Chapter 2: A Cruise, a Cop, and a Call.

I drove away from base that Monday morning with a heavy weight on my mind.  No going back kept reverberating in my mind like a hymn in an empty church—haunting, endless, and impossible to ignore.  It was the end of March, and the weather was getting nice enough outside to be able to cruise with the windows down.  I drove my 30+ minute commute with my hand out the window, and I prayed a lot.  The content of my prayers was primarily that God would continue to give me clarity throughout the situation, and to have strength to do what I felt I needed to do.  Thankfully, I wasn’t left to my own devices that day.  I had agreed to help my pastor work on some things with the audio-visual equipment at church, so I decided to head that way. 

I routed my course to Grace Lutheran Church in Pensacola, FL.  This is a congregation that left a lasting impression on us from the moment we walked in the doors.  In fact, our first few weeks at the congregation were extremely telling of their love and hospitality…

The front courtyard to Grace Lutheran Church in Pensacola

You see, our move to Pensacola wasn’t exactly simple.  I was coming from being stuck in the gulag of OCS Student Naval Aviators/Naval Flight Officers who were held at the base after graduation while waiting on the approval of their flight physical. 

Our graduation occurred in July 2021, but only weeks before graduating they informed us that, if our flight physicals were not completed by the medical personnel prior to graduation, we would not be commissioned or allowed to leave until it was completed.  This process was completely out of our hands.  The worst part about all of this: there was no “ETD”, you were held indefinitely (sometimes for up to 4 months) until they sorted it all out.  This meant the possibility of up to 4 additional months away from home (on top of the 3 months OCS already was). 

To complicate things even further, Rachel was pregnant with Hannah at the time, and due in early September.  We knew I would have 4 days from the moment I was released from OCS to when I would be required to check in at the new unit, which was 11 hours away from where we lived in Jacksonville, NC. This meant Rachel had to bear the brunt of preparing our house for the move, packing, coordinating with the movers, and setting up a property management company to manage our house, all while 8 months pregnant and taking care of two young children.  Thankfully, my mother-in-law, Lisa, helped us tremendously in this time and stayed with Rachel to watch the children and provide support during the process.  

All of these things finally transpired in the end of August.  We settled in our newly rented home in Pensacola and, that next Sunday our exhausted family arrived at Grace for the divine service.  Rachel was only a few weeks away from her due date at this time, so it was very obvious she was about to pop.   People surrounded us from the moment we walked in the door, excited to welcome us in and offering to help in any way they could.  We were complete strangers but they were not willing to let that stop them.  Some offered to help us with the children when Rachel went in to labor, others offered to make us meals or help with transport if necessary, and everyone… I mean everyone, said they’d be praying for us.  We felt loved immediately. 

We met with the pastor, Pastor Bernhard Huesmann, after the service to inform him that we would like to have Hannah baptized there after she is born.  I did not know at the time how deeply I would grow to love and respect Pastor Huesmann, who is a major influence in my spiritual growth as well as a mentor and counselor throughout my career change (and will be, God willing, for the rest of my life).  Rachel was only able to make it to church at Grace once before Hannah was born.  The second service she attended there was Hannah’s Baptism, but, by that point, we already knew we had become part of the family of this congregation.  God had given us a community that became a very essential part of our life in Pensacola, and served as the perfect conduit for the future events we had no idea lay only months ahead on our path…

Hannah’s Baptism on 26Sep21

I was so distracted and perplexed on the drive to Grace that I merged into a lane not realizing there was a car toward the back of my blind spot.  Thankfully, they were alert enough to slow down and let me in… of course, this particular car had to be alert, it was a state trooper.  Crap, I thought to myself, that’s just what I need, my first ticket in the midst of all of this going on.  I kept an eye on the trooper who followed me for three or four turns, likely to verify if I was just a typical Florida driver or if I was actually impaired, a line that is often hard to distinguish (sorry to my Florida friends out there, it had to be said).  Thankfully, he got bored and went his own way after a short time.  Crisis averted. Oddly enough, even something as stressful as cutting off a cop in traffic and being followed by him for a few miles was a welcome distraction from the thoughts racing in my mind.

I arrived at Grace in the late morning and Pastor Huesmann invited me into his office to pray and discuss the meeting with my Lieutenant.  I told him the finality of my Lieutenant’s words had shaken me up.  I was no less convicted that I needed to drop flight school and pursue seminary, but it was much more real, now, than it had been only a few days earlier when the “light switch” had first flipped. 

Pastor Huesmann assured me that, although he knew I felt very strongly this was something I needed to do, my vocation as a pilot-in-training was also God pleasing, and that it was okay if I decided to stop pursuing this internal call before it became permanent. 

“Either way,” he offered, “I am happy to pray with and support you in whichever choice that you make.  And you need to know that God will not abandon you regardless of what you do.”

A sense of relief swept over me as we talked and prayed.  I had entered his office with the law weighing heavily upon me and he quickly diagnosed what I needed: the gospel.  He reminded me that God will use me regardless of whether I go to seminary now, or later. He knew the situation better than anyone, after all, he was the second person I talked to when I first felt with intense clarity that I needed to conduct such a drastic and sudden career change.  I appreciated his willingness to not simply feed me with encouragement to “take the plunge” but rather help me discern this internal call by reminding me that something being difficult does not necessarily make it “God ordained”. 

Still, he was also supportive of the fact that both Rachel and I both really felt like this was the right course of action, that God truly had put it on our hearts to pursue seminary now, rather than waiting until later. Our conversation continued for some time before we were interrupted by the tune of Led Zeppelin’s “Song Remains the Same”; my cellphone was ringing.

I quickly pulled it out of my pocket, it displayed a 314 number, an area code I wasn’t familiar with.  Normally I would let an unknown number go to voicemail, but I figured I’d give this one a pass, maybe it was one of the seminaries reaching out.  I held the phone up to my ear, offered a quick and inquisitive “hello”, the reply to which pushed me to the edge of my seat.

“Good Morning, this is Pastor Jesse Kueker from the admissions department at Concordia Seminary, St. Louis.  Is this Tyler Simmons?”…

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