Ordination

I grew up in Fundamentalist Christianity, and that tradition does not allow women to be ordained or to have a leadership role that would result in women teaching men.  I am not a part of this tradition any more and have not been for more than a decade.  I find myself wondering at times what my life might have looked like if I had not been required to take such a scenic route to my life's work, but ultimately I come back to a place of gratitude for my journey.  I married into ministry because that was the only on-ramp there was for me, and I "so happened" to marry a truly egalitarian man who never bought into the constraints placed on women, even in the early days when we were both committed fundamentalists.  I always served shoulder to shoulder with my husband in our churches, even in a church that tried very hard to limit my involvement, telling me they didn't expect a "two for one deal."  I suppose that was honorable of them, but those years were frankly miserable because I was cut off from what mattered most to me: tending to the well-being and health of the church.  Back then, I wormed my way into being church secretary just to stay as close to the action as I could.

Nothing pleases me quite as much as accurate words. I long for a specificity that must be exhausting for people around me to watch me snatching at. In the years while we planted Vintage, it was always awkward to find a word or phrase that expressed what I was in the church, and my people struggled with me. They introduced me to their friends as "My Pastor's wife. But more than that. My friend. And also....Kind of my pastor too."  I chalked it up to the ever-bizarre role of being a pastor's wife, which always seemed to me to be only really like a First Lady in its level of involvement. But in time, and after a variety of experiences where words failed me, I came to the realization that the reason the words "Pastors Wife" didn't accurately describe me was because I was more than that and always had been.  It would be another three years before I could put meat on the bones of that realization.

The church has a tradition of recognizing people who stand out in their midst for their ability and calling to lead them.   The process of ordination is different in various denominations and has various levels of intensity.  Many mainline denominations like Episcopalians, Anglicans, etc. require formal training in a seminary to be ordained, while most "low church" gatherings only require the ability to successfully navigate an ordination council convening with them to examine their life and doctrine.  In my case, based on my twenty years of experience serving the church,  my requirements were to present a paper citing my belief system and a defense of that paper in an exam that was lovingly dubbed "a witch trial" by my charming congregants.  A small group consisting of a three teachers and two former pastors served as my ordination council.  They reviewed my paper and prepared follow-up questions which I answered in a public forum. When their questions were exhausted, the public crowd was allowed to ask some questions. That was a fun night!   I didn't know the questions ahead of time, so just before hand, I got nervous and started cramming, but once the questions started coming, I was just having fun.  The council recommended my ordination to the Oversight Team that serves like trustees, deacons or elders of Vintage and they formalized the ordination with an installation service.

I'm fond of exaggeration to prove a point, but I use no hyperbole when I say that the day of my service will live in my memory on par with my wedding day.  My husband and children were fully supportive and present.  A friend from a former church came for the weekend to celebrate with us, and a series of video greetings took my breath away with their words of confirmation, encouragement, excitement and participation.


For many years, I joked that if I ever met Brian McLaren in person, I would punch him in the face.  His book A New Kind of Christian was the match that lit the fuse that exploded our life as fundamentalists. The resulting destruction sent us hurling into life in Arkansas with a house in foreclosure and my imagined future burned to the ground. Not even my irony-loving soul could have guessed that a few years later, Brian would be sending a greeting, speaking words of blessing and confirmation not to my accomplished husband, but to me, as a pastor in my own right.

My fellow enneagram 4, Mark Scandrette sent a message, giving me the beautiful phrase, "spiritual midwife" as a description of my calling.  Mark has been a friend for years now, and his books have helped us give birth to new ways of thinking and gathering.  But maybe most important to me, Mark has always talked to me as an equal, even before I realized my own calling.  In all our visits, he included me in the conversation.  This might not seem like much, and I suspect he didn't even know he was doing it, but for a girl who grew up in the shadow of men, being included and welcomed into theological conversation about the life of the church meant a great deal to me.

The room lit up when Jerusalem Greer appeared onscreen.  Not only is she a friend of Vintage, she is a role model, a source of joy and inspiration, and a personal friend.  This Preacher Lady, author and fellow Arkansan caught my eye years ago at a conference and I quietly began stalking her blog.  There is no doubt that her simply being Jerusalem made space for me to crash through the glass ceiling in my mind.  I finally let her in on the secret that I am "totally picking up what she is putting down" when she came to speak at Vintage a year ago.  I played nicely with others and shared her with my friends, but hearing her heart and just chatting for a short time told me that this was a sister, a colleague, a companion on a journey that I needed.  Our lives in the work of church prevent us from all the time it would take to have all the conversations that reveal all the ways we would end up saying, "Me too!"   But sometimes you just know a member of "the tribe that knows Joseph."  Go read her new book. Get to know her.  She's delightful.

My high school English teacher went on to become an Anglican priest and was recently ordained herself. What was the mad respect of a student for one of the best teachers ever has bloomed into a grown-up friendship.  Her greeting reminded me to "listen, listen, listen," which is really to love my role as student like I reveled in being a student in her classroom years ago.  A private chat later revealed that we share a love for some of the same authors and for the exquisite beauty and reverence of liturgy.  When someone who has known you as one kind of person but makes room for you in their imagination to be something else, that is a special grace.

My college roommate is one of the most generous souls I have ever known.  She is a world of kindness and still has the best sense of humor, which is a rare combination. She rejoiced with us, spoke such wise and loving words to our church, and was the single person to recognize my husband for the role he played in being the kind of man who actively encourages his wife to  have her share of what he has enjoyed all these years without the slightest hint of insecurity.  She noticed and she rejoiced. Not everyone who "knew me when..."  can or did or would be so excited with me.  This too is grace.

And then my siblings showed up like an Army of Enthusiasts.  My sister-in-law, Cathy, who is as loyal as Samwise Gangee and fifty times as strong and brave. My brother, who hinted at the feeling of a wedding again when he toasted me as "high voodoo princess" followed by my sister, whom I adore for so many things, not the least of which is being Nadia Bolz Weber's doppleganger in appearance, strength, and vocabulary. Finally, my youngest sister brought down the house with a custom remixed tune played on her ukelele. (Her original debut album was just released by the way.) They have known me the longest. They have the most reasons to call my ordination a joke.  But instead, they showed up with support, love, laughter, and song.

The ordination council and Oversight Team laid hands on me and prayed over me after presenting me with my framed certificate, and tears fell down the protective glass.  These people believe in me, recognize me, support me and agree with what the Holy Spirit has brought about.  They are the witnesses, willing to invest their time and energy in formalities, recognition and a thirteen page paper to boot.

They join me in recognizing more than anything that people who have left a narrow Christianity behind are still going to need a pastor.  People who can't go to a church that teaches that only men have a calling to teach need a pastor.  People who can't sit under a pastor whose teaching bears the ugly, poison fruit of authoritarianism and abuse are going to need a pastor.  People who celebrate an end to slavery and the end of inequality as equal progress are going to need a pastor.   People who look another person in the eye and don't mentally categorize them as "dangerous" are going to need a pastor.  People who have released their own mental idols of how God has to act are going to need a pastor. People who have studied scripture for more than fifteen minutes without wearing patriarchy-tinted glasses are going to need a pastor.  They will need a pastor who believes that when we pray "Your Kingdom come"  it doesn't mean we keep acting like the Kingdom will be split into traditional gender roles for all of eternity.

And I am that pastor.

*A very special thanks to Michael and Julie Drager for the beautiful photographs!

How Pastoral is Too Pastoral

There is nothing more earnest and sincere than a Bible college student trying to figure out how to maintain their virginity.  It is serious, serious business.  Forget the Theology and Bible comprehensive exam.  Keeping your virginity intact when you are away from your parents for the first time in your life, and you have met the person you intend to marry, the person you have been dating for three years and the one you see all day every day..that battle is the greater concern.  There is no greater test to how seriously you take the Bible's commands to remain pure than that season of your life.  You draw lines in the sand and walk up to them, but you do not cross that one BIG line because you are totally committed to obeying God's word and you are pretty sure if you do cross that one BIG line, you can't be a pastor or pastor's wife or effectively lead a youth group,or look your future kid in the eyes. You pray the rapture doesn't take place before your wedding night.  Forget the debate of predestination versus free will. The biggest debate in your mind is how far is too far? 

I draw your attention to those years not to bring up shame or guilt, (maybe a bit of mortifying amusement?) but rather as a colorful analogy to a question I raised last week.  

I asked the question "Does the Bible really, clearly teach that women cannot be pastors?"  My friend from college, Amy, gave a thoughtful reply in the comments.  She and her husband serve a traditional church where she described a typical situation for them where her husband stayed at home and cared for their children while she went out to handle a counseling situation.  Amy is a trained counselor and a wise and thoughtful person whom I was drawn to in our college years because she was then and still is thoroughly committed to living according to what the Bible teaches. She admits that she has the right skill-set to pastor but believes the view of women not being permitted to pastor as it has been traditionally taught in our circles. 

The next morning, I had this thought: "Amy can do pastoral types of work as long as she isn't called a pastor and isn't paid to pastor?"  

In my experiences, these lines are drawn in many different places. Some women can speak (or preach) but many will only speak to a group of women. Some churches will hire a woman to be on staff as a counselor but they don't call her a pastor of counseling.  A church will hire a woman to fill a position but they are forced by their own standards to re-brand the position commonly called "Education Pastor" to "Education Co-ordinator."  In all of these cases, women are pastoring. But because of the baggage of two passages of scripture, they either aren't called that or they are limited professionally because of them.  

If God is really so opposed to women being pastors, then they shouldn't do any of the work of pastors. If the line really is that women can't be pastors, simply denying them the title (and the paycheck) doesn't fulfill His supposed standard.  Much like my little analogy, somehow we have drawn little lines in the sand and jumped over and back of those lines, as long as we don't cross the big line of calling her a pastor and paying her to pastor.*

It's tempting, as I read and study on this, to post a Bible study of the various passages used to "prove" my point. Instead, I think it's better for me to simply point to the the fruit of this interpretation.  We are told over and over again that the fruit of something is the way to tell what it is.  I simply want to point out that this fruit has some wormy holes that really bother me. 

* note: Wanted to make clear that the whole virginity thing is simply an analogy and I'm not saying that sex outside of marriage is ok according to the Bible. Just an analogy. Don't get excited.

No More Hiding Behind My Uterus

I've made the joke plenty of times, but never without squirming over the inaccuracy of it: 

"I went to Bible college to marry a pastor."

You see, it's true, but it is also not true. 

I don't exactly know how to explain this. 

One group of my friends can't imagine that somebody can't do a job based solely on the fact that she is a woman. They find the idea shocking and archaic and also rather sad.  

The other group of my friends believe that it doesn't matter what the culture may say, women are limited in what they are allowed to do because of what the Bible says.  They don't have anything against women, they just think that God wants women to take a back seat to the leadership of men.  

For all of my formative years, I absorbed the idea that the Bible "clearly" teaches that women cannot lead men. They cannot pastor, shepherd or teach.  They should not take leadership in their own homes, but rather should do whatever is necessary to make their husband the leader of their home. They must be submissive to their husband's authority over them. I never questioned this teaching.  My spunky attitude was always present, but I was fenced in by the idea that my gender was limited as my punishment for being a daughter of Eve. 

So I grew up, always receptive to the Bible. Always interested in theology. Always a student of Biblical history. Always a participant in church and its ministries. My reasons for involvement were many, but one of them was that it came naturally to me. 

So after 13 years of Biblical training, I went on to Bible college for four more years. And I met a pastor. And I married him. 

Our marriage is an equal place. I spent more than 18 years of my life believing I had to limit myself because I was a girl. It has taken nearly that many years of living with someone who believes in equality to errode those mental limitations.  Years of Saturdays that found him folding laundry and me wielding power tools. Years of putting our heads together and coming up with parenting strategies. Years of throwing the budget back and forth like a grenade before finally coming up with a way of spending money that works equally for both of us.   Our marriage doesn't much resemble the notion I had early on of shoving him forward and telling him it was God's plan for him to "be the spiritual leader" (i.e. make all the decisions and then take all the blame if they went wrong.) Thankfully, he pushed back on that idea and helped us create something that more closely resembles the loving MUTUAL submission that the Bible actually describes.  

But I maintained my position of standing behind him instead of beside him when it came to church.  At our first church, we were a team. It was a survival thing. And it was a good instinct. We did everything together.  But at our second church, we were kindly told "Oh, we don't want a two-for-one deal. We are only hiring Robb for this position. We don't expect Vanessa to do anything."   They meant to be kind and respectful.  But those were some of the loneliest years of my life.   I had a newborn, I was in a different regional culture of the country, and I was shut out of the only thing I knew how to do or cared about doing. So I did it anyway, as best as I could.   Then came another baby and another ministry and I put on an apron and became everything I envisioned the perfect pastor's wife to be. Keep the children quiet in church, do the work of the deaconess board, be the perfect hostess, play the piano.  I should have been in my element. I should have been perfectly happy. I thought I was. I thought I was doing what I was meant to do. 

Fast forward 8 years and find us sitting in our bed at 12:30 a.m. having an enormous fight: because one of us has been struggling along, feeling alone and unsupported. And one of us is utterly exhausted by trying to make her business successful so she can support him. Like two magnets turned the wrong direction, we are repelling one another. He is trying to be so supportive of her business and she is trying to be so supportive of his ministry. And they are failing to connect. Hours of arguing have them weary and worn down, and the tension finds a weak spot and something comes crashing down. 

It is a glass ceiling. 

When all the pieces come crashing down, you see them so clearly for what they are. You have the part where he so strongly believes in equality. The part where he has a "day job" that he has excelled in. The part where he needs help meeting the needs he clearly sees at church. The part where she loves the work of ministry and has the time, training and heart to do it. The part where she is wired to help, support and make things happen. 

You see, I went to Bible college to marry a pastor because that was the closest way I could get to being a pastor within the confines of fundamentalism. 

That's why it's never quite described me to say I am "The Preacher's Wife."  It's never quite been accurate to say I'm not defined by his job.  My friends have always tried to liberate me from the false confines of what other people think a pastor's wife should be.  Maybe what I needed was for them to liberate me from the false confines of what I thought a pastor had to be....

namely...

a man.  

Missionaries have it so easy. In Fundamentalist churches, a married couple that goes to a foreign country are both missionaries, not just the husband. Or a single woman can be a missionary.  That's acceptable terminolgy.  Church planters get a pass too. But eight years in, you have more of a church than a church plant.  And that church doesn't need a planter anymore. It needs pastors. 

So I said it out loud to Robb. "What about us being co-pastors?"  He wrinkled his nose...

"Eww. I've always thought couples that co-pastor are a little weird." 

I laughed and countered "Why not? We co-parent."

To which he replied, "You are absolutely right."

I'm not settled on the terminology. If somebody called me Pastor Vanessa, I'd probably freak out. Or cringe. Like my husband does when someone calls him Pastor Robb. Because it's not about having a title or a position.  

I can no longer hide behind my gender as an excuse to NOT do things I know how to do, want to do, and in fact, am created to do.

Meeting with people. 

Giving announcements.  

Writing and giving the Ash Wednesday homily.  

Listening to people's needs. 

Studying passages of scripture and sharing what I'm learning from it.

Praying for people.  

Getting the building ready for people to worship and meet together. 

Reading and learning.

These the the things that have filled my time in the last month. These are the things that I think about the most. This is the kind of work that I am "wired" to do.  Does that make me a pastor? If a man made this list about himself, it would be an easy question to answer.  

Does the Bible really teach that I cannot do these things?  

Ten Years Later

Forgive me the introspective posts, but I read an article on NPR today about how much we change in 10 years and yet we still have a hard time imagining that we will change in the future. Here is a link.

I can't help but think about change in light of the fact that we'll being going to a conference this weekend where we may see the author Brian McLaren, who Robb met back in the summer. During their conversation  Brian inquired about me, which really helped to repaint my old feelings of wanting to punch him in the face at one time not so long ago....but I digress. He said that he meets a lot of guys whose theology and practice have changed. They are reading books, meeting other thinkers and sharing ideas and thereby develop in their beliefs, but their wives are often left out of these conversations. In the worst situations, a woman finds herself caught between her pastor husband who has moved into a new arena of thinking that is scary for her, and a pastor-daddy who hasn't moved at all.  I feel for those women. Because the only way out of that situation is to sit down and do some reading, thinking and owning of your own theology. But it takes time. There is no substitute for time. Not in learning. Not in grief. Not in making changes. Time is transformative.

Ten years ago....I was 28 years old.  (I had to stop and take that in for a moment. Twenty freaking eight. TWENTY 8. Dang.)

The year was 2003 and I was the mother of a 3 and 1 year old. We had just purchased our first house (THAT house).

I was deeply depressed. Whether postpartum or seasonal affective disorder, I don't know, but I have trouble bringing those days to the front of my memory. I had to go find a picture in a scrapbook because there were no digital pictures, no iphones, no blog, no facebook, just an old PC that Dr. Carter gave me as a gift for helping him move out of his office when he retired.  He was still living on earth and we were still emailing on a regular basis. I took pictures of the kids with a film camera and there are very few shots of me, mostly blurry images that I asked Robb to take to prove my existence.

I spent an afternoon looking at those pictures and while my clothes and hair made me cringe (seriously, girl, couldn't you do SOMETHING with that hair?) it was the snapshot of that girl's mind that most surprises me.

I had no friends my own age that I spent time with. I had no friends that were not connected to the church.  I had no unchurched, non-Christian, non-fundamentalist friends, nor friends of any other Protestant denomination.  I had zero interactions with the LGBT community. I had zero interactions with atheists, pagans, hippies, agnostics, Jehovah's Witness, Mormons,  Jews or Muslims.  I voted straight-ticket Republican and struggled to understand how a democrat could also be a Christian. It was inconceivable in my mind.  I had a firm grasp of Christian contemporary music at the time, but no idea what was popular on the secular radio stations.  I played the piano from the hymnal and praise chorus book if I was needed on a Sunday evening service. I primarily read Christian non-fiction books about theology or devotionals by Kay Arthur.  I felt guilty for not being more faithful to the inductive Bible study method. I don't recall seeing movies, but I think we saw one or two a year if it was something we really liked. Drinking alcohol was prohibited by our church constitution and membership agreement.

I spent every single night watching hours of television. I thought play dates were something made up for tv show families and I stayed home with my kids all the time except for church and when we went to get groceries and go shopping as a family. I weaned my son cold-turkey at 8 months because he bit me. I had never heard of attachment theory. I expected my kids to sleep in their own beds from about 6 weeks on (with varying success rates) I rarely went out alone. Sometimes we went to the public library.  I had no goals for the future other than getting Robb into a doctoral program and doing whatever it took to get him into the upper leadership of the church's denominational fellowship.  I could only envision myself as a housewife and couldn't imagine having a job or working outside our home.  My only concern was our home and making it pretty. I did all the regular cooking, cleaning, and laundry and would have been mortified if Robb was to do any of this kind of work since it was my duty. I couldn't imagine life beyond Calvin's baby-hood, but I expected to have two more kids after him. Adoption was something we had talked about in the past, but we were sure it was expensive and we were not thinking much about our future.

I was afraid to drive on highways and went out of my way to stay on back roads due to a near-accident I had while I was pregnant with Mattie. I was afraid of Robb dying. I was afraid of conflict. I was afraid of being alone. I was afraid of criticism. I was afraid of life.

I thought family members would always be there and I took them for granted. My grandparents were both living and so was my brother in law. 

I had no concept of recycling or the environment and sincerely believed that if God made the world that humans couldn't mess it up enough to hurt it much.  The extent of my knowledge of Africa was that they were poor and hungry. I had no idea of the extent of the epidemic of AIDS or of any ways that could be helped.  I knew that Compassion International was an agency that Michael W. Smith helped. I knew nothing about the foster care system in America or of the way it worked.

We ate whatever we could afford from the local grocery store, and I pretty much bought whatever was cheapest. We though eating at McDonalds was a treat and Sunday nights often found us eating a Super-sized meal, in bed, while watching tv.

I knew that Dr. Cater believed that someday people would buy everything from the internet, right down to their shoes, but I wasn't sure I believed him.  If I could have, I would have bought everything from the mall, but as it was, I shopped at Walmart.  I believed that if it came from the mall it was better than handmade. We were in debt up to our eyeballs with no plan to get out.

As I think on these things, I am genuinely astounded by the extent and profundity of the changes.  I changed at the core of my values and beliefs. I am also amazed by how much more alive I am. How I "own" my life now....back then I was living someone else's life by someone else's standards. I was waiting for someone to give me permission to make choices.  Much of what I did do was out of false bravado and trying to blend in.  My lack of understanding myself led ironically to being self-conscious and awkward, not free to serve and love others.  I am also surprised at how the changes were brought about by such small things... like joining the Public Library book club.  Having a conversation with a lady at my garage sale.  Going for a walk and finding an estate auction. One thing that led to another.

I really can't imagine what I will be like ten years from now. Aside from the extra 10 pounds each decade though, I feel really optimistic about the future.  I know that there will be times of pain, but there will also be growth. And hopefully, better haircuts.

Experimental Collectives

Um. Hello.
I haven't blogged for months.
There's no easy way to explain that, so I'm just going to start in like nothing happened.

Months ago, we invited a pretty cool fella named Mark Scandrette to talk to our church about his book Practicing the Way of Jesus. His ideas deeply resonated with me because Mark teaches followers of Jesus to DO something with what they already know. (Also, Mark was a joy to have in our home and get to know as a human being.) I am a person who values action. Words don't mean nearly as much to me as actions. So, long story, very short, we chucked our traditional (as if ANYTHING at Vintage feels traditional) small groups and have formed groups that experiment together with an idea that we are trying to grow in. Mark's group in San Francisco, for example, worked together as a group to get rid of half of what they owned to give to the poor. They called it Have 2 Give 1.  In other words, if they had two of something, they gave it away. Each week they focused on a particular kind of item like clothes, books and media, household goods, etc.  We call these things experiments because there is a possibility of failure in each group as well as the possibility for success. And it factors in the human tendency to struggle with making meaningful, lasting changes. Because the groups experiment for a set amount of time, you have a better chance of making a change at least for that period of time.

Last night was my first meeting with my Experimental Collective. All of the groups at Vintage are experimenting around the idea of authenticity:  admitting, owning, accepting who we really are before God, good and bad. One group is meeting to work out the general idea of identifying who they are. One group is meeting to experiment with being silent before God to listen to what He as to say about them. And my group is meeting to experiment with how creativity expresses who we really are.  Our group wrote a poem last night at the first meeting and each day of this week, we are to spend 15 minutes in reflective writing. Our experiments will culminate in an art show at the end of our 40 days together.

This morning, I am still mulling over just how different the dynamic was with the Experimental Collective vs. a regular small group.  I am also thinking about what I wrote. We had no time to edit, just enough time to spit out our topmost idea. As I think it over this morning (and cringe because I always go back over a meeting with a group in my head and rehash it painfully and anxiously) I realized that my poem accurately reflected my real, current struggles, if not exact reality. 

I will be forty in a few short years. Which means that I can divide my life pretty evenly in half. The roughly 20 years I spent as a child, unmarried, not in ministry, on the same plot of land, surrounded by family and a community that knew me before I knew them.  The second half of my life has been spent in 5 different states, 6 different churches, married, and in full time, vocational ministry.

My poem devoted 6 stanzas to the first half of my life and 4 to the second half.  Three of those four stanzas expressed weariness, loneliness, and depression.

My picture of a life away from my extended family and community, in ministry, is a little desperate. I don't know how to erase that sketch, no matter how disproportionately I've drawn the shadows.

But I did end my poem with this stanza which is much different than the rest of the poem and I think it strikes a more hopeful tone.

I am from fragments of old things, 

familiar, every-day things,

quaint and silly and forgettable things,

The good ordinary

clean floors and clean windows and clean ovens

from fresh paint and fresh starts

I am from old places and old ideas

that have good bones but need new upholstery

I am from the here and now

I am from what may come.

I guess I am still in this...ministry and being creative... because I'm still captivated by what may come. 

Homecoming

It was a harried and anxious woman who flew out of XNA airport on Thursday morning. No fewer than 18 lists filled sticky notes on my MacBook's desktop. With the show happening this week, going away for a weekend was poor timing, but Robb was class president of his college class and a 15 year reunion just seemed like something he ought to attend.  It had been 10 years since we were on campus, but I suspect all the ways we have changed in the last 6 years really made it seem like longer.  We kept trying to find a word to describe how we were feeling about going back, but nervous wasn't quite right.


Some of my readers knew me then. Some of my readers know what it was like to attend a Bible college. It would take a book to fully describe it. I suggest Kevin Roose's Unlikely Disciple (which left me howling in helpless laughter). Ours were even stricter rules than those wild students at Liberty University. Curfew at 10 on school nights, midnight on the weekend. Lights out for freshman at 11:30.  Freshman couldn't go on single dates. I wore a skirt or dress to class, guys wore dress pants and collared shirts. Upperclassman had to wear a jacket and tie.  We attended chapel every day and church on Sunday morning and evening and prayer meetings on Wednesday night. We were required to be active in some form of ministry service and to share our faith for a certain number of hours.  We were required three one credit classes in sharing our faith, in fact, which is money I would really like to have back, please and thank you.  You had to have your room clean by chapel time (10 am) and your bathroom clean by the end of the day. You could not hold your boyfriend's hand on campus or kiss or any other form of public display of affection.  Guys hair had to be short, above the ears, and thy could not wear facial hair. We couldn't attend movies and smoking or alcohol was a clear no-no. Some offenses resulted in fines. Some of the biggies would have meant expulsion.  Most of the rules I kept faithfully.  Several, I broke egregiously.

What I know now, these 15 years later is that the breaking and the keeping of those rules was equally sacred.    The slow, plodding discipline of cleaning the bathroom and the wild free-falls into God's grace, tasting forbidden fruits gave me a gift that not everyone experienced.  I was not the student who couldn't understand the value of the rules and spent their whole time chafing against them and lost the opportunity to focus on anything other than getting out of there.  And equally important, I was not the student who believed that my standing in heaven was bonded to my spotless record in the Office for Student Development.  Knowing that I was a sinner, having the five dollar fine for kissing my boyfriend on campus (or rather, getting caught) kept me from the worst kind of pride...the insufferably self-righteous students (usually girls) who were shooting for perfection and thought they could hit it. (The guys, on the other hand, thought their standing in heaven was bonded to if they believed the right things about the Bible and it's teachings, thus resulting in the nearly constant rounds of theological ping-pong)  I arrived on campus as a freshman one of those girls.  I left as a married student, a true follower of God, with my sense of humor fully intact.

I suspect that going back was odd because Robb wears an earring and a tattoo. He is outwardly branded with a different kind of Christianity than we were taught there.  We are no longer subscribers to our denominational teaching.  No longer "in the fold."  We went beyond what we were taught.  Planted a church that values much different things than we were taught to value.  In short, we break a lot of the rules.

But things change. Even when they stay the same.  The rules at BBC are no longer the same. The students wear jeans to class. They boys have facial hair. The girls are allowed to be security guards. And most of the students don't come from The Denomination anymore. You think, driving on campus, that you will be going back in time. But you aren't.  Kids are standing around with cell phones, and even if the dorm smells the same, now the lounge has an actual television in it. 

I don't exactly know what I'm trying to say with this post, only maybe, that we thought we might be going back to visit as prodigals, and discovered instead, that we were products of our school.  That we felt at home there with people we loved then and still love now.  That without our time on that beautiful old campus...(which used to be a monastery) we would not be who we are now. It was a precious gift to go back, to remember.  To think again on all the ways that God guided us.  It deepened our faith and our confidence in what we are doing with our lives, and why we get up in the morning.  It was good for our souls.  It was sweet to go home.

A Milestone In Redemptive History

August 9th, 2011 marked our 15th wedding anniversary.  There is a part of me that feels a little goofy about it, but we celebrate our anniversaries like crazy.  I know lots of couples who say, "Oh we don't have the money"  or "It's just too busy right now to celebrate."  But for us, I would sooner skip celebrating Christmas or Easter.  As I was thinking it over (and planning Robb's gift of 15 of his favorite cigars...not terribly original, but guaranteeing 15 times that he will be able to be still and think and relax Charles Spurgeon-style) I realized that I don't hold the day in high regard because I'm a spoiled brat, but rather, because our day really is a holy day for us.  Our spiritual health and our marital health have been tied to each other for 15, maybe even technically all 18 years we have loved each other. 

On that warm August Friday night, Doug Messerall married us.  A good man, he has served faithfully in a church that would have made a lesser man fall apart years ago.  He still serves there, as far as a I know.  Dr. Rembert Carter gave the "charge to the couple"  -a practice that was common in our circles- a short sermonette just for the couple.  In Doc's case, that was 40 minutes and included a print-out of every mention of marriage and family in the Bible with notes.  I didn't realize it was long at the time, but I only really remember the main idea....that our marriage would be a "milestone in redemptive history."   In the time that has unfolded since that night, I have come to realize what that means in a much fuller and more beautiful way. 

Marriage has seasons just like everything else.  We've had lean years, hard years, as well as the more recent years of tremendous plenty and blessing.  I had doubts at times in the past because I'm fickle and struggle to make commitments because I don't trust myself to keep them perfectly.  But I have always been fully invested in the belief that together, Robb and I were impacting the world for good.  We have fought through the illusion that going backward was better than going forward and came to a place that is richer, more mature, more complex, more fascinating than the dating and falling in love phase ever could have been. 

Another dear professor of ours, Dr. Firmin told a story in class one day that he had been engaged before he met and married his wife.  He said that if he ever had a doubt about his choices, he had only to look at their two daughters to know that he had chosen perfectly.  I recall pondering this idea, perhaps in a season of doubt, thinking, "Well of course you would adore your children, but isn't it possible that you would feel the same if you married someone else and had different children?"  It was an odd thought to me.  But then my thinking came to a clearing.  I have that kind of assurance when I look at my youngest daughter, Charleigh, who is adopted.  In all the might-have-been-scenarios, Charleigh would have been no matter what Robb and I had done.  And we would not know her if I hadn't married Robb.  Adopting her was another milestone in redemptive history.

So when my dear husband told me to pack a bag for overnight, pawn off the kids and the dogs and meet him at his work, I was ready for a celebration.  He took me to a beautiful hotel where our room was bigger than our first apartment, and sent me to a three hour spa appointment where I had a facial, a massage and a mani-pedi (my first!) while he (and dang, this is still so hot to me) went to the health center and worked out, and then outside to enjoy one his cigars!  We went out to dinner, laughed our heads off and had a grand time without an ounce of guilt.  Fifteen beautiful years is something to celebrate with all our hearts, minds, bodies and souls.