An Epiphany Miracle (of Sorts)

On January 11, 2015January 14, 2015 By Stacy N. SergentIn Singleness, Writing2 Comments

We’re now two days away from the electronic release of Being Called Chaplain: How I Lost My Name and (Eventually) Found My Faith. In another post (which I am still trying to recover from the internet abyss), I explained how I ended up publishing with Harrelson Press and how smoothly everything was going, right up until the last minute. This is the rest of that story. My editor, Merianna, and I set a timeline for publication. We wanted to release the ebook in January and the print version in March. Merianna suggested Epiphany as a good and theologically interesting date for the ebook launch. She began formatting the book for 6×8 pages and quickly realized that, even after my initial edits, it was still way too long. Even when she changed to 6×9 formatting, we were looking at a book the length of a historical epic or late entry in the Harry Potter series — far too lengthy for the spiritual memoir genre for which we were aiming. Mere days before Epiphany, she emailed me the sad news that there was just no way we could print the complete book in this form. I was devastated. Continue reading “An Epiphany Miracle (of Sorts)” →

Being Called Author

On January 10, 2015January 14, 2015 By Stacy N. SergentIn Chaplaincy, Grief, Writing2 Comments

We are just four days away from the ebook publication of Being Called Chaplain: How I Lost My Name and (Eventually) Found My Faith, my very first book! This is a dream come true for me, and a process six years in the making. I still remember the day, just a few months after moving to the Charleston area, that I was walking the Ravenel Bridge with my friend Anita and I told her, “I’ve always wanted to write a book, but I just don’t know what I’d write about!” The next year or so was a case of “be careful what you wish for,” as I got enough material for two books, at least. Continue reading “Being Called Author” →

I is for Invisible

On December 5, 2014December 5, 2014 By Stacy N. SergentIn ABCs of Hospital Chaplaincy, Chaplaincy4 Comments

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

I took my dog, Hurley, for a walk along the Mount Pleasant waterfront, as I often do, but things didn’t look the same at all. Where I can usually look across the water to see the port of Charleston and the many church steeples of the Holy City, today there was a wall of gray nothing. A few times every minute, we would hear the low call of a foghorn, but couldn’t see the source of the sound. Then suddenly, the top of a massive cargo ship became visible, just a few phantom smoke stacks and containers that seemed to be floating on a cloud. It sounded a nearly constant alert to its presence as it made its way through the fog. If there were other ships in its path, I sure couldn’t see them. Continue reading “I is for Invisible” →

H is for Hope

On November 19, 2014December 1, 2014 By Stacy N. SergentIn ABCs of Hospital Chaplaincy1 Comment

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

It is the thing with feathers that perches in the soul, according to Emily Dickinson. Nietzsche said it is the worst of all evils. And on my dark days, I think it’s stupid (though not really). In a hospital, hope can make the difference, if not between life and death, then certainly between life and mere survival. Dum spiro, spero. “While I breathe, I hope.” Even when the people I meet in the hospital are fighting for each breath, or when they are hoping that the next breath will be their last, I watch them wrestle with what it means to hope. Continue reading “H is for Hope” →

G is for God

On October 27, 2014December 1, 2014 By Stacy N. SergentIn ABCs of Hospital Chaplaincy, Chaplaincy8 Comments

(This post is part of the continuing series ABCs of Hospital Chaplaincy.)

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve had the following exchange with a patient or family member in the hospital:

“Hi, my name is Stacy. I’m the hospital chaplain.”

“Oh, thank you for coming, but I don’t believe in God.”

My response varies. In my early days as a chaplain intern, I would have allowed this to be the end of the visit. But now, with a few years’ experience under my belt, I don’t walk away so quickly. Sometimes I’ll ask them what it means to them not to believe in God. Sometimes I’ll be honest enough to say, “That’s okay; sometimes I don’t really believe either.” But usually, I just breathe a silent prayer to the God I (usually) believe in and offer whatever support I can to the person across from me. We may never mention God again, but God is there. Continue reading “G is for God” →

E is for Emergency Room

On September 30, 2014December 1, 2014 By Stacy N. SergentIn ABCs of Hospital Chaplaincy, ChaplaincyLeave a comment

(This is the fifth in the series ABCs of Hospital Chaplaincy.)

It is the beating heart of the hospital. It’s also the only place I’ve ever seen a human heart beating (or struggling to beat) inside someone’s chest, up close and personal. I never know quite what I’m walking into when I get a call to the ER. Chaplains are part of the trauma team, automatically paged in the event of a trauma call. (More on that when we get to the letter T.) But there are many other reasons we get requests to come to the emergency room. It’s one of the units where I spend the most time. My closest friends on staff at the hospital are those who work the ER. (Incidentally, it is more appropriately called the emergency department, since it comprises many rooms. But thanks to those pharmaceutical commercials, when I hear ED I can only think of erectile dysfunction, so it remains the ER for me.)

Here, it’s all about crisis. Almost nobody wakes up in the morning planning on being in the ER later that day. The things that bring people here are sudden and surprising. Continue reading “E is for Emergency Room” →

D is for Death

On September 17, 2014September 17, 2014 By Stacy N. SergentIn ABCs of Hospital Chaplaincy, Chaplaincy, Grief11 Comments

(This is the fourth in my series, ABCs of Hospital Chaplaincy. Read other posts in the series here.)

“He then greeted Death as an old friend and went with him gladly, departing this life as equals.”

Sometimes I forget how different my perspective is from that of most “normal” people. Then my roommate asks me, “How was work last night?” I reply, “Not too bad. Just two deaths and a trauma.” She laughs and I look at her quizzically. “Sorry,” she says, “but you’re the only person I know who would call two deaths in one shift ‘not too bad.’ Your job is so weird.” I guess she has a point. Working in a hospital, encountering death on such a routine basis, is more than a little weird. Continue reading “D is for Death” →

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” →

ABCs of Hospital Chaplaincy: C is for Charting

On September 9, 2014December 1, 2014 By Stacy N. SergentIn ABCs of Hospital Chaplaincy, Chaplaincy2 Comments

When I began my first unit of CPE, way back in 2006, I remember the awesome sense of responsibility I had each time I got to document one of my patient visits. I can’t believe we get to write in the patients’ charts, I thought, just like doctors do! Over the next several years and hundreds, maybe thousands of visits, charting became much less exciting. It was part of the routine, something to check off the list of tasks that must be done. “If you didn’t chart it, it didn’t happen,” my CPE supervisor told us. So I charted my visits, over and over and over again. Every job involves paperwork, I suppose, and this is ours. (And yes, when I started out, most of the charting we did was still on paper, writing with an actual pen on a form in a binder. It’s all electronic now.) Continue reading “ABCs of Hospital Chaplaincy: C is for Charting” →

ABCs of Hospital Chaplaincy: B is for Bible

On September 5, 2014December 1, 2014 By Stacy N. SergentIn ABCs of Hospital Chaplaincy, Chaplaincy6 Comments

I’m sure it’s not true everywhere, but since the hospital where I work is located pretty securely in the Bible Belt, we chaplains get a lot of requests to bring Bibles to patients. Our office also contains copies of other sacred texts — the Quran, the Book of Mormon, the Torah, and more — but rarely do we get a request for one of those. Instead, we regularly get calls from nurses whose patients say they left their Bibles at home when they were hospitalized and would like to borrow one. We have a steady supply of Gideon Bibles, so it’s okay that we almost never get them back. One patient told me not long ago, “I just can’t fall asleep without reading God’s word!” I wondered which parts she wasn’t reading, since I have found a lot in there over the years that would keep me awake nights. Continue reading “ABCs of Hospital Chaplaincy: B is for Bible” →