I wasn’t supposed to be a pastor.
It’s remarkable, really, how the messages communicated to us as children stay with us. Long after I had abandoned the belief system that taught me a woman’s place was singing from the choir loft (not preaching from the pulpit), my own voice would startle me awake, sounding eerily like that of my childhood church.
You can’t do this. You’re not supposed to be a pastor.
I wasn’t using the Bible as my justification. I wasn’t convinced that women shouldn’t be pastors. I just knew I wasn’t supposed to be a pastor.
Why?
First, it was because I was too angry. Angry in general, but also incredibly angry with God. The worst had happened—tragic loss had found its way to my family—and all that simple trust I had in God shattered into unrecognizable shards, far beyond recognition, let alone repair.
Then, it was because I didn’t know enough. I made myself sick the day before I was to travel to North Dakota for first call interviews, ending up in urgent care mere hours before Doug and I were set to drive north. I was twenty-seven. How could I possibly have the right answers? Why would any congregation want me? Why would anyone put their confidence in someone who had no confidence in herself?
Two years later, I became a mom, and the wrestling began in earnest. I nursed the miracle that had been given to me and I knew…THIS is what I was born to do. Why would I give up time with my family to be a pastor? I didn’t have enough energy to give and it felt as though the Church was always getting my best energy. What about my family?
Over the course of three calls to parish ministry, I began to wonder if I was caring for God’s people too deeply. There was such a fine line between the resonance that inspired empathy and the dis-ease that kept me holding the grief of others as my own. “It’s not what you’re carrying, but how you’re carrying it,” a wise mentor advised. But I only knew one way to carry, one way to care. And it was too much.
I established some boundaries, even though I felt like a failure doing so. Perfectionism kept pestering. Why couldn’t I be all things to all people?!? I tended to my well being. I met with a spiritual director and a counselor. I took long walks and had equally long conversations with God. I asked God this question: “Should I stay or should I go?”
Even as I gained clarity and health, I saw the struggle all around me of women in ministry. The pandemic seemed briefly to inspire our best selves to rise up, but quickly led communities of faith to fracture and to foment anger. I saw colleagues bending under the weight of systems that should have provided support but instead contributed to the crushing. And finally, I too witnessed firsthand the power of misogyny alive and at work in the world and in the Church.
God’s response to my question became clear. I left parish ministry to respond to a new call in a familiar place, Wartburg Seminary. I am daily inspired by the students who are responding to God’s call. I wonder what life in the Church will look like for them. I worry, too. I don’t know how to respond when a student has an experience that leads them to ask, “Will it always be like this for women in ministry?”
Here’s what I do know. And I was reminded of it at last night’s staff and faculty dinner, where I was honored alongside dear colleagues for years of ordination. (Twenty, for me, coming up later this year.) President Largen shared the vow we make when we are ordained:
Will you be diligent in your study of the holy scriptures and faithful in your use of the means of grace? Will you pray for God’s people, nourish them with the word and sacraments, and lead them by your own example in faithful service and holy living? Will you give faithful witness in the world, that God’s love may be known in all that you do?
I will, and I ask God to help me.
Our ongoing I will is only possible by God’s grace.
It was God who held me through that season of long-held anger, cradling me and the one I lost as a mother cradles her children. There are still sharp shards of broken trust that pierce my heart, but overwhelmingly God has assembled those shards into a stunning mosaic that filters the light just right.
It was God in whom the beloved ones in my first call put their confidence. Not me. It was never about me. It was about the God who sent me. And that God was steadfastly shaping me for a life of ministry through the dear elders I had the great joy of knowing there in Adams, North Dakota.
It was God—it is God—who holds space for me to wrestle with how I show up for the many vocations in my life. My boys have been blessed by the communities of faith in which they have been—and are being—raised. I’m enveloped by their voices as we sing the hymns on Sunday morning. They know they’re loved. That’s a gift that the Church has given them.
It was God—it is God—who gently invites me to lay down the burdens I’m carrying for others. It’s God who reminds me that there are others bearing the love of Christ to these hurting ones. It’s God who has surrounded me with trusted colleagues whose partnership blesses me every single day and friends and family who’ve known me and loved me so well through all these years. I can turn off my phone. I can find joy and embrace laughter. I can rest.
And though the wrong seems oft so strong, God is the ruler yet. Not the systems that oppress. Not the powers that crush others for their own gain. Not apathy and ignorance. Not legislatures that sign discrimination into law.
No, none of these hold ultimate sway over the life of the Church. None of these hold ultimate sway over the life of the world. The love of God embodied in Jesus, the Word made flesh, holds all creation and carries us to life.
What is the ministry to which God is calling you, the life toward which God is shepherding you? Our ongoing I will is only possible by God’s grace.
In the wrestling, dear God, be at work in us and through us for the sake of this world you so love. Amen.
Through the shards of glass we see eachother. Thanks for sharing the journey and listening for what God is doing in and through you.
thank you for your honesty in wrestling with God. We think we shouldn't wrestle, argue, doubt, or be angry with God. But I think that is exactly the way of faith formation. Whether we "go to the mat" for personal issues or community issues, our wrestling makes us stronger, more alert, and more capable of being there for others.
There is much in this world to be angry about. But things don't get resolved thru anger. We need to take the anger to God, wrestle about it, and in our exhaustion, listen. Listen to our own breathing, listen to what God is breathing into us.
Somehow, in that way, God gives us the courage, the strength and wisdom to do what she wants us to do.
May we all keep wrestling!