Every morning on Tybee Island, my wife walks the beach alone for about an hour. She’s been hunting shark teeth since she was a kid, and she’s extraordinary at it. She doesn’t rush. She doesn’t grid-search the sand like a crime scene investigator. She just walks, eyes loose and open, and finds them. Every time. She says they’re blacker than anything else on the beach. Once you know what you’re looking for, apparently, they’re impossible to miss.
I have never found a single one in my entire life.
I came to Tybee to rest, which is something I did not realize I needed until I got here and stopped moving. It’s Wednesday. We arrived Saturday. My mom brought me to this beach a handful of times when I was growing up, which means I’m now the adult returning to a childhood place — sitting on a porch drinking coffee with my mother while my wife walks the waterline and my nine-year-old niece swims up and down the backyard pool like she was born to be a fish. The geography is exactly the same. But I’m standing in it almost a completely different person.
I haven’t written a word since we got here until now. I haven’t thought about work once. And in the quiet, with no laptop open and no inbox demanding anything, I’ve finally had room to sit with a decision I made a recently.
I called a seminary.
General Theological Seminary, to be specific. I had a Zoom call with admissions. I went in curious. I had spent weeks before that conversation imagining what it might look like to actually study for ordination.
But there was a moment in that call when I knew none of it would work out.
The admissions counselor was lovely. Warm. He walked me through their hybrid M.Div. track — the one designed for people exactly like me, working professionals who can’t relocate to Manhattan for three years. He talked about online coursework and asynchronous formation. I was nodding. I was taking notes. I was already mentally rearranging my evenings to make it fit.
And then he said, even in the hybrid track, you’ll need to be on campus for two to three weeks every year for in-person classes we just can’t teach online.
Two to three weeks.
I did the math in my head right there on the call. Federal leave doesn’t multiply. I get what I get. Two to three weeks every year, for three years, on top of the time I need for actual rest, for my marriage, for my family, for the trip to Tybee I’m sitting on right now. The numbers did not add up. Not at DOJ. Not with my actual life.
That should have been disappointing.
It wasn’t.
What it actually was — and this took me a few days to recognize — was a relief I had not allowed myself to feel until something external gave me permission to feel it. Like getting a flat tire on the way to an appointment you didn’t really want to keep. You stand there on the shoulder looking at the deflated rubber and you realize you’re not upset. You’re relieved. And then you have to be honest with yourself about why.
Here is the honest part.
I sprint. I have always sprinted. I do not know how to live during a thing — I live after it, in the version of myself who has already accomplished the next milestone. I went to law school. I got the degree. I started another master’s at UVA before the first job was even comfortable. I moved from Mississippi to Virginia for the dream job and within months was already thinking about what should come next. The accomplishments stack up because I keep adding them, and the moment one is in hand I am already mentally elsewhere.
I started going to St. Luke’s around Easter last year. I got confirmed this April. Before spring I was on the vestry. By May I was Googling seminary admissions deadlines. I had been Episcopalian for thirteen months and I was already trying to figure out how to be a priest.
What was that?
What was I actually running toward?
Because here’s the thing — I love St. Luke’s. I love being a parishioner. I love the slow Sunday mornings and the same hymns and the same prayers and the way the liturgical year hands me a rhythm I never had to invent. I love my Substack readers. I love that I get to write about all of this and find people who want to talk about it. None of that needed to be improved upon. None of it needed to be credentialed.
But I had turned faith into something I was trying to finish. And I didn’t see it until a fella working in admissions while also pursuing his M.Div. said two to three weeks of residency and my body relaxed instead of tensed.
You all know by now that I was raised Pentecostal. My grandfather was the preacher. Church of God, Mississippi. The Spirit showed up loud and immediate. You did not wait for God in that tradition. God was here. Now. Hands raised, music going, the room electric with the possibility that the Holy Spirit might fall on you that night, in that room, in that exact moment. You came to church hungry for the encounter and you left having had it.
Everything in my childhood church was about now.
The Episcopal Church I joined is about maybe, not yet, on the way, we’ll see, you have to have patience, it’s possible, you can do it, we’re here for you, it can be now, but let that now be on your terms with God’s help, etc...
I don’t think I fully understood that until I sat down to write this. Advent before Christmas. Lent before Easter. Fifty days of Easter before Pentecost. The Spirit doesn’t fall whenever you summon it; the Spirit comes in the season the Spirit comes in, and your job is to wait. The whole liturgical calendar is one long instruction in not skipping ahead.
I came from a tradition where you ran toward God. I joined a tradition where you sit down and let God set the pace.
And then, eight weeks past confirmation, I tried to sprint through it anyway.
My grandfather would find this funny if he were still around. He’d also probably find it baffling. The granddaughter who grew up in his church now learning to wait — really, truly wait — for things he believed should arrive immediately. We loved each other deeply and we would have disagreed about almost everything I now believe. That’s its own kind of grief and I’ll write about it another day.
But the irony is not lost on me: I left the tradition that taught me God shows up now, joined one that teaches God shows up in time, and then immediately tried to skip to the end of it.
We drove to Savannah on this trip because we always do. St. John’s Cathedral is there, gorgeous and Catholic, standing against the skyline the way cathedrals are meant to — visible, unapologetic, an open door dressed up in stone. For years, I’ve gone in there and lit a candle and stood in the silence. Today, I thought about the fact that every Sunday at St. Luke’s I stand up and confess my belief in one holy catholic and apostolic Church — small c, universal, the whole Body of Christ across time and tradition. And then we pray responsively: We pray for your holy Catholic Church, that we may all be one.
That we may all be one.
Cathedrals aren’t built for a specific kind of person. They’re built tall and prominent because they’re meant to be seen from a distance and walked into from any direction. Sanctuaries of art and peace and love. They’ll take whoever shows up.
That’s the church I want to be a member of, not the church I want to graduate from.
My wife met my best church friend once, maybe twice and afterward said she finally understood everything. Not the liturgy or the theology. Just everything I love about being there. Because he never tried to convert me to anything. He talked to me about sports. He was my friend first, which is the only order that ever works on me. His friendship made St. Luke’s feel like home before I had any language for why I needed to be there.
My wife saw that in five minutes. She’s perceptive that way.
She’s also the one finding shark teeth every morning while I drink coffee with my mom.
My wife has been hunting shark teeth since she was a child. She finds them because she’s been at it long enough that her eyes know what to look for. She’s not trying hard. She’s just present, and patient, and walking slowly enough to see what’s already there.
The ancient things are on the beach. They’ve always been on the beach. They’re blacker than everything else around them, she says, once you know how to look.
I called a seminary. I said no. I sat on a porch in Tybee with my mother and my niece and a cup of coffee, and I let the no be enough.
I’m still learning how to look.
Know your "no" is just as courageous as a "yes" might be for someone else, or for another thing, at another time. Both mean trusting God, and letting God set the pace.
I'm so happy for you! From the sounds of it, that's the last thing you need on your plate.
I'm a lot like you in that I can't "see" things that my wife clearly sees. Even after over 35 years of marriage, I still miss stuff. Like, a lot. To my wife's frustration, I might add.
But, to me, that's okay. We're supposed to be different. It helps us see the world better because we see it together.
In other ways, you two are like my wife combined. While she notices the things most of us miss, she's also the one who is thinking five steps ahead before I even know what the question is! Like you, she can take on too much, especially when she's having a good day physically (she suffers from fibro along with a bunch of other stuff).
Sometimes, the best "yes" is a "no." Like you stated, sometimes, we don't know we need the "no" until we can pause and reflect on it. That's what slowing down does for me anyway. I'm reminded of the story of Elijah and the "still small voice" (1 Kings 19.11-13). Certainly, G*d can be in the excitement of a Pentecostal service, but often times, we replace the voice of G*d with the experience. Like, we feel we haven't heard from G*d *unless* we have the exciting experience. I've found that, more times that not, G*d is in the quiet, the stillness, the silence. Fr. Thomas Keating once said, "Silence is God's first language; everything else is a poor translation."
All of that to say, perhaps G*d is telling you to slow down, to not search out the next thing. To take lessons from your wife and notice the every-so-subtle things and see G*d in them. Perhaps G*d is saying, "Be still, and know that I'm G*d" (Psalm 46.10).
Or, perhaps not. Perhaps you're just who you're meant to be. And you and your wife are exactly what G*d needs in the world just at this moment.