Sometimes I wonder how I became a pastor.

Yeah, I know the official story.

I went through CAMS. C-A-M-S. I studied. I worked. I went through the exhorter program. I did what they told me to do.

But then, right before I could take my final test, my son was diagnosed with bone cancer.

And suddenly, that test didn’t matter very much.

I wasn’t leaving my son to go take an exam.

So I waited a year.

The next year came, and because of a miscommunication, I missed it again.

Another year.

Another delay.

Another round of studying because things had changed.

At the time, it felt like life kept getting in the way of ministry.

Looking back, I realize something.

It was the ministry.

God wasn’t keeping me from my education.

He was giving me one.

Sometimes I wonder how I became a chaplain.

Then God starts reminding me.

Back in 2006, there was Grandma Logan.

Colon cancer. Hospice.

Mom and I were there taking care of her.

Then Dad got sick. COPD. His breathing became harder, his world became smaller, and Mom and I took care of him until he passed away.

I was a caregiver for Grandma.

I was a caregiver for Dad.

Then came my son.

Bone cancer.

The very reason I couldn’t take my ministerial exam became another classroom.

No desk. No textbook. No professor.

Just cancer.

Fear.

Prayer.

Hospitals.

Waiting rooms.

And learning how to stand beside somebody you love when you cannot fix what is hurting them.

Years later, I stood in my own church and married that same son to Kaylee.

There were probably 80 to 100 people in that sanctuary.

Love filled the room.

It was beautiful.

Then Kaylee began helping take care of him. As he grew older and matured, he learned to take care of himself.

And then there was Mom.

Mom had been my mother.

Then she became my co-parent, helping me raise my children.

But dementia is a thief.

Little by little, it took pieces of her away.

And somewhere along that road, the woman who had once tucked me into bed became my little girl.

I tucked her in.

I kissed her forehead.

And at night, I would have her repeat the Lord’s Prayer with me—

the same prayer she had taught my children,

the same prayer she had taught me when I was a child.

Life had turned the whole thing around.

The hands that once cared for me were now in my hands.

And I cared for her.

So sometimes I wonder how I became a chaplain.

How I became a pastor.

And then I look backward.

Grandma.

Dad.

My son.

Mom.

Hospice rooms.

Hospital rooms.

Bedrooms.

Deathbeds.

Wedding altars.

Church altars.

And suddenly I can see it.

God had been training me the whole time.

I thought I was being delayed.

God was developing me.

I thought life kept interrupting my ministry.

Life was becoming my ministry.

And now I’m a caretaker for a church.

Because pastors aren’t just preachers.

We’re caretakers.

We take care of bruised souls.

Hurting hearts.

Weak faith.

People who come through the doors carrying wounds nobody else can see.

And we stay with them.

We pray with them.

We preach Jesus to them.

We walk beside them until the bruises begin to fade, the weakness begins to strengthen, and the broken places begin to heal.

Not because the pastor has the power to heal them.

But because Jesus does.

He came to bind up the brokenhearted.

And maybe that’s how I became a pastor.

Maybe that’s how I became a chaplain.

Not because one day somebody handed me a certificate and said,

“Now you’re ready.”

Maybe God had been preparing me for decades.

One bedside at a time.

One broken heart at a time.

One goodbye at a time.

And I didn’t even know I was in school.