Dad died on a Tuesday night during the January term of my last year in seminary. Two weeks before his death, the search committee from Suburban Presbyterian Church piled into a fifteen-passenger van to make the 1200-mile roundtrip to interview me and hear me preach, since I was great with child and unable to travel. I still can’t believe they did that.

I was tense the previous week, particularly about having to preach for them. I was a house, and my joints were loosening up in preparation for childbirth. I felt twangy and slack. What if I tripped on the way to the pulpit? And worse, I felt my mental joints loosening as well. Did I even know how to write a good sermon anymore? To speak intelligently in an interview?

In the midst of my stress-out, Dad sent me an e-mail that said, in part:

Don't let the perfectionist stuff cause you stress. It isn't worth it… We don't force things to happen, we allow them to happen. When I struggle the most with my writing is when I am trying to force an outcome. When I am able to remove my ego and become part of a flow of creativity which neither begins nor ends with me, the work is effortless and much more effective.

The stress level grows as more opportunities present themselves. Remember, in every interview situation, you are there to show them who you are and your job is to learn who they are. Instinctively, you will know when it's a good fit. Follow your feelings instead of your intellect.

He was right, of course. I think we all knew.

I had arranged for us to meet in a classroom on campus for our interview. While I waited outside the main building for them to arrive, I remembered three years earlier, stepping onto that campus as a prospective student and being enveloped by a sense of Home as soon as I stepped onto the quad. When the big red van finally pulled into the circular driveway and the doors opened, a group of lovely, laughing people tumbled out, and Home poured out with them, once again.

Two weeks later, I accepted the call to be associate pastor of Suburban Presbyterian Church. I made the phone call during the Super Bowl. Crowds cheered in the background! Announcers excitedly narrated the play-by-play while I did a bit of salary negotiation for the first time in my life. I’m sure I was channeling a little of Dad, who worked in sales his whole life and was assertive but never slick, who managed to bring easy-going humor to his job.

I sent out announcements to family, including pictures of the church. A day later, I received this short response from Dad:

This is exciting and we're happy for you. So much going on at one time! You make me a proud papa (and grandpa).

The day after that, he was dead.

I’m told that when the body goes into shock, the extremities feel clammy to the touch as the blood races to the trunk and vital organs—brain, heart. In the aftermath of Dad’s death, I just wanted to rush towards my family, to be where the lifeblood was. But I couldn’t make the trip; I was just dangling out there, pallid and limp, five states away with a ticking alarm clock that was set to go off any day. I suppose I could have taken the chance and gotten on the plane—everyone had an opinion about that, I’m sure, whether they shared it with me or not—but I honestly didn’t know what the stress of traveling would do to me, and I feared for the baby. I decided, for better or worse, that I would be a mother first, and find a way to be a grieving daughter in the midst of that primary responsibility.

But on a larger level, I also debated with myself. “Life is fragile, unpredictable, and short. You’ve just made a career decision that will take you, not five states away from family, but half a country away. Does it make sense to be so far from family, given what has happened?”

The next day, as word continued to go out, I got a peace plant from the search committee from Suburban Presbyterian Church. The card read, “…from your SPC family.”

They could have written something else. But they used the magic word, and it was word enough.