Up until very recently, I had a lot of trouble articulating my call.
It’s like knowing I have green eyes and a million freckles and ten toes. Something I just knew: not something I found written on a wall or saw in a dream or heard in the night. It’s a feeling; something warm has laid itself across my heart and I know it’s the right thing the follow, but how do I begin to explain that? It wasn’t until this past July that God gave me something tangible to hold; before that, it was following a tugging on my heart deeper and deeper into wilderness: constantly questioning, searching, asking.
My call story is wrapped around hiding and running and embracing myself and standing still. I remember being twelve and realizing that God was judgment. I remember being twenty and realizing that God was the one who cradled all my broken pieces. I remember being twenty-two and realizing that God was love. I remember being twenty-six and realizing that God was a leader and path-layer. I remember being twenty-nine and realizing that God was past and present, but now also future. And I remember now, at thirty: God is indescribable and present and has always been on the other side of the heart-tugging.
My path dances around the church like fireflies at night. Certain points brighter than others: sharp flashes that would flare then fade, and it was like trying to play connect-the-dots in the dark. In the church, then out of the church, then realizing God is bigger than church, then back in the church, then trying to meld the two together. Then now, where everything seems clearer than ever before, and the truth is something as simple as: I can’t NOT follow God’s call. I can’t do anything else but this.
I’ve been a United Methodist my whole life. Baptized at Myers Park UMC as an infant, and now becoming a member again at 30. I remember these halls, but they seemed so different to me when I was younger. This place has changed and so have I, so maybe it’s appropriate to find myself unable to match the layers. God has brought me full circle. In third grade, I received a Bible in church: a beautiful red-letter Bible with gilded pages and my full name emblazoned across the front in gold. In sixth grade, I received a Bible at confirmation retreat: a Student Life Application Bible with simplistic language and commentary on the “big issues” of the day like Divorce and Abortion and Homosexuality. At twelve, I realized there were things I could never be or God wouldn’t love me anymore and I would be consigned to hell. In my first year of Divinity School, I bought a New Oxford Annotated NRSV Bible with commentary and realized that maybe I didn’t understand God’s Word at all.
In the summer before Divinity School, my mom spoke to me of mountain top experiences because she knows I’ve had them. She hasn’t and she wanted to know about them. I didn’t tell her how many years I spent clawing my way through the valley before I could even see there was a mountain in front of me. I didn’t tell her of the despair and loneliness of feeling unworthy and hating myself. I didn’t tell her how jealous I am of her steady and constant faith in God’s love. There are some things that are nearly impossible to understand unless you’ve lived through them. Instead, I told her that God’s love is infinite and sometimes you don’t need to be on top of a mountain to understand that. I didn’t tell her that the worst part of the mountain top is that you can’t stay there forever.
The thing is: I never doubted God’s existence. I doubted that God loved me or cared for me or wanted good things for me, but I never questioned the existence of God, merely God’s regard for me. Depression lies. And so does the world. And so does the church sometimes. For the longest time, I thought I was irredeemable: I was never going to fit into the boxes of the faithful, and so God had no use for me. The thing is that my call is so wrapped up in loving and accepting myself – in reconciling my being with God’s Word and God’s Love – that I can’t tell my call story without slicing myself open to show you the patched-up parts inside of me. God carved God’s call on the insides of my ribs to heal all the self-harmed parts of me: pressing it close to my heart so I wouldn’t forget. I never understood the phrase “a heart strangely warmed” until I felt God’s call.
My call is formed around how the church formed me, but also how deeply the church hurt me. There will always be scabbed-over wounds in me. But God’s love is such a bright and brilliant and wonderful part of the world that I can’t help but want to spread it everywhere I can reach. Not following God’s call to be a pastor was just as painful as the valley slogging in the years before. Not following God’s call is restlessness without direction, jitteriness without productivity; it’s like going back in time to try and force myself into all of the perfection boxes I thought I had to check to be a good and faithful churchgoer. It’s opening the Bible at confirmation retreat and the feeling of loss and despair that followed. It’s unfulfillment and marking time.
The summer after my first year of Divinity School, I preached for the first time. And it was like something slotted into place inside me. A piece I didn’t know I was missing slid itself without warning into my being, and I realized that this is what I am doing for the rest of my life. I had followed my pastor around all summer learning the ins and outs of behind-the-scenes church work and feeling content and happy in that, but this was the moment that everything became clear: all the bits and pieces that had been forming through my whole life coming together in one bright flash of insight, and the knowledge that being a pastor is my future terrified me. But more than that, it was like my whole life I had been waiting to exhale – holding my breath – waiting for something. And this? This was it.
That’s it, really. My entire call story boiled down to: how can I do anything else but this?
I started candidacy for the first time after that moment trying to chase that newfound piece of me and keep it there. I tried to write my call story and articulate all of this, but it came out dry and dull: sentence after sentence of trying to show the pieces of my life without giving anything away. I’ve never been able to tell a story without opening myself up, and this showed. This? This is an outpouring of everything: an attempt to capture the essence of something living inside of me, and I can’t show the one piece without putting it properly in the puzzle. I hadn’t figured that out before.
I know I made the right call to take a break from applying for candidacy in the Spring. The special conference ripped open the wounds I thought had healed, and I honestly didn’t know if I could pastor a church in the middle of this. I didn’t know if I could love everyone the way I am supposed to while also providing leadership to a divided church. It wouldn’t have been fair to me or the church to put me in that position. I needed the time to discern. I needed to question my call. I needed to figure out if I could love people who have hurt me and who will continue to hurt me.
Now I know.
The thing about being a part of the church and God’s call to be a pastor on my life is that I never stopped pastoring people even as I stepped away. I cared for people hurt by the conference. I cared for people I know would have voted in a way to hurt me. I cared for people I didn’t know and people who were close to my heart. God’s love is consuming and infinite. And once I started job searching and realized the true depth of how much I can’t do anything but this, I realized that my own fears hadn’t been enough to stop me from loving people. Living in the world is hard enough, but living in the world while fighting God’s call? If I’m going to fight, I might as well fight to follow the call on my life instead of fighting against it, so here I am. I know it isn’t going to be easy, but I also know that there is nothing else I can do but be a pastor. This is what I’m meant to do. This is my call. This is my future.
I thought I knew that before, when I started this process, but I didn’t fully understand it until the week after I settled in Charlotte: in July 2019. I asked God for a sign – I begged God to tell me what to do – I prayed constantly. And God answered with Isaiah 41:8-10 (NRSV):
“But you, Israel, my servant,
Jacob, whom I have chosen,
The offspring of Abraham, my friend;
You whom I took from the ends of the earth,
And called from its farthest corners,
Saying to you, ‘You are my servant,
I have chosen you and not cast you off’;
Do not fear, for I am with you,
Do not be afraid, for I am your God;
I will strengthen you, I will help you,
I will uphold you with my victorious right hand.”
This is the clearest answer I’ve ever gotten, and I am so very grateful for it. It hasn’t been an easy journey, and I know it won’t get easier, but that’s not what following God’s call is about. God didn’t say it would be easy, just that I wouldn’t be alone. I know this isn’t the easy road, but it’s the right road and I will not walk it alone, and that will make all the difference. The picture on the box is still forming, and I am delighted to see what pieces God gives me next.
We are stardust 