The Conversation That Rearranged Everything

I've been meaning to write this since my ordination but kept putting it off. I never planned to go into ministry, I was studying accounting in Wilmington, until a single conversation with a hospital chaplain during my father's illness. It wasn't only his words. Sitting in that hallway I felt something settle over the conversation itself, rearranging what I thought I wanted from somewhere beneath my own thinking, the way water finds a lower place without being told to. I finished my degree anyway and applied to seminary the same week. Six years later that chaplain crosses my mind more than I expected, and I hope I've become half of what moved through him that week.