The Epilogue: A Recall Notice
On August 11th, 2023, I received a phone call from the admin office on Pensacola.
“LTJG Simmons, this is Ensign ________ [I don’t remember his name] from the redesignation section. I wanted to let you know, our commanding officer [CO] just went to a new command and the new CO is no longer allowing TADs for anyone in redesignation. We need you to come back to Pensacola in the next 2 weeks.”
No, the date isn’t a typo. The “few months” it was supposed to take for my paperwork to separate me from the military turned out to be far longer than that. Throughout that time, I would travel to Pensacola for a week every 5 months to get new TAD orders signed and return to seminary (it worked out well because my brother Ben was doing his Director of Christian Education [DCE] internship in Pensacola at the time, so I enjoyed visiting with him).
Up until this phone call, the command was completely understanding. It was not at all that I was just trying to get a free ride out of it. I was actively working with the chaplaincy recruitment division to try and sort through how they could separate me from the military, but that turned out to be a more difficult thing than they originally anticipated. We would go down one avenue only to hit a dead end, and then another, and then another. Each of these avenues would be a month or two of anticipation before we would find out it didn’t work. Meanwhile, I was actively in my seminary classes working through the first few semesters. I was very thankful I had all of the resolutions God had brought about on my way down, to help keep me from worrying during this time. After all that had happened, I was pretty confident.
At the time of the phone call, we had some paperwork pending down a different avenue but it was looking very close to a dead end and far from the most promising option to get me off active duty. I was amazed that I did not feel panic afterward. I actually felt very calm. We had two weeks left in our Hebrew intensive class and I figured I could head back to Pensacola for a time and pray that God resolves things quickly, if that is how He desired for things to work out. We had certainly been blessed to be at seminary for far longer than I could have ever expected the military to allow me to be TAD.
I called to let my chaplain recruiter know what was going on. He apologized that things had been taking this long, but assured me that they would keep working diligently to get the situation resolved so I could return to my studies as quickly as possible.
Rachel and I started to brainstorm options as to what we would do. Should I go and try to stay with someone from our Pensacola church and leave her at Seminary until I could return (my brother had completed his internship by this time and was installed at a church in St. Louis)? Would the seminary even allow us to continue to rent on campus if I wasn’t actively taking classes? There was quite a bit of uncertainty, but we knew it would resolve and God really gave us peace about the whole situation. At this point, I also had over 70 days of leave saved up and figured I could use some of those to bridge a gap time if necessary, so long as the command would allow me to do it.
5 days went by and I had radio silence from my command as well as my recruiter. It feels very weird to be in a time of limbo where you really don’t know what the next week will hold. I poured my energy into my Hebrew lessons knowing there was nothing I could do to change the military situation. It was all just a waiting game. I figured, as soon as Hebrew ended, I would drive down to Pensacola and try to figure things out. Still, something held me back from taking any action, just yet. So I just went about life as normal.
I was eating lunch on August 16, 2023 when I received a phone call from my recruiter’s aide, PO1 Jackson.
“Hey Sir, great news, the paperwork has come through, we can separate you from active duty whenever you’re ready.”
I about dropped the phone. Here I was a week away from having to move back to Pensacola for an indefinite amount of time and finally, there was a resolve to my situation: I was finally able to separate from the military. She informed me that she was forwarding the paperwork to my command’s administrative office to begin the process and that I should call them.
After we hung up the phone, I called down to the admin office to talk with a member I had gotten pretty close with and knew my situation very well: PO1 Huang. As he picked up the phone he said.
“Sir! I just saw your paperwork come through the system. Congratulations, let’s get you separated!” I couldn’t have been more excited to hear those words. I asked him what it all entailed and he told me that, since I had already completed my entire checkout of the unit, he would be able to do the separation without me even needing to physically travel to Pensacola.
He sent over some documents for me to sign and I set it up so I would have a month and a half of leave and then sell off the rest of my leave days. By the 17th, all the paperwork was completed and I had officially started my terminal leave (that is the term for the leave that you start as you separate from the military). On October 01, 2023, I officially separated from the military and, on October 02, 2023, I swore back in as a Chaplain candidate (not on Active Duty but rather in the Inactive Reserves).
And there you have it. From a moment of clarity on 26 March, 2022, to a separation from the military on 02 October, 2023, my story was full of uncertainty but it is absolutely unequivocally clear to me that God was at work throughout all of it.
I am honored that God has used me in this way and has shown His hand so vividly in my life; however, I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention the fact that this is no different than how He works in all of our lives. He is at work far more often than we will ever give Him credit, and although it may not always come in the form of a last-minute phone call from a stranger, it still all comes from God. Whether it is grabbing some items at a grocery store or trusting that inhaling will bring oxygen into your lungs, God is at work not just on a large scale, but even down to the smallest minutia in our lives. I pray that this account helps you to trust in Him and call upon Him in every need no matter how small it may seem or how insurmountable it may appear.
Thank you again for following along. My family is in the process of moving back to St. Louis to finish my final year of seminary, so I do not plan on posting again until August 2nd. However, prior to that post, I will send out an email to all those who have subscribed to this blog letting you know what topic I plan on writing about next. If you would like to receive this email and further updates, please subscribe below!
“Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things. What you have learned and received and heard and seen in me—practice these things, and the God of peace will be with you.”- Philippians 4:8-9
