I prayed eventually, but even that I am not sure of.
What I do remember is that it was only a week later that I found myself going into room after room and saying clearly and without hesitation, “Hello. I’m the chaplain. May I come in?”
It was not that I somehow grew comfortable with the pain and death I encountered. Far from it. But, by being thrown into dozens of visits within the first couple of weeks - including some with impossible circumstances - I discovered somewhat quickly that I could, in fact, be present in such space.
Sometimes with words. Sometimes not. But always, I began to realize, with a presence that provided something important - and even more so than I realized (which is what always happens when we show up in service to a calling).
—
It’s as a friend once reminded me: “The cure for imposter syndrome is reps.”
Getting thrown into hospital visit after hospital visit was the quickest way to peel away all my self-inflicted labels (too young, too inexperienced, just an intern) and uncover the truth of who I was called to be (and, in fact, already was); namely, a chaplain.
What about you?
Where can you throw yourself into some reps and shed the false labels you’ve been carrying?
Or, are you being thrown into reps right this moment? Maybe even some that feel way beyond your comfort zone or ability? And in either case, if these reps are in service to an emerging call….then is there a sense, however imperfectly, that something deeper, truer, and bigger is emerging through the reps?
One way or another, if you sense some kind of call growing in you in this season of life, perhaps a good resolution for this new year is simply…
Get in the reps.
Take every rep offered.
Chase the reps.
Or maybe you make the mantra one word: reps.
By which, of course, you are helping yourself remember that the way for your emerging call to unfold will be by risking repetition.
Because if the call is there, then it really will be the reps that tear you from the false story you are currently watching unfold on your internal big screen. And it will be the reps, too, that draw you into the True Story where your Authentic Self emerges in full strength, service, and vitality.
Ready to knock on the next door?
My late husband told the story of being the new chaplain intern called on to administer last rites to a dying patient. When you are the one there, it's on you. Your story helps me better understand what was going through his mind when he stepped through the door. It also reminds me that I've been doing this all my life. Even as our choir rehearses the Christmas portion of "Messiah", with LOTS of reps since September, I have to summon my belief that I am enough. The extra challenge now is hearing my late husband's voice singing the opening aria, "Comfort Ye." Can't let the emotions get in the way of singing out. I liked your story, full of encouragement.
Truly baptism by fire! Very powerful.