Shortly after graduating seminary in California, I thought perhaps I would slide into a full-time associate pastor position at a church. I didn’t. Instead, I found myself walking the halls of an emergency department at a level one trauma center in South Carolina. A few months into my hospital chaplain residency, I found myself with my arm around the shoulders of a middle-aged woman as we watched medical staff move through the motions of a futile effort to revive her husband on the fourth floor of the heart tower. At 2 a.m., as she and I had tears in our eyes, I knew I was where I needed to be, where I was supposed to be.
Later that year, I drove home from leading my second Sunday worship service that morning, knowing that evening I would begin a long night shift at the hospital. I began laughing alone in the car – like a maniac. The situation was absurd, and I was tired, even weary. I laughed because I knew this was a calling, mycalling.
The hospital chaplain residency concluded, and I accepted a call to a church in North Carolina. Seven months into the call, I officiated a funeral for a dear friend. I remember the last day we spent together. We held hands. He was frail, having not eaten for weeks. He said, “I love you.” I said it back. I officiated his funeral, and I concluded the eulogy with some of his final words to me: “I feel joy. I feel thankful. I feel love.”
As I greeted people at the back of the sanctuary after the funeral, a woman informed me that her infant grandchild was near death. The young couple asked me to stay as they turned off the life-support machines and took out the tubes from their dear child, only a few months old.
The moments I cherish most have not been my strongest moments. They have been moments on the heels of disappointment, loss, inadequacy and silence. I cherish these moments because they have been thin places where holy and ordinary mingle.
What is real and good and true in life appears to me to be found in our weakest and most vulnerable moments. As I have come to accept my calling and as others have revealed their truest selves, as the veils have fallen, I realize in weakness I am fully alive.
The strong-man attempts come from insecurities. The strong-man attempts do nothing but conceal and obscure, though the masks are often seen for what they are by everyone but the one wearing them.
Vulnerability reveals truth — truth about ourselves and the mysteries that encircle us. Vulnerability opens us to reality.
It can be scary to remove the masks. It can be scary to see myself as I am. It can be scary to realize that I am not what I thought I am. It can also be liberating.
I’m learning it is true that God’s “power is made perfect in weakness.”
SAM CODINGTON is pastor of West Haven Presbyterian Church in Rocky Mount, North Carolina. He and his life-partner Esther have a three-year-old son, Ezra, and can often be found running along the Tar River Trail in Rocky Mount.
