I don’t talk much about this part of my life, but once upon a time I set out to become a preacher. It wasn’t my idea. I had no clue what I wanted to become, but there were others around me who were convinced that they saw my future, and that future was in a pulpit somewhere.

That’s a heavy weight to put on a young man’s shoulders. A lot of my buddies who were preparing for ministry used to talk about how they knew from an early age that they wanted to be a preacher. They told vivid stories about how they got the call to ministry, much like the one where Moses met God at the burning bush.

I didn’t have a story. I didn’t have a call. The closest thing I had to an awakening was when some of the little old ladies at church would come up to me, pinch my rosy cheeks in both hands, shake my head back and forth saying, “You’re gonna make a fine preacher one day.” And all I did was read a couple of Bible verses at the beginning of the church service.

One of my earliest experiences was working as a youth minister with a guy who preached the same sermon every Sunday. I mean it. He’d use a different text, but the sermon was always the same. He’d give his points in a different order. He might read a different poem at the end. But every week, it was the same message that had something to do with living by faith and staying out of Hell.

He quit and left town almost in the middle of the night. It caught everybody off guard. The men of the church looked at me, the kid wet behind his ears, and said, “You’re up.” And for the next year I wrote and delivered sermons. I had never done that before. Those people tolerated a fledgling preacher who was learning to swim without a lifejacket.

I didn’t last long. I tried one other church for a couple of years, but I was never at ease in the skin of a preacher. It wasn’t me. I didn’t feel the call. I was a square peg in a round hole. I was good at hiding my uneasiness. No one seemed to notice, but I felt it.

I had a professor of homiletics who said to our preaching class one time, “Boys…if you can be happy doing anything else in this world besides preaching, you ought to go and do that. You won’t ever be happy as a preacher.” What he meant was that a fella has to have a passion for the ministry, a deep commitment to the calling, or else he’s always gonna be dreaming of doing something else with his life. “You’ll be miserable,” he told us.

I was miserable. After just three years, I left the ministry. I was 25 years old.

I wrestled with the guilt of quitting. I thought about how my decision was perhaps a disappointment to God. I didn’t leave the church. I didn’t abandon my heart for God. I just couldn’t be the preacher everyone else thought I should be.

The really crazy part is that, five years later, I gave preaching another try. A man called me out of the blue and started talking to me like I was the best thing since sliced bread. He said I’d be perfect for the job. When I look back on that conversation now, I can see that he guilted me, he shmoozed me, he put the world of opportunity at my feet. I told him, “No,” over and over for several months, but he kept calling. And I finally went.

I made a good run of it. I crafted the sermons. I made the hospital calls. I married and buried as needed. I made some lifelong friends. But in the end, I was itching to be somebody else. The preacher’s skin still didn’t fit. And I finally recognized that it would never fit.

My dad was a real trooper through those unsettled years of mine. He never judged me. He always supported me with his life experiences. “Nothing in life is a mistake,” he said to me. “No education or experience in life is ever wasted.” He wanted me to know that whatever I did in life, my short time in ministry would serve another purpose.

I left full-time ministry over 32 years ago and I have never looked back with regret. I have been at peace for so long now with who I am and what I’ve done with my life that I hardly ever think about those days and all those struggles.

I have known some great men over the years who were good preachers. They were faithful to the task of preaching on Sundays, but that’s not what I’m talking about. They were good men. They belonged in that skin and stood in that gap between earth and heaven with dignity, honor, and humility. They loved what they did with their lives and were perhaps part of the reason I was willing to give ministry a try.

But, for me, it didn’t work. I didn’t fit. I couldn’t stay.

The irony of my time in ministry as a young man is this. As an old man I have been asked over and over again to speak at the funeral of a friend, or the parent of a friend, and even for members of my own family. It is a unique privilege that I cannot explain. I am not a preacher. Yet I am entrusted with the final words spoken over so many of those whom I have known my entire life.

By the time you read this, I will be headed to Hampton to fill that role yet again. I will stand under the tent out in the cemetery behind the church where I grew up. I’ll be among people who have known me better than I care to admit. They know that I did not cut it as a preacher. Yet, they have asked me to walk with them in the shadow of their grief.

I am convinced that God has a sense of humor. Every time I say yes to another funeral, I wonder to myself how in the world I got here. I ran from that job. I gave up on that life. I didn’t fit the mold.

Yet here I am. Even after all these years, there’s this one thing I cannot escape. No matter how uneasy it makes me, I am bound to it by an unseen thread from my past. I have never sought it, yet it always seems to find me.

So, Dad was right. There are no mistakes. No experience in life is ever wasted. Tree farming didn’t require any ministry skills. I had no idea that I would ever again need to draw on those experiences. But God knew. In some strange way, I guess, He was preparing me for this stage of life.

Tomorrow, I will be ready. I am honored to stand beneath that tent.

I can do no less.