What Do I Do Now?
By Hal Haralson, Austin, TX
The first step I took after leaving the ministry was to write the First Baptist Church of Loraine, Texas. This church had licensed me and later ordained me. The small rural church (Loraine, pop. 700) had supported and encouraged me for ten years. Leonard Hartley, the pastor, was my mentor.
They responded to my letter requesting that they revoke my ordination with their own letter stating, "We don`t know what to do; we`ve never done that."
My reply was, "You`re Baptist, vote on it."
They did.
I was no longer a preacher and vowed never to preach another sermon. That vow lasted twenty-three years.
The reader needs to know how difficult this decision was.
I had felt God`s call to preach at age sixteen and continued in this direction for ten years. My education at Hardin-Simmons University and Southwestern Seminary (1 year) was preparation for being a preacher.
I married Judy Christian in 1956. She had come to Hardin-Simmons feeling that God had called her to marry a preacher. Judy`s family and my family spoke with pride of their preacher son/son-in-law.
I pastored two churches during this ten-year period: one in Las Cruces, New Mexico, and one in Brackenridge, Texas. After ten years I wanted out.
How do I turn my back on God`s call? How do I support my family when I`d never done anything but preach? What will be the effect on my wife, who had responded to God`s call to be a minister`s wife? What will others think of me? How do I admit failure?
The difficulty of dealing with these questions brought on deep depression.
After a suicide attempt, I was admitted to San Antonio State Hospital. The stay lasted three months and I was given thirteen shock treatments. I was diagnosed as being bi-polar.
The psychiatrist told me (after several sessions) that it was his opinion that if I did not leave the ministry, I would either take my life or spend most of it in a mental hospital.
Strangely, I felt a great sense of relief. I knew that this was not what God wanted for me. I knew that the right door would open when God was ready. I had God`s permission to leave.
I got out of the State Hospital and went to Littlefield, Texas, to get Judy. Brad was born there five days later.
Now I had to find a job. We were deeply in debt and I needed to go to work as quickly as possible.
I told each prospective employer about the mental illness and suicide attempt. I had to be honest with them. It took two months of interviews to find someone who would give me a chance. My first non-church job was that of personnel director for a corporation with 600 employees.
My time in the business world lasted six years. My last job was that of being the managing partner for two doctors. I ran a 35-bed hospital and clinic, managed their ranching interests, and handled all of their personal business. Eventually, the doctors purchased my portion of the partnership.
One of my former doctor-partners asked me, "What would you do, Hal, if you could do anything you wanted? Money is no problem."
I thought for a while. I had a wife and three children and I was 33 years old. What I needed was a profession where my mental illness would not be a handicap. I decided to become a lawyer. "I`d move to Austin and go to The University of Texas Law School," I replied.
Within two weeks (1968) I had been approved for admission without a prior application and without having taken the LSAT. I graduated three years later.
No one wanted to hire and "old man" (age 37), so I hung out a shingle and went to work. I was a solo practitioner in Austin for 30 years.
I experienced one more bout with depression during my first year of practice, which caused me to close my office for six months. When I started again, it was at a much slower pace. I found the right medication, lithium, which has allowed me to enjoy the past 35 years without an episode of depression.
Judy always felt a sense of personal loss after I left the ministry. Her role as a pastor`s wife had been taken from her. But she never gave up on me. She has remained constant in her support during my business and legal careers.
Judy`s empathy and wisdom and fortitude did not go unnoticed. Dr. William Denham, a noted minister and counselor, suggested that she go to graduate school (at age 40) and get her degree in educational psychology.
Judy followed his advice. For the past 25 years she has been a most effective professional psychotherapist. Twenty of those years have been in private practice. The void that had been created when I left the ministry was filled.
Let me share one particular incident that began to shape the rest of my life. Through it I realized that I still am a minister-we all are ministers-just not all preachers.
My secretary buzzed me and indicated that Don Anderson was on the phone. Don was a long-time friend who was pastor of Manor Baptist Church in San Antonio.
"Hal, I`m going to be out of town on May 13, and I`d like for you to preach for me."
"Don, I left the ministry and had my ordination revoked. I don`t do that anymore."
"I`d still like to have you speak on Sunday morning. Why don`t you come on and do something?"
I reluctantly agreed and began to regret it as soon as I got off the phone. As the date approached, I was determined not to "preach."
I really wasn`t sure what I was going to do until the service was turned over to me. I felt more and more as though it was time for me to open up and talk about my experience of leaving the ministry. So that`s what I did. It was the first time that I spoke publicly about my depression and my attempted suicide.
As I spoke at Manor Baptist Church that May morning, I noticed a man on the third row to my left. He was weeping. He cried all the way through the service. But he got up and left before I had an opportunity to speak to him.
That afternoon the phone rang. The voice on the other end of the line identified himself as the man who had cried during the service that morning. "I`ve got to talk to you," the caller said.
We met at a well-known restaurant in San Antonio at three o`clock that day, and over coffee Eric spilled out his story.
"I`ve been an ordained Baptist minister for ten years. For the last several months I have been plagued by severe depression. Yesterday I told my wife that I was going to the grocery store, but I really went downtown. My plan was to loosen a window on the twentieth floor of a particular building and jump out today. My struggle over whether or not I should leave the ministry had taken all of my strength. Suicide seemed to be the only way out."
"As I drove toward the building, I saw a sign that said Manor Baptist Church. Something inside me said that I should go to the worship service. I had no idea what I would hear. I had never even seen this church before. But this morning I listened to you. I was overwhelmed. It was as if God said to me, `I`ve been here all along.`"
Eric and I met two other times. I have seen him over the years at various meetings. He stayed in the ministry, became a chaplain, and retired last year-thirty years after his planned Sunday morning suicide.
As the result of that day I began to see that by sharing our experiences of life-our pain, our fears, our victories-we voice God`s message to others. Painful and traumatic experiences that are our "valley of the shadow of death" become our gift to those who listen. Through our sharing, God can say to someone else, "I`ve been here all along."
