Chapter 6: The Weight of the Nametag
I stepped out of my Lieutenant’s office into a hallway that suddenly felt unfamiliar. Same walls. Same fluorescent lights. Same smell of coffee and dry-erase markers. But I wasn’t the same.
To my left and right, classrooms buzzed with the energy of newly minted officers trying to absorb months of knowledge in a few condensed hours. Just weeks earlier, I had been one of them—shoulder to shoulder, name pinned to my chest, chasing wings of gold. And yet here I was now, walking those halls not as a student, but as something else. Not yet free. Not yet reassigned. Somewhere in between.
There’s a strange dissonance in watching the machine carry on without you, as if your nameplate is still bolted to the conveyor belt even after you’ve stepped off. My nametag still clung to my gear, but the gear no longer felt like it belonged to me.
Chaplain Holland’s office was on the far side of the building. Of all the chaplains I had worked with in my career, he was one of the most well-liked and respected I had ever seen. I imagine this was mostly because he spent so much time getting to know everyone in the unit and truly caring about what was going on in our lives. He didn’t just exist in the margins, he was known and loved by everyone. Back when I was working in the Flight Management Office, he would come into the office regularly and greet us all, turning even a stressful day into something a bit more manageable. He had a contagious joy that clearly came from the confidence he had in his savior, Jesus.
I hoped he’d be able to see my situation with clarity, or at least with grace. But when I arrived, his aide informed me he wasn’t available. So I scheduled a meeting for the following morning and called it a day.
That evening, something unexpected settled over me. Peace. Not the peace that comes from knowing everything is going to work out—but the peace that comes from knowing you’ve done what you were supposed to do. The gears were already turning. There was no “undo” button. The decision had been made. The beach ball was in the air. Now it was just a matter of where the wind—or rather, where God—would take it.
With nothing left to do that day, I started gathering my flight gear. Helmet bag. Checklist binder. Flight suit. Everything I had spent months learning to depend on. I took the stool out of the walk in closet… That may sound like a silly fact but it had become a pretty prominent part of my life. “fake flying” in the closet in full gear running through check lists and emergency drills over and over again trying to commit them to memory. That stool had been my home office for the past month and there was more than a moment of reverence as I removed it, impressions still left in the carpet, knowing I’d never need to run through those drills again. I then turned to my gear and began the arduous task of cutting out the stitched-on nametags—one by one.
There’s something deceptively simple about removing a nametag. It takes only seconds. But each time, it tugged at something deeper. These weren’t just patches of embroidered thread. They were identities—ones I had worked hard to earn, ones I had once worn with pride. And now, I was taking them off, unsure of what—if anything—would replace them.
The next morning at 10 a.m., I sat down across from Chaplain Holland. If I had any lingering doubts about the path ahead, they faded as soon as he spoke. He listened, not just politely, but with the kind of quiet attentiveness that makes you feel like your story matters.
After I laid everything out, he didn’t hesitate. He nodded, leaned back, and said, “Well, let’s see what we can do to help you follow this calling.”
He mentioned a route I hadn’t even considered: the Chaplain Candidate Program. “I don’t know how it would work from active duty,” he admitted. “But it could be a way to transition into the Inactive Reserves while attending seminary. I’ve never heard of anyone going from flight school to chaplaincy, but—hey—you might be the first.”
I didn’t want to be the first. I wasn’t doing this to be the first or some kind of “trailblazer”. There was some confusion I had as I tried to contemplate what exactly all this amounted to. Why was it on my heart for so long to become a pilot only for it to be something I was led away from before it came to fruition? I wrestled with this thought over and over again.
I had no roadmap. No template to follow. But at least now I had a compass. And more than that, I had someone in the chain of command who wasn’t skeptical—someone who didn’t see my decision as reckless or naive. That was a turning point.
Before I left, we prayed together. His words were confident, hopeful, and grounded. And in that moment, it didn’t matter that my future was still foggy. I had enough light for the next step.
As I left his office, I carried two things with me: a new name to contact—one chaplain recruiter—and a deeper sense of clarity. I wasn’t out of the Navy yet. My ID still said “student pilot.” My gear was still stacked in the corner of my room. And somewhere in a database, my name was still linked to a career that no longer fit.
But bit by bit, the nametag was loosening. Not torn off in frustration. Not ripped away in defeat. Just slowly, reverently, removed—because something heavier was beginning to take its place. Now I had a plan: a recruiter to contact, seminary exams to study for, and a gauntlet of command exit interviews to conduct, my work was cut out for me…
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