You know how you stay married even though you don’t always feel like being married? because you made a promise and a commitment and besides you are part of one of the most stable social constructs in which to raise children. and too, if you wait long enough, it generally gets better. Well, ordination is like that for me. I only have one toe in organized religion from a spiritual perspective (I’m far more into an amalgam of practices and beliefs found in a wide variety of world religions and animism, but that is another post for another time). but it’s my big toe. I have this love-hate relationship with The Church (my marriage is actually a much more stable and sane relationship) where I keep thinking The Church will change and I see signs of change and then it doesn’t really and I get my hopes dashed all over again. But something happened at the clergywomen’s conference a couple of weeks ago. I got a fresh batch of Hope. I was reminded of my Call. in a very real, even somewhat tangible, way. Those old familiar feelings were back. resoundingly so. That deep and abiding sense that I. am. not. a. lay. person. That I am a prophet, a priest, a pastor. Motherhood did not change that part of who I am, of my identity that I first gave voice to at 15 but that I had known since I was at least 8 or 9.
Some women slip on motherhood the way you pull on an old familiar sweater. Easy, effortless, comfortably, snugly. My road to motherhood was marked by fits (do I really want to do this? should I have a child? what will I gain? what will I give up? am I already too old? can I keep my own identity? my life is good, why mess it up with a child? will I regret it if I don’t have one? can I even have one? should we adopt? from where? how will we afford a child? how will we manage?) and false starts (months of infertility that turned into years, painful testing, 4 miscarriages). Impending motherhood brought near death and terrible bodily destruction to me. It was the most difficult thing I had ever undertaken, and it nearly took me under. It did take literally years away from my funtioning life. And then, when I had recovered fully and even begun to work again, I accidentally started over with another one. Which was unbelievably and unbearably more difficult than the first one.
I thought I had gotten swallowed up in this whole motherhood role. This calling to be a mama. I have totally subsumed myself in it, as I do everything in my life — I don’t even know how to do anything half-way. But I discovered at the gathering of my sisters in ministry that I was still called to be ordained. So what does that look like for me? an ordained mother. a Reverend mother in the most literal of those terms. It is that very personality trait that I have in which I do everything full on and utterly completely that messed me up as I moved into motherhood. By physical necessity, I became Mother at the cost of all else. including my previous existance as Reverend. I had no intention of quitting work when I got pregnant, but that soon became not even an option as my body was so weakened and sick that it was all I could do to live through the pregnancy; showering was relegated to a weekly activity from which I could take an entire day to recover; getting dressed every day was a pipe dream and working was a total fantasy. So I quit working. In one sense it wasn’t hard. I just didn’t travel back and forth to Southeast Asia. I cancelled speaking engagement after speaking engagement. I asked out of all the teaching of workshops and making of presentations. It was humiliating to have to keep calling people and cancelling. People who had booked me months, even years in advance. People who were gracious and understanding all the while I was judging myself harshly for not being able to still be myself and be pregnant. It was professionally devastating not to be able to “see and be seen” in those settings. and it was personally destroying my sense of calling. After all, if I couldn’t even lead the School of Christian Mission for a week in the summer because I couldn’t swallow my own spit, much less talk out loud or god forbid, DRIVE somewhere 2-3 hours away, well then what kind of minister was I? Obviously a very bad one. One whose impending motherhood totally removed her from her first calling, to preach. Those long months where I was isolated in the eight walls of my bedroom and bathroom took a toll on my professional life as much as it did on my personal one. A toll I am only now articulating. I was too sick to be anything other than barely alive. How could I be someone’s pastor? someone’s pastor’s wife (T still had a church)? a missionary on furlough back home to raise awareness and funds? I lost my sense of who I was in the miasma that was Hyperemesis Gravidarum. I have always had a strong sense of Call. It is one of the most consistent aspects to my journey towards ordination. I just knew. I didn’t always understand what form the Call would take or how I would be in ministry. But from a very young age I knew I would be in “full time Christian service” and later would say that I would be in “international mission and ministry to persons who were oppressed.” It permeated my entire being. It dictated what kinds of summer jobs I took and the volunteer work I did and how I handled myself in personal relationships, both romantic and platonic. It was who I was. I was always “going to be a Christian educator” or a “missionary” or a “minister” as those terms progressed in my mind, each one a more accurate description of what my Call would look like. I was always the person in the whatever group (academic, family, social) who knew what she wanted to do. It was always clear. and for that to be compromised by something else I was wanting to do (or thought I wanted to do) was uknowned territory for me. I didn’t navigate it well. I just left the Ordination calling hanging somewhere and put what little energy and attention I had into getting this nightmare over, getting this being out of my body, and getting myself healed in mind and spirit and body.
But the other week gave me a sense of how I can be called to both Motherhood and Ordination. I had seen others do it, but I hadn’t appropriated that ability of balancing Calls within my own life. What I think I did learn is that I cannot be either Mother or Reverened and be as ill as I was. I couldn’t take care of my existing child when I was pregnant with the second one, nor could I work professionally. But what I am now recognizing is that those illnesses, both during and in between the pregnancies, did not eliminate my Callings. Nor do they define me wholly anymore, as I am moving beyond having been so sick and depleted. Having been so ill is now a part of my past, my life experience; it truly shapes who I am as a mother (I still have a strong feeling of having fought hard for my children even before they arrived) and as a pastor (I have a far better understanding of severely ill congregants now, not in a spiritual sense but rather in a day-to-day needs sense) but it doesn’t not define who I am now.
The clergywomen’s gathering, coupled with the training retreat I led just five days after having returned from being with all my sisters in ministry, gave me Hope, something I had been seriously lacking. I’m sure some people live without hope, but I am not one of them. Without a sense of hope (for the world, for ministry, for myself) I am lost and depressed. The training retreat was for Probationers, folks just out of seminary who are serving their first parishes. They haven’t gotten jaded (or screwed over, to be honest) by “the system” yet. They still have the idealism of not just youth (because many of them are second career persons) but the idealism of pursuing a new calling, a new direction with their lives. The training I provide them with is on Clergy Sexual Ethics. Basically I teach the clergy sexual misconduct piece for all the people who have been, are, or will be ordained by our annual conference. That experience last week was so refreshing, too, which was a complete surprise. I usually get very grumpy (and consequently charge a lot of money, hence my “grump factor” in pricing out my services) when I do these trainings. I don’t do them often because it is usually a difficult all-day or two-day event. There is resentment on the part of the clergy for having to attend a required anything, but certainly a something called Ethics. There is outright combativeness from clergy I can tell have offended are are currently offenders (hell, you do this often enough and, well, I can spot a Predator across the room), and there is pain and often misplaced anger from anyone in the room who has been victimized by a violence of any kind (1 in 3 females and 1 in 7 males have been the victims of sexual abuse in our culture; for any gathered group, you do the math). So I’ve usually got a lot to balance — pastoral interventive care for victims and survivors, a sharp mind to catch the offenders with their excuses and circuitous thinking whereby which they pass the blame onto other factors/people, and then there is the plain old complicated-ness to the curriculum that I’m teaching, which is both heavily theological and legal in nature. It is a tough balancing act to do the clergy misconduct training. Ask any of us who are Trainers, and there are precious few of us. It is usually a no-win situation to be in. For a 6 or 8 or 12 hour time period, depending on how much training I’m offering.
But last week, none of that happened. The resistance was low and the victims were pretty good at taking care of themselves (I always tell people that if anything gets too intense during my presentation that they can excuse themselves and protect themselves in any way they choose. point being that I treat everyone like a grown up, responsible for their own feelings, and give them back some Power over their abuse by allowing them to Choose whether or not they participate in a particular exercise or discussion). This group I had was so receptive and appreciative of my presence. Hell, when I got home one of them had written me a thank you note (!) for having done the retreat in such a way as to be nonthreatening and helpful. How amazing was that!?
All of this is to say that now I have Hope. For ministry: as I see all my sisters in ministry who are worn from years of fighting the system’s sexism and racism as well as the “new recruits” so to speak, I received Hope from all those people who still believe that Ministry is a way to be in and change the world. For the world: as I see how far women have come in my denomination, as we pastor larger and larger churches, as we now have 3 (!) female bishops in the Southeast, as we have many more women entering and exiting seminary now than ever before, I received Hope from those women which represents a world view change, giving me Hope for the whole world. For myself: as I realized that I belonged. really Belonged with those clergywomen. They were my tribe. my community. my people. my sisters. their callings are just like mine and they understand and appreciate my Call in a world that doesn’t use call-based language nor understand how powerful a pull from the Divine, from outside yourself, can truly be. and when I was teaching and doing the training, I remembered that I am good at this. really good. gifted even. If I can teach such sticky and potentially explosive material as is clergy sexual misconduct training and do it with such humor and seriousness and effectiveness that my students are actually enjoying themselves and that process to the point of thanking me? Well, then I truly am in my calling. living out my ministry exactly where I need to be.
Hope is a good thing. It keeps us going when the world around us falls down and fails us. I got me some Hope now. and I am more at peace than I have been since I first began this journey toward motherhood nearly a decade ago.
