Just call us Abraham and Sarah

Ok, so maybe we'll stick with Nick and Kelli. But, I realized yesterday who should be our current Biblical models: Abraham and Sarah. (See Genesis 12) Their journey from place to place in the desert connects with our story as a couple and today's younger adults in general. Movement between jobs and cities is more than commonplace. It is almost the story of my generation.

Nick and I realized recently that since we met at the end November 2006, that one or both of us have been unemployed, underemployed and/or seeking a place. Nick was in law school, graduated, searched for employment then worked a government job that was terrible, worked an attorney doc review job (which if you know anything about that...ugh!), and finally found stable employment as an attorney with a firm that does employment law and insurance defense. (His two year mark there is this summer.) I, on the other hand, was working at Community Christian as a part of a two-year program, left there with intentions to start a church, worked last season for the IRS, did some temp work, and finally was offered a wonderful part-time position with Hillside Christian Church doing mostly administrative stuff.

In that time, counting my move from Texas, we have moved 6 times between the two of us, just in Kansas City! (I personally have lived in 3 places: Louisiana, Texas and Missouri. Nick has lived in 6: Oklahoma, Kansas, Scotland, Australia, South Carolina, and Missouri.) Movement and flux seems to be part of our identity. Our place or home became each other. And, that, my friends has been my constant and my truth since we first fell in love.

Although I am the one of us who was given a "call" to serve in ministry. We are in this journey of life and living faith together. We've certainly seen the desert and known moving from place to place. I also know that we have left altars to what God has given us in each of the places we have been. The friendships, experiences, and journeys we have made together and before we met each hold a spiritual ebenezer (altar, it's just a way more fun word to use), lifted up to God in thankfulness. I look forward to where we will next build up those stones of hope.

So, call us Abraham and Sarah if you like. But, I am pretty sure you won't find Nick pretending I'm his sister. : )

Angry and Incredible

I’m angry today. Oh, yeah, angry. Angry in that way where someone else incites you only to realize that the anger you feel is barely about what he/she did and more about what else is going on inside, that which the person’s actions connected. (Dude, I’ve had a lot of counseling to get to that place of self realization. And, one of my professors in seminary always said “The problem is not the problem.” Turns out pastoral care/church dynamics resolutions are closely related to the resolutions of one’s own cognitive dissonance.)

This morning a very sweet little old lady reminded me of the tension between a being a fully female human and a fully called pastor. If I am honest with you and me, I am not angry at her. My pastoral identity is way past asking the question, “Can I be a women and a pastor?” Yes, yes I can. Get over it world. A pastor can have boobs.

Now, for the meat of what I am really angry about -- this question: what is God doing with me?*

Since the moment I left my last full-time ministry position I have been asking that question. For a great deal of time, I thought that was starting a new church. Obviously, that isn’t exactly what I think is happening. (Read my last post to get some perspective on that.) I no longer know what my pastoral identity specifically is, or where my place is. Undoubtedly, I am a pastor. My passion is being with people and reminding them or introducing them to a God who loves them without fail. The question is with whom and where that should happen next? I am trying to pray my way through this, but there is an underlying angst that is eating away at me in negative ways. It’s easy to feel sorry for yourself if you live in a vacuum. I don’t. So Nick keeps me honest and patient along the way. And, conversations with most younger adults finds other people saying, “yeah, this is not exactly where I thought I’d be right now.”

So, for those of us who are “on fire for the answer”, covering ourselves with “the sweat I sweat in battles with myself” I ask you to “stop inviting these walls into wide open spaces” because “even at your worst” (even at my worst, even at our worst) “you are …incredible.” (Listen to the poem below by Buddy Wakefield to get the full effect of those quotes. Be forewarned there are some expletives.) We are incredible people, made in the image of God, meant to find our calling (whether pastoral or not), our calling’s places, and the incredible people who will walk our journey with us.

* For those of you who have screwed up understanding of anger... Anger is the emotion we have when something we value is threatened. What is that I feel has been threatened? My knowledge of place. This process of finding place will make me stronger and better. But as far as those who think anger is a bad thing...you need some good counseling and an unwinding of bad theology that keeps you from being all that God has made you to be. It's not the anger that's bad; it's our actions that come forth. Just like it's not sex that is bad; it's how we use it.