Waiting on a Baby at Christmas

On December 25, 2021 By Stacy N. SergentIn Gratitude, Holidays, Parenting, Women in Ministry2 Comments

I watched as my 9-year-old stepson raised his hand during a recent Sunday morning children’s sermon. “When you said that Jesus came to us as a baby,” he told the children’s ministry coordinator, “it makes me think about the baby in my stepmom’s belly.” Tears filled my eyes and I smiled, placing a hand on my very prominent belly, where his sister was making her presence known with unmistakable movements. As we approached Christmas this year, I enjoyed Jackson’s questions and observations as he made connections between my pregnancy and Mary’s.

“You think Jesus kicked Mary all the time, too?”

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Becoming Into Another Decade

On December 31, 2019January 1, 2020 By Stacy N. SergentIn Gratitude, Holidays, Love for Neighbor and Self, Parenting, Perfectionism, Women in Ministry, Writing1 Comment

A lot has happened since the first day of 2010. That’s true for the world at large, of course, and probably true in any of our individual lives. I’m a sucker for new beginnings, and for nice round numbers ending in zero, so despite a pretty tough 2019, I find myself very hopeful as we face the beginning of a new year and a new decade tomorrow. It would be easy to look back at the last ten years and see all the things that haven’t turned out as I had hoped or planned. As a type 4 on the enneagram, I am someone who makes great big beautiful plans and goals on a regular basis, and regularly finds myself shocked and embarrassed when I am unable to bring them to fruition. (Hey, remember when I was going to do 40 new things for my 40th birthday? Yeah, let’s try to forget.) But rather than wallowing in my losses and failures (we 4s looove to wallow), I’d like to look back gratefully at all the things I was able to become in the 2010s, and (maybe in a later post) dream hopefully of some things I’d like to become in the 2020s.

In the past decade, I have become: Continue reading “Becoming Into Another Decade” →

Living in Imaginary Worlds

On March 23, 2016March 23, 2016 By Stacy N. SergentIn Chaplaincy, Holidays, Love for Neighbor and Self, Suffering, Uncategorized, Women in MinistryLeave a comment

Recently I discovered and fell in love with a podcast called Imaginary Worlds. Host Eric Molinsky explores many of the fictional worlds we know from pop culture, but often with a unique and very intelligent spin. It was his five-part series on Star Wars that hooked me (which will come as no surprise to anyone who knows my lifelong devotion to that franchise), and made me think about the movies and expanded universe in new ways. In one episode, historians and Star Wars scholars discussed the cultural/political factors in 1977 that led to the original movie becoming such a phenomenon. Subsequent episodes delved into the “Han shot first” controversy from an ethical standpoint, asked whether the Empire saw itself as evil or was taking what it saw as reasonable steps to bring order to a chaotic galaxy, featured a rabbi who compared the Star Wars expanded universe to the rabbinic commentary on the Torah called midrash, and debated whether “Slave Leia” could be seen as a symbol of female empowerment or was a misogynistic wrong turn in the character’s journey best left forgotten. I listened to those episodes multiple times, then went back and listened to every episode since the podcast began in 2014. It got me thinking about how much of my time is spent in imaginary worlds, not just when I lose myself in fiction, but when I do my job as a chaplain. Continue reading “Living in Imaginary Worlds” →

A Day in the Life of a Chaplain

On February 4, 2016February 4, 2016 By Stacy N. SergentIn Chaplaincy, Women in MinistryLeave a comment

I was asked to write a guest post for Baptist Women in Ministry’s blog, and it was featured today on their Wednesday Words. Check out “A Day in the Life of a Chaplain” on their website. And to read about a whole year in the life of a chaplain, be sure to get my book, Being Called Chaplain: How I Lost My Name and (Eventually) Found My Faith.

Q is for Quiet

On January 10, 2016January 10, 2016 By Stacy N. SergentIn ABCs of Hospital Chaplaincy, Chaplaincy, Prayer, Women in Ministry2 Comments

(This post is part of my ongoing series ABCs of Hospital Chaplaincy.)

Working in a hospital is sometimes enough to make you superstitious (though, like Michael Scott, I try to be only a little stitious). Full moons really do seem to bring out more of the crazy stuff. If someone mentions that we haven’t had a gunshot wound all day, ER staff members would bet that one will arrive within the hour. And whatever you do, don’t say anything to the effect of, “It sure is quiet around here.” In my book, I tell the story of how I got on a nurse’s bad side by jinxing her shift with the Q word. Continue reading “Q is for Quiet” →

May the Stigma End

On May 30, 2015May 30, 2015 By Stacy N. SergentIn Depression, Love for Neighbor and Self, Women in MinistryLeave a comment

There’s not much of May left, so I’m getting this in just under the wire! May is Mental Health Awareness month, signed into recognition by President Obama in 2013. I’ve written quite a bit about my own struggle with mental health here, and in my recently-released book, I touched on how growing up in a family affected by major depression eventually contributed to my calling as a hospital chaplain. Continue reading “May the Stigma End” →

K is for Kids

On January 21, 2015 By Stacy N. SergentIn ABCs of Hospital Chaplaincy, Chaplaincy, Grief, Women in MinistryLeave a comment

(This post is part of my ongoing series ABCs of Hospital Chaplaincy.)

Working closely with children is one of the best and worst parts of my job. Sometimes it means I get to hold a new baby and speak a blessing over her, as I did with my friends’ daughter, Elli, in the above photo. It means playing Legos with the kid whose mom is working one of her three jobs and who just wants some company while he recovers from another round of chemotherapy. It means talking to the very tall 12-year-old boy in the emergency room in a way that lets him know I understand he’s still a kid, and that it’s okay to be scared or to cry. I love being with kids in those moments. Continue reading “K is for Kids” →

To My Good Friends, Whom I’ve Never Met

On September 13, 2014December 1, 2014 By Stacy N. SergentIn Chaplaincy, Gratitude, Love for Neighbor and Self, Women in MinistryLeave a comment

It is rather a strange 21st-century phenomenon. There are people I have never met — and may never meet — in “real life” who know things about me that I haven’t shared even with members of my own family. It all started, for me, with a group on Twitter. I don’t even remember how we all found each other, but somehow a bunch of hospital chaplains from very different religious backgrounds and several different countries started a weekly chat at #SocMedChap, for Social Media Chaplains. We would take turns facilitating the discussion, choosing a topic and throwing out a few different questions for the group to tweet responses. It was eye-opening reading these different perspectives from fellow chaplains, even in 140-character bursts. Continue reading “To My Good Friends, Whom I’ve Never Met” →

I Am Not a “That”

On July 5, 2014July 5, 2016 By Stacy N. SergentIn Body Image, Love for Neighbor and Self, Women in Ministry9 Comments

It was a little after 9pm, barely dark. I was walking across the campus of the hospital where I work. My shift lasts until 1am, and if it gets really late, I will sometimes ask the Public Safety officer for a ride. But it was not late, and it’s only a few blocks’ walk, so I didn’t even think about it. That is until a couple of minutes later, when a man in a car at the stoplight stuck his head out the window to yell, “Whoo, baby! I want some of that!” Since I was not carrying anything, I can only assume the “that” he was referring to was me — or the sexual pleasure he imagined he would get from me. I was sufficiently startled that I changed my route in case he followed me, and made sure to pass by the Public Safety building. It made me angry that I have to think about such things, no matter what time of day it is. Continue reading “I Am Not a “That”” →

Why We Still Need to Have This Conversation

On November 27, 2013December 1, 2014 By Stacy N. SergentIn Women in MinistryLeave a comment

This month marks the one-year anniversary of the release of The Modern Magnificat: Women Responding to the Call of God. I’m proud to be one of the women who contributed a ministerial calling story to this collection edited by Jennifer Harris Dault. I was discussing the book, and my calling, with a friend recently, as we were both reading Sarah Bessey’s new book, Jesus Feminist: An Invitation to Revisit the Bible’s View of Women. An acquaintance walked by and overheard us. “Another book about women?” he said laughingly. “Didn’t you just go hear some other author talk about this same thing?” He was referring to a convocation with Rachel Held Evans I attended in September, at which she discussed her book, A Year of Biblical Womanhood. “That’s an important issue, I know. But there are other things the church needs to focus on,” he said. “Why do we need to keep having the same conversation?” Continue reading “Why We Still Need to Have This Conversation” →