My Story

The very first inkling that I was being called into ministry happened when I was in 8th grade. The year was 2005 and Invisible Children was a big deal. If you aren't familiar, there were child soldiers being taken from their homes in Uganda and it was horrible. A movement started in America to help put an end to it and was largely led by young adults and teenagers.. I was into it. It was really that instance that kinda woke me out of my teenage selfishness that, hello! there's a whole world outside of my tiny bubble! And there's bad things happening! And YOU can do something about it! I was pumped. I had a purpose! (Any other Enneagram 4's out there??) I will never forget the moment a couple short years later where I declared to my parents at PF Changs that I didn't want to go to college! I was going to be a missionary. I knew they'd be so proud. They were. But they also asked how I planned to make any money. Well, that part wasn't important yet. I'd figure it out!

The second nudge into ministry came to me at the end of high school. I was committed to going to a Christian University (thanks Mom & Dad) and pursuing a degree in Missions. Look at me go! I also made a personal resolution that I wanted to marry a youth minister so I could be a youth minister's wife. I was BEYOND blessed to have 2 of the best youth ministers throughout high school but their WIVES! They impacted me more than they will probably ever know. They counseled me, prayed for me, and encouraged me. They were some of my dearest friends in the hardest time of a teenage girl's life. I wanted to be that for some girl someday. Little did I realize, they were ministering to me. And what I wanted to do was minister to teen girls as I had been ministered to.

Well, God being the good God that He is, He gave me that deep desire of my heart. I got to marry a youth minister! And I got to live out the dream set before me by incredible women in the sacred role of youth minister's wife for 2 almost 3 incredible years. Not long into that role, my husband and I realized we were being called to more. My sweet husband began to speak into me truth: I was a minister. It broke my heart to miss out on youth events where I knew I would be missing out on bonding and sharing and opportunities to guide and mentor these teen girls I adored so much! I loved being the wife, but I wanted to be even MORE involved.

It wasn't that anyone had ever told me I COULDN'T be a youth minister, I had just never seen it before. As Tara Beth Leach so wonderfully explains in her book Emboldened, my imagination had been limited. I just hadn't been able to imagine myself in the role of a minister because I didn't even realize it was something that could be imagined!

"Why have adult imaginations become so limited? Someday my boys will stop making beautiful pieces of art out of paper clips; someday they will see them for what they are—paper clips. Similarly, because women rarely teach, preach, and lead from up front, our imaginations will continue to be limited. When women don’t teach, preach, and lead, we will continue to put them into the teal boxes of our churches: neat, quiet, and safe. Young girls sitting in the pews will never come out of their boxes, get their hands dirty, and boldly go where few have gone in their generation. Something happens to our imaginations when women preach: women in the pews come alive. When women teach, preach, and lead, women in the pews begin to open their confined imaginations and undo the narrative that their role exists in a perfectly fitted box."

Leach, Tara Beth. Emboldened: A Vision for Empowering Women in Ministry (pp. 145-146). InterVarsity Press. Kindle Edition.

Well, that's my story in a very small nutshell. Here I am! Overcoming limited imagination and honest to goodness just trying my best to please God and serve Him with what I have. I've only been an "official" minister for just under two years and man it has been BRUTIFUL. (brutal & beautiful as Glennon Doyle Melton puts it) But as I struggle to find my place in ministry, more than anything I long to play a part in the expanding of the church's imagination for women. I know that SO many of my friends, teachers, & mentors who have impacted my most have been women without whom my faith would NOT be as strong as it is today. I remind myself that I do what I do

1) Because it's where God has led and placed me.

2) Seeing little ol me as a minister could help some girl, someday, somewhere realize & imagine that there IS a place for her and her gifts in the body of Christ!

Please pray for ME and the countless other women pursuing their call to ministry. It truly is brutiful and Holy and terrifying and discouraging & all the things. And maybe even more so, pray for many girls in years and years to come to have BROAD imaginations for themselves in the church! Better yet, let them see it fleshed out and not just in their dreams.