It wasn't during her six months in the burn unit of a hospital that Carol Gadsden got her calling.
It wasn't a few weeks later when the woman whom doctors sent home to die decided to fight back.
Nor was it three years later when she was counseling a co-worker fighting breast cancer and realized "I was squandering my life."
As Gadsden explained Sunday, her calling came on a May day at her school psychologist job as she stood at her desk.
"I couldn't move. My arms and legs were frozen," she said. "And I heard God say, 'I did not abandon you. I was calling you but you haven't stood still long enough to hear it.' I immediately went to the principal, told him I was resigning at the end of the (school) year and began packing boxes."
As she sat there on Sunday in her clerical uniform of the Episcopal faith, Gadsden said, "In this life, you can tell me lots of things and maybe I'll believe some of them. But there's one thing I'm sure, is that God exists."
While she had been going to the church office for the previous week, Sunday was her first day in the pulpit as rector of St. Mary's Episcopal Church.
