Calling

The following is my "Call" story or Faith story or autobiographical statement. I wrote most of it in January 2005 when I was applying to seminary. It took me several weeks. The fun thing about trying to become a minister is the frequent need to tell or write about one's calling to the ministry. It's a deeply personal story of a painful and wonderful journey.

My faith story begins at my baptism with all of the mystery and promise through which my infant self slept. My father is an ordained minister and my mother is his active partner in life and ministry. Church, specifically the United Methodist Church, has always been a natural and familiar part of my life. My presence and participation was always expected, though not particularly forced, and I was happy to perform my role as the perfect daughter. My parents and I form somewhat of a triumvirate. I identify closely with both of them, and in personality and appearance I am a decent reflection of both. Their excuse for only having one child is that “You don’t mess with perfection if you got it right the first time.” I did not really challenge my parents’ faith in my early years. My father has a very active, exhausting faith in God. He never sits still and runs around all day from visiting the sick to running the community food pantry to writing his sermon to changing the oil in our cars. My mother’s faith is somewhat more relaxed and patient. If the answer to the question one is pondering is a fruit that is still hanging on the tree, my mother is likely to look at it for awhile, and then sit by the tree and wait for the fruit to fall. My father, on the other hand, is going to be trying his hardest to climb the tree and pick it or, at the very least, shake the tree with all his might until the prize drops. I tend to be a tree-shaker myself, but I’m trying to cultivate patience, especially as I have come to realize that the answer may not even be in the tree at all.

My childhood was what I would call fairly uneventful. I grew up in the lovely small town of Orange, Virginia. I was an imaginative, fairly content only child. There were no great tragedies that pierced my awareness. My paternal grandparents died when I was old enough only to know that something was wrong and someone was missing. The grief touched me in a mild irritation that my grandfather was not around to kiss me. I spent many hours in the back yard, climbing trees and making up stories to tell myself, always wishing for a big brother.

I usually do not have dramatic, lightening bolt flashes of truth. Inspiration and revelation tends to come in the moments of quiet truth, comfort, relief, happiness. I was always intrigued by the mystery of our stories, of Creation, the Psalms, the birth of Jesus. I loved stories of angels. There was one time when my grandmother heard voices singing a wonderful song that was familiar, but she couldn’t quite place. She claims she heard angels. When I was in third grade, I really wanted my own angel experience. My mother advised me to pray for a sign and so I did. After a while, I forgot about my request, but one morning I awoke to a moving image on my bedroom wall of a laughing, shimmering girl. I was imaginative, but I knew that that was something from outside of my own self. God had given me a glimpse of my guardian angel.
I went to the University of Virginia and basically plowed straight through four years of anthropology and English literature, loving most minutes of study and critique and writing. When I first got to college, it was very important for me to be on my own. I wanted to be as independent as possible and chart my own course of life. I desired a complete separation from my parents and childhood to prove my individuality. While I still felt connected to God, I did not want to participate in a faith community. I entered the Wesley Foundation only a few times in my first year mainly because I had known the director, a fellow Orange county native, for most of my life.

In my classes at UVa, I met brilliant thinkers and new evidence. In my anthropology and cultural criticism courses, I found a new language for expressing the injustices in our world and society. I was better able to understand how we create our own worlds. Our less than wonderful society, national and global, is a combination of many different forces, and is thus something that can be analyzed and understood and eventually improved. I loved studying other cultures and stories, but I most valued the backward light that those stories cast on my own. I didn’t want to go off to document and “preserve” culture, which I think is and ought to be fluid and constantly changing. My concerns were more for the people. Everyone deserves to be able to write her or his own story. I liked the power of stories, which brought my interest in literature and culture together. We create ourselves and our worlds with our words and our stories that can be narratives of power and dominance, or submissiveness, or we can tell stories of hope and action and justice and love.

During Christmas of my second year in college, I experienced a sadness and longing. I felt distant from God and wanted to get closer. I wasn’t sure exactly what I wanted. I was hesitant to join a college group, having never been part of a large peer faith group. I wanted genuine grounding and acceptance. I went to the Wesley Foundation and found a welcoming, understanding community that was deeply concerned for caring for our world and each other. I was a cautious participant, and it took many hard months outside of my introverted social comfort zone, but eventually a mission/service trip to Mexico helped form the bonds that would keep me connected to this community even after college. That was one of the first times I can recall feeling absolutely insane trying to explain to boyfriend and friends that I had to go eat and talk and play with people I was unsure of yet strangely drawn. Once back to the church, I reexamined the language of my faith, the things I’d learned to say and memorized. I found that I really liked that language, that’s it’s one that I not only know, but also feel. In a roundabout way, I came to discover that my yearnings to help heal humanity had a great deal in common with Methodist ideas of Social Justice.

I found myself in crisis as my final year of college came to a close. I was happy with my life thus far. I was content with my plan to enter the archaeological field. At this point, God was more of an advisor. I picked my course, planned my life, and God would sign the release papers of approval. However, God started nudging me in a different direction. I was restless as graduation approached. I likened the experience to falling off the edge of a cliff. I had gone to college because that’s what I was supposed to do. But I didn’t have a template for afterwards. I felt I was supposed to go to graduate school or get a real job, but nothing inspired me. As radical as I felt archaeology was, I was depressed by the fact that all of this amazing information is almost only read by other scholars, when it should be out in the general public. I was more involved in the Foundation than ever, participating in Disciple Bible Study and a baptism small group. This intense theological study gave me a thirst for more, and I started entertaining ideas about seminary. Gradually, I began to think more of vocation and the possibility of ordained ministry. I had two very distinct choices before me. There is always grace and promise in the very presence of options. I felt that I could continue with my male, advisor type vision of God, or I could embrace a fuller, complicated, seemingly contradictory vision of God, both male and female, leading and testing. I knew that I hadn’t been living my fullest, God-desired life. I had not been as bold and brave.

My choice, ultimately, came down to courage. Instead of worrying about a serious job, I took a summer internship with the Wesley Foundation’s program Project Transformation. I had the chance to put my faith and action together as I helped to lead day camps for children. Project Transformation gave me the opportunity to work with children and churches and communities and to see firsthand, some of the prejudices that our very churches harbor. Something is wrong when a church will not allow Hispanic children to play in the front lawn for fear of their self-image. It would be terrible indeed if a church was a safe-haven for society’s undesirables.
If a language of love and justice is to be found, it ought to be first in the churches. If we all live our truest lives, out of concern and love and care, the rest will fall into place. The church is where this all makes sense to me. At it’s best, the church community reflects a micro-vision of the world: an inclusive family that takes care of each other, shares a story and a language of God, and holds a responsibility to live as radically as Christ. Church is a place to be known and held, where each question leads to another, until we can shape and test and transform our view of God and ourselves. Being in ministry is a part of being in the church. All members participate in ministry because it’s our call. The least we can do is be willing and available for God.

I spent a couple of years working at Barnes and Noble, figuring myself out, learning to love myself as my own and no one else’s, learning to be more outgoing and confident. I went to Candler in Atlanta for seminary. Married Shawn, graduated, and moved back to Virginia. I know there will always be a learning curve and I’ll always be growing and changing and assessing my self and figuring out where to go next. I’ve learned that most people don’t know what they want out of life, and that is part of the mystery. We are all restless and searching in our own ways and we need each other, we strange, fragile humans. We need to be understood and loved and listened to and held. We need to take care of each other, our coworkers and next door neighbors, and those in other countries. We need to be conscious and careful in our living.
I know that I have followed the God who called to me out of the darkness, and will continue to do so, along my own unique journey that our creator has graciously designed for me.