What’s supposed to happen in your 20s? Is it about planning or rambling along? How do you know when you are on the right path?
Some thoughts on these questions and more in my new post up today on the National Campus Ministry Association blog. I’d love it if you’d visit!
Two weeks into the new job I knew I had made a mistake. Sitting at my desk, trying to make it through the afternoon, trying to figure out how I would come up with a new plan, and the phone rang. It was Alex Joyner, the campus minister for the Wesley Foundation at UVA. I was an alumna and a Board member there and it was the middle of the afternoon. This is all he said: “I know you just started a new job, but – ” I interrupted and said to him, “Whatever you are about to ask me, the answer is ‘yes.’” It was the craziest and wisest thing I’d ever done. 
I had finished seminary 5 years before this and, like Jonah, I had gone traveling in the other direction for a while, hoping what I heard wasn’t God calling my name. I ended up back in my college town, volunteering at the Wesley Foundation, wondering around the edges how I could finally figure out this vocation thing, but still not certain ordained ministry was my calling.
And then that phone call. Alex had money for a part-time associate and he wanted me to do it. I didn’t know that when he called or when I interrupted him. My response was completely unexpected and made no sense, except that my whole being was finally ready to say “yes” and something in his voice sounded like God saying my name again.
But I could start this story with Cindy Maupin (now McCalmont). She was the youth director at my church the summer between high school and college. She had just graduated from the school I was about to attend. After the summer she was headed off to serve as a US-2 missionary across the country and then on to seminary. I don’t know if she specifically encouraged me to consider seminary but her example was enough to open that door in my imagination. I had never had a female pastor but watching her I could envision what one might be like. I could envision how I might be one.
When I got to college, campus ministers Brooke Willson and Barry Penn Hollar made it explicit: “Why don’t you go to seminary?” They asked me this more than once. I wasn’t entirely sure what they saw in me that made them say this, but I was intrigued. When I started testing out the idea with friends at the campus ministry, no one laughed. Our United Methodist understanding of ordination is that both the individual and the faith community need to recognize a person’s call to ministry. Sometimes, with us stubborn Jonah-like folks, the community hears God more clearly than the individual.
That’s how it was for me for a long, long time. Even when I rashly answered “yes” to Alex on the phone and worked with him for an academic year, part of me held back, still questioning if this was it. Then, at the end of that year during our baccalaureate worship, Jessie Smith, a graduating student, got up to speak. Before her remarks she thanked Alex and me for our ministry and our roles in her journey. When she mentioned me she called me her “spiritual guide.” Simultaneously, I had two reactions: 1) I am not her spiritual guide! and 2) Oh crap, she’s right. Jessie was the straw that broke this strong Jonah-camel’s back. She was the last in a long line of people who could hear God calling my name long before I was willing to hear it and respond in full.
Thank God for each of them. The ones I’ve named here and the many others who encouraged or challenged me. As surely as God has spoken directly to me, God has also given them words I needed to hear. Maybe they were words I could only hear coming from those people at those times. One by one, they chiseled away at my resistance and helped me to claim what I was reluctant to claim on my own.
God doesn’t just call once and then give up on us and move on. Not every call sounds exactly the same. But I can tell you this for sure: God’s call is more persistent than we are stubborn.
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Today’s post is part of a group blogging day for ordained clergy, devoted to answering the question “Who called you on your journey of ministry?”
The United Methodist Church is hosting an event designed especially for those considering or wondering about a call to ordained ministry: Exploration 2013, being held November 15-17 in Denver, Colorado. It’s a great opportunity to meet other young adults (ages 18-26) pondering similar questions and to explore what God is saying to you and how you might respond. You can also check it out on Facebook.
I traveled solo for a long time. Single, with friends and family all over the globe and a love of the road, meant I developed habits to keep me safe, on schedule, traveling light, and unnoticed.
I am the kind of person who is ready to de-plane well before we pull up to the gate. When we get there, I am standing in the aisle, meticulously organized and ready to walk, waiting behind the person who can’t remember where he put his scarf when he sat down. I am the kind of person who checks her tickets and writes down emergency numbers. I try hard to sleep on the transatlantic flights because when I get to London alone and still have a couple of hours to go until I arrive at my friends’ house, I need to be alert and quick and get on the right train without calling attention to myself, the solo American.
When I left to study abroad in France during college, the USA was in the midst of a spat with France over air rights and Libya. France started requiring visas and word went out that Americans should keep a low profile. Experienced fellow ex-pats assured me that passing for Canadian would be the way to go if the going got tough. I took it to heart and tried to blend in. Or at least not stand out as American right away.
I read Rick Steves and pared down what I considered necessary for a 2 week visit. Traveling alone means that it all has to fit on my person or in my hands. God forbid, I ever end up somewhere looking for a trolley that I still can’t push because of the mountain of suitcases I’ve brought.
Backpacking also contributed to my thoughtful, scant packing skills, honed further on my many treks into the Smokies. If you’re headed out into the woods for a few days, everything you take has to be useful and absolutely necessary, and fit in your pack.
Later, when I started taking trips with friends who, according to me, packed too much, I felt superior. Streamlined. In the know. I was the svelte and efficient traveler who didn’t need help to manage my bags and no one was waiting on me.
I have people waiting on me now – husband and son and a passel of students. And I do a lot of waiting on them. I’m working on the superiority thing.
No matter how many advance packing lists we devise or how little room our caravan of cars has, students always show up for mission trips with too much luggage and big, gangly, sloppy sleeping bags spilling out of their ties. The guitar always ends up on top of everything else in the back of my car, leaving just a sliver of rear view left in my mirror. We never move through an airport or a restaurant or a town square without being noticed, all 25 or more of us laughing and talking loudly over top of one another, clearly “not from around here.”
When I travel with my family people usually notice as soon as we get out of the car. My stepson has autism and needs to jump up and down and make a lot of noise. Absolutely not an incognito experience, making a pit stop or a visit to Starbucks. Things take longer with him and he is not generally interested in whatever schedule we have in mind. As my husband says, “He can wait you out. He has all the time in the world.”
During seasons like Advent and Lent, I tend to lean on journey images… Making the Advent pilgrimage to Christmas. Clearing space in our lives and hearts for God to show up along the paths we travel. Allowing ourselves to be surprised by the turns in the road… And, though, I can’t claim this was part of my solo traveling ethos, it does seem that the less baggage we lug into the season the more open our hands and hearts are for what God wants to give.
The thing is, God gives us what we need, but rarely expect. Apparently I needed a noisy, jubilant, jumping son and a crowd of witnesses who are still learning to pack lightly. I know I needed my traveling partner husband (who’s not half bad at packing, by the way). Perhaps my solo traveling habits weren’t formed for my own speed and convenience but so that my hands and my life would be open enough to lend a hand to my fellow travelers with the huge, toppling trolleys.
I love knowing I can get myself around the world solo. I love remembering those times and adventures. But the adventures I am having now are wearing away at my rough edges. Almost none of my trips are solo any more but I love the company.