A Young Pastor’s Guide to Suffering

Doing God's Word (Messed-Up But Managing #28)

Back in the early 2000s, when I first started full-time ministry, I went into it with absolute excitement. I thought I’d be putting my hard-earned degrees to good work. I thought I’d spend my days preaching, praying, and occasionally engaging in apologetics at Starbucks. But this particular country church had a different idea. To them, ministry meant home visits. Lots of them.

So, I quickly became like a door-to-door vacuum salesman, but instead of vacuums, I was peddling prayer. And I was enduring quite a bit of discomfort. I couldn’t complain to the old-time ministers either. Their comeback was always something like, “I never heard Jesus complain and he had it way worse!” Umm, okay!? Was Jesus above complaining? What about that whole disciples-repeatedly-falling-asleep-in-the-garden scene? Anyway…

I had a quota. I had a literal numerical quota of how many elderly people I was supposed to visit each month. I had to turn in a chart ahead of the monthly board meeting. That part was so loathsome. The other part was just wild sometimes because I was showing up at houses so far off the grid even the Amish would’ve been like “Nah, too remote!”

I ended up in some places that legit felt like deleted scenes from Fargo! I visited a lot of shut-ins. They were usually sweet and kind widows. And the visits were always similar. I’d sit in a saggy floral-patterned chair with a plastic cover that made fart noises every time I moved. The pastor in me hated it, but the comedian in me loved it.

Then the moment of truth would always come: they’d offer me something to eat and drink. It was never soda. Never water. Always something… suspicious. Always something that looked like it had expired when Lincoln was still in office. And sometimes, before trying to down something, I thought enduring Lincoln’s fate might’ve been better!

I remember visiting one widow in particular, a kind little lady who insisted on serving me cake and milk. I could tell, she probably hadn’t welcomed a visitor in a while. This was fun for her. But I also felt like if I didn’t eat and drink what she brought me, I’d lose my salvation. She cut me a slice of cake about the size of my head and brought a glass of milk that looked...and smelled… off. It had chunks. It was the kind of milk that should’ve had as its motto, “We’ve gone bad and we’re proud of it.”

I took one look and knew that milk had turned. It was a dairy nightmare. It’s probably what made me… lactose intolerant! I started wondering whether I should pull a Judas and get out of there. And this woman? It didn’t affect her at all. She chugged hers like it was a cool glass of lemonade on a hot July afternoon. Clearly, she’d done this before. Probably earlier that morning, in fact. She didn’t flinch. She didn’t blink. She just went for it like a champ.

Me? I was sweating. I tried to fake it. I did the ol’ “bring it to your lips and then wipe your mouth with a napkin” move. I did this about forty-six times. I was basically giving the glass a tour of my face. I kept making tiny sip sounds just for realism. I even threw in a mid-sip sigh like I was enjoying it. Meanwhile, I was dying inside. D-Y-I-N-G!!! And the cake? The cake was basically a brick made out of cinnamon. I took my first bite and it disintegrated like sawdust the moment it hit my tongue. Sadly, I had nothing to wash the sawdust down.

In seminary, they teach you how to parse Greek verbs. They teach you to explain the Trinity using metaphors that don’t get you called a heretic. They teach you to preach funerals, weddings, and revivals. But they don’t teach you how to gracefully refuse curdled milk from a woman who keeps calling you “preacher boy” and thinks it’s still 1987. Ugh!

But I couldn’t address the stupid nickname she’d given me. And, in terms of the cake and milk, I couldn’t say no. I was too polite. And she was too proud. I knew if I offended her, I might end up on her mantle next to her dead husband’s urn. Eventually, I got through the cake. The milk…not so much. As I left that old rural house of a lady whose name I couldn’t remember if you offered me a million dollars, what I can tell you I remember is her standing in the doorway saying, “Come back any time!” I learned a lesson that day: Kindness can cover a multitude of bad meals.