I was preaching one August Sunday in 2009 when, to my embarrassment, I lost my place in the sermon. My perception of the event was that approximately 10 seconds had passed, but in reality, I was told, it was at least one and a half minutes.

I had just experienced my first seizure and had begun my reluctant journey toward disability. As a first line of defence, I passed the whole episode off with humour. “The sermon was so boring,” I chuckled, “that even the preacher fell asleep.”

It was not funny when it happened in the pulpit again just one month later. 

I am an Episcopal priest, living with the disability of a seizure disorder called epilepsy. Though my story about disability is my own, it has some similarities with those of other clergy who are also living with disability. It is our own struggle for clergy wellness.

There is the obvious physical side to wellness. It includes, but is not limited to, going to numerous doctors’ appointments, availing oneself of physical therapy, undergoing surgery and taking medications hourly.

For instance, I have a primary care physician, a neurosurgeon and a neurologist. My medications have included two high-powered AEDs (antiepileptic drugs) that were accompanied by two pages of warnings about nasty side effects. I’ve also had two neurosurgeries.

But wellness goes significantly beyond the physical; it also includes multifaceted emotional components. I have had the pastoral care of my bishop, George D. Young III of the Diocese of East Tennessee, a therapist, and a priest from East Carolina with whom I have a weekly telephone appointment.

I have also talked with Barbara Ramnaraine, a deacon at the Episcopal Disabilities Network in Minneapolis, who has been a remarkable source of both encouragement and education.

However, finding other Episcopal clergy living with disabilities in order to share experiences has been an exercise in futility due to the privacy regulations of the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act. This separation from one another diminishes our health. Do not underestimate the depressing influence that isolation brings to our complex journey toward wellness.

There is another example of separation: think about diocesan conventions, where so often the seating plan singles out clergy who are not associated with a parish; they are seated with other onlookers or stand around the periphery of the event. Though not excluded from the Eucharist, they are unintentionally excluded from another kind of table fellowship.

For me the hardest part of healing is spiritual and vocational. I went from being the rector of St. Timothy’s at Signal Mountain, Tennessee, to wearing my “civies” to other Episcopal churches. Clean, crisp vestments that once hung in the church’s vesting room were now hanging in the closet, permeated with a musty, mothball smell.

I placed my clerical collar on my dresser as an “outward and visible sign” of my priestly vocation, because sometimes I did not know who or what I was anymore. I experienced a depth of despair, difficult for others to understand, as my identity was being stripped away by my disability.

I had to find a way to climb out of despondency but found I could not do it alone. The reclaiming of some of my priestly call came when the pity party ended, and I began to consider the possibility of something new emerging in my priestly call through the workings of the Holy Spirit. I needed others who would take the time to walk with me and, even though it was awkward at first, I began to reach out to colleagues.

Another significant step in reclaiming my priestly identity came in a serendipitous moment on Christmas Eve. Entering the narthex of St. Peter’s in Chattanooga with my family, the Rev. Carter

Paden III spotted me and, with a huge grin, asked, “You want to ‘suit up’?” I turned to my spouse with a questioning look. She nodded, then in a quiet yet clear voice said, “Go on.”

I needed her permission. She had walked the journey with me and had every right to be involved in the decision. It was now time for me to be at the altar again, even though I still have epilepsy. The “outward and visible sign” of my vocation, my clerical collar, is coming off the dresser and going back around my neck again as I continue to regain my identity.

I cannot emphasize enough how other Episcopalians have a profound part in our healing when it feels that our dignity has been stripped from us, and in our nakedness of disability we are unintentionally separated from the church that once called us to exercise our gift of priesthood.

We clergy who are on disability offer our gift of weakness to the church, to be a visible symbol of the wounded Christ in a world filled with millions of people living with disabilities. In the broadest interpretation of the word, you can “call” us to come back and participate.

And in so doing, we can begin to explore a new call in the context of our community, the Episcopal Church. After all, calls to ministry are best discerned through the community.

The Revd George L. Choyce lives in Signal Mountain, Tennessee, in the Episcopal Church's Diocese of East Tennessee.

This article first appeared in the Episcopal Journal and is republished with permission.