Chapter 8: The Deadline and the Desert — A Miracle at the Eleventh Hour
My task to contact a chaplain recruiter became 1000% more intense as I headed home from my interview with my new lieutenant. I was glad that I was aware now of the deadline. Up to this point, the deadline for the ball to begin rolling toward the chaplaincy had been on the horizon but not set. Now it was, and there was some useful pressure that came along with it. It was also helpful that I had finished my ELCE exams which were one of the primary things I needed to have to do for my seminary registration. The rest of the work was more paperwork/background information which was far less stressful.
This is one of the ways that I really did see God providing throughout this time, even amidst the stress of the unknown. It seemed like, every time I would jump over a hurdle, there would be a new one in my path, but there were never multiple hurdles coming at me at the same time. God allowed them to be spaced out enough that I was able to focus on what I needed to do for any given week and pour all my energy into that specific task. This brought my mind to Jesus words during the Sermon on the Mount:
“Therefore, do not be anxious about tomorrow, for tomorrow will be anxious for itself. Sufficient for the day is its own trouble.”
Matthew 6:34
During these weeks, I certainly could tell that every day was having its own trouble. But learning to trust that God would sort things out one day at a time, in His timeframe and not mine, served to help slow me down. I had never considered myself much of a patient person (and I still don’t), but in a situation like this I had little other choice…
I wish I could remember exactly which week this all happened on. I know it was the end of April but I don’t remember the exact dates. I think they’re written in a journal somewhere but most of our belongings are packed up, at the moment, for our move back to Seminary, so suffice it to say my interview where I was informed of my deadline happened early in the week. Within the next few days, I landed a conversation with a Chaplain recruiter that I thought was an answer to prayer.
I had spoken to other Navy officer recruiters who had promised to pass my information on to chaplain recruiters, but none had given me a call back. A couple of days after my deadline was set, I received a phone call from a chaplain recruiter in Jacksonville, FL. I answered the phone and was extremely excited: God was at work again! My excitement faded quickly. We talked for about 25 minutes and she simply could not understand my situation. I tried multiple times to explain that I was already a commissioned officer in the Navy and was looking to transfer into the chaplaincy, but she was getting fixated on the goal of getting me prepared to “go to OCS” (OCS is Officer Candidacy School, a course I had already completed a year earlier).
By the time I was able to get her to acknowledge that I was already an active-duty officer, she decided that what I was requesting is not something the chaplaincy could do for me. “That’s not how this stuff works, you’ll need to find some other way to get out then maybe you can try contacting us again.” Our conversation died at that. We closed with the common pleasantries and hung up the phone.
I walked back into the house and slumped into the couch. If the chaplaincy wasn’t going to play ball, what other options did I have? If I had infinite time to go back to the drawing board on all of it, maybe I could find another option, but my time was running out. I knew it was in God’s hands, but I also knew I had a role to play in all of it. So what do I do? Do I sit back and pray for a miracle? Do I frantically try to call other people? Would a different chaplaincy recruiter say something different? I wasn’t fully convinced the one I talked to was all that interested in thinking through the possibilities. She was looking for a cookie-cutter situation and, when I didn’t fit the bill, she wasn’t interested in taking on a project.
The rest of this week was a blur to me. I don’t remember what different approaches I took to try and find a solution, but I know they were all dead ends. Every day that ticked by made me more and more anxious that God’s plan was going to be for me to redesignate into a different Navy career field for some time. I started to wonder what kind of job would I even want to do if not a pilot? In the back of my mind I was still holding out hope that something would come up, but I was not counting on it. I knew it would truly need to be a miracle if there was any way I was going to utilize the chaplaincy to help me get out of the Navy. I had some regrets putting all of my eggs into that basket for the past month, but it was the only lead I had to work off.
I was keeping Pastor Kueker up to date on all of these things and I’ll never forget a conversation he and I had the week of my deadline. I was telling him about how I was getting nervous that things weren’t going to work out and that I had whimsically abandoned my career on an impulsive decision and he offered me these words:
“Tyler, think back to Exodus. All those times that Israel was upset and looked back on the way that things were wondering how God was going to take care of them. They were in the desert. They couldn’t grow food or make water magically appear. It was truly life or death for them in there, they had no choice but to rely on God to sustain them. Yet, even in their weakness, God expected them to trust in and rely upon Him. You’re in the desert right now, and you don’t know where your support is going to come from, but you need to trust that His will is going to be done. Regardless of how this turns out, its in His hands.”
I had to keep pulling myself back to that thought as the days turned to hours. The morning of my deadline for packet submission had come. I had prepped the paperwork in case I needed to submit it (but hoping I wouldn’t have to). Now it just seemed inevitable.
Hey, I thought to myself, Now at least we don’t need to worry about the financial questions about all of this! That was little consolation. I spent the morning piddling about the house feeling defeated. I would need to send the packet in by early afternoon so it could be submitted for the board, but I wanted to hold out. My Lieutenant knew I had the paperwork done and was holding out, we had talked about it and she did not have a problem with me submitting it at the literal “last minute”.
As the morning droned on and the heat of day began to enter into full swing, I received a phone call from a number I didn’t recognize. Let me tell you, when you’re praying for a miracle, you answer every call you get, even if it means talking to a solicitor or two. Thankfully, the voice behind this number was no solicitor, it was my miracle.
“Hello, is this Ensign Simmons?” The unknown voice began.
“This is he.” I responded.
“My name is Lieutenant Commander Burleson; I am the officer in-charge of all chaplain recruiters. Your name came across my desk the other day as word has spread about the calling you’re pursing and I wanted to let you know that you have my support, I think we can make this happen. I will be in Pensacola next week for a conference and I want to have lunch with you and hash out the details. I’ll also be assigning you a Chaplain recruiter specifically for your situation that will work with you to get all the paperwork sorted out, I’ll bring her with me next week. Until then, what do you need from me?”
I was speechless. Talk about the last minute, I was literally hours away from submitting a packet requesting to be assigned to various fields across the Navy Officer Corps and here was my answer, finding me rather than me needing to find it. It came in the form of a person I had never met and would have never known to (or have had the ability to) contact on my own.
“Well, Sir, I hate to ask this, but I need someone to speak with my command. I am hours away from submitting for redesignation and, if this goes through, I won’t be able to try and switch to the chaplaincy.” I responded after a short moment when the shock wore off.
“No problem, send me the phone number and email of whoever I need to talk to. I’ll give them a call right now and follow up with an email. If that doesn’t sort things out just give me a call back and we can go from there. Otherwise, I’ll email you early next week with details for our in-person meeting. I look forward to working with you.” With that we hung up. That short 5 minute (and completely unexpected) phone call had changed the course of my future…
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