Tag: Chaplain

Monastery mornings

7:05am I checked the Salt Lake Tribune and noticed there was a new book coming out called “Monastery Mornings: My Unusual Boyhood Among the Saints and Monks.” The Author is Michael O’Brien. An attorney in Salt Lake City. The book is about his trips to Holy Trinity Abbey in Huntsville, Utah. I have written about the monastery before. (Side note: I need to start adding tags to posts) I often visited the monastery with my mother and on my own when I was a hospice chaplain in Utah. It closed four years. I still cry realizing I can’t go to the chapel and sit in contemplation.

Still on theme

6:39pm in the apartment. Picked up dinner for everyone, finished eating, now changing. I am still on the same theme today. My work history isn’t normal. No one should change jobs fourteen times in twelve years. No one should worry about being fired everyday. No one should have to give themselves a pep talk to get ready for work. I loved being a chaplain. I was empowered by the job. It wasn’t perfect but it was great as far as jobs go. It fit my personality. I hate operations and sales. I knew early I didn’t want to do operations. It wasn’t much longer I knew I hated sales. But work has a way of locking you in. Your resume shows experience in certain fields. Whether you like those fields is a different story. The immediacy of needing money and having a job override choice. Next thing you know you are depressed and stuck. I need to change.

Still play?

8:49am in my office. The referral from last night fell through. I am jaded. I knew something would go wrong. The patient had been put on palliative care with another hospice and the family chose to go with them. We went from an immediate need imminently dying patient to the admission being put off. Now it is gone altogether. Frustrating. Another set back in an already rough month. The question I have been pondering all morning is how long to still play the game? I think about the scenario of being a chaplain and my wife cutting hair. Find a small town, build a quiet life. Live simple. Her work is just as stressful. She does marketing for a pest control company. We both are beholden to numbers and financial results. Should we stop playing the game or keep going?

Journey man redux

5:47am in the apartment. Took the dog for a long walk this morning. We are both tired. I know I mentioned before that my post chaplain career has felt like being a “journeyman” professional athlete. I bounce from team to team. I seldom stay for more than a season. I am never settled, never at home. I have a particular set of skills that are valuable to a team. I fill a needed position. I show up, work hard and get paid. After a while the team management decides to go in a different direction or try something new. I update my resume, look for a new opportunity, get a new job and the cycle repeats. It hasn’t been terrible. I get to travel. I make decent money. But it is tiring not having a permanent job. I miss stability. I miss having peace of mind. I want to wake up and not feel like I am about to be fired every single day I go to work. How long can I continue to do this? Will I miss it when it is over? And most importantly, what is the alternative? What will I do if I am not doing this?

Chaplain and hairdresser

3:17pm I’m my office in south Phoenix. Listening to music. I wonder what my wife would say if I proposed we move to a small town? I would get a job as a hospice chaplain with good health benefits and she could work as a cosmetologist. I have my Mdiv. She has her license. She cut our daughters hair yesterday. She also cut and colored our daughters friends hair. And she cut my hair. So many years ago, years before our daughter was born, before the WIL, that was the plan. We were going to live our dreams. I wanted to write and work as a chaplain. She just wanted to style hair. Maybe we lost our way. Perhaps now is the time to get back on track

Glimmer of narrative

5:54am Wednesday while walking this morning I started to see a glimmer of a narrative I can embrace. It is the narrative that I was a journeyman salesperson. reliable but not outstanding. I accept that narrative about sales because I have perspective. That career is in the past. I also thought about being a chaplain this morning. I had an honest discussion with myself about why I don’t go back. Reasons include, money, lifestyle, challenge, expectations for my daughter. But I did come up with a new look forward goal. Being a prn chaplain. Just being called when needed to see people or do assessments. Not full time, not set hours.

Confluence

There is this confluence in my life where a lot of things happened together. A nexus. One was the five years of being the chaplain. I loved that job but after five years it had become stale. I wanted to try something new. Second, I became a parent. That changed my world outlook and made me more anxious. Third was the financial crisis. That disrupted our lives. I felt I had to make more money. I have gotten into a worldview rut. I don’t mind the things I have done. Sales, travel, operations. But I would like to feel that security and enjoyment of being a chaplain again at work. I am exhausted

Little kid

6:22am a part of me wants to be that kid again. The kid that could get lost in following the baseball season. That looked forward to football. The kid that read the newspaper and was transported to different possibilities. I say little kid but I was like that well into my 30’s. Today I wish I was a chaplain. Making a couple visits then parking in the shade, reading the paper, drinking coffee.