for today...
i thought that i might set the stage a little with a fairly raw blog entry from three years ago when i had just started a small house church and was asked to write something about the cost of being a woman in leadership.

for the conversation that will begin tomorrow, i'll try to keep it a little more objective - but for those of you who are not women involved in church planting, i wanted to give you a picture into the ambivalence and pain of being called to this life.  again, this is a repost of something from three years ago - but i think it can still be a good primer for our conversation today:

i want to tell you, readers, how costly it is to lead as a woman. i want to show you my scars and tears. i want to reveal how much shame i feel with regard to my call, how much anger i have for that shame, how much shame i have for that shame.

i want to tell you how fear floods my heart everytime someone asks what i'm studying.

i want to tell you how i wanted to end my journey toward starting a church when our lone man in leadership felt a call away from the church, how i didn't want to engage the fact that two women are starting a church and how i both envied and hated two well-loved friends who are men starting a church and who surely never stumbled over the question, "we're two men - can we start a church? where could we find a woman to start it with us? will anyone come to a church headed by men? what will my brother think? how do i tell my extended family that i'm a man pastoring a church without a woman over me?"

i want you to see that, when asked to write about a biblical narrative that reflects what leadership is like for me as a woman, i broke down in tears because the biblical narrative stage is desolate when it comes to leading women. women lead by washing feet and by being prostitutes harboring spies and by following their mother-in-law and marrying a kinsman redeemer, and by beaing beautiful and making dinner for the king - her husband. i identify with jeremiah, but there is no great, tortured prophetess.

i want you to know how afraid i am to write this blog entry - how i'm afraid of your reaction, afriad that you will think i am overly emotional about the subject, afraid you will voice support and live nothing in response, afraid that i'll reach out only to be left even more alone.

i want to tell you the story of the first time i admitted my call to someone - after harboring it for four years - on a youth group retreat - on my 16th birthday - only to be left weeping, knowing that my calling, unless it was to marry a pastor and not to be one, was from the devil and not from God. i want you to see the roses my dad sent me for my birthday wilting as they are pelted with the salt-water of my flowing tears. i want you to know the jovial smile of late night adolescent-girl goofing off that was lost in the violence of the church against women.

i want you to know that, at the very same church, my brother's call was celebrated - and that i had to watch that and that i couldn't be happy for him - only envious that he was celebrated as i was chastised.

i want you to know how deeply i wish i could just get married and be an at-home mom and abandon my calling. i want you to know that i have tried to. i want you to cry with me over the fact that i have tried to abandon a call simply because i am a woman.

but how do i tell you these things eloquently, so that they are all in one piece and so that you will read this and think better of me? how do i begin to hope that you might see me and grieve with me? where are the words i so often weild to bring you on a journey with me? in my rawness and desperation, they seem to have disappeared leaving only these broken fragments of a life-time of being shamed of what i should know is God's glory sining through me.
 


Comments

tara a healy

Sat, 06 Mar 2010 10:17:39 pm

Wow Rebecca! Thank you so much for sharing this amazing story! I did not grow up in the church and when I entered journey with Christ all I saw women in equal position to men or leading them. Married single it did not matter they were clearly as filled, gifted and called as the men. But when I went to Bible College received my first wounds.

Sitting in a Bible class on the OT a professor said Deborah was either an exception to God's rule (one which at the time I was unaware of) or she was an example of Israel's further decline into sin. I was the only student who laughed out loud in class. Everyone looked at me like I was rude to which I looked at the class and professor and said "Surely you are joking! You dont really believe those reasons would be true!" The prof told me I could discuss this matter with him after class if I like. So of course I did. I felt dejected! What was I doing at Bible College then?

I decided to illicit the voices of some of the girls in the dorm. To my shock they were the most chastising! I was weird because I had not already planned out my wedding and thought about how I would keep a home in order so that my husband could effectively preform ministry. It was like a horror movie, a sort Stepford wife moment! I asked them "What about your call?" One felt deeply called to mission work and she answered my questions stating "Well if I get married then my call will change to my husband's call, because I will then be called to be a wife and mother." I never heard this before and I quickly discovered that I was a minority in my thoughts.

So I tried to change. I said maybe they are right. I have not been a Christian nearly as long as these people, maybe they are right. But everyday I tried to convince myself of this even promote it in someways pieces of my died. I became angry at God and bitter! How could he torture me like this! A fire in my bones and I am not allowed to release it. But I did my research and had to confess my sin of denying the truth of what God has called me. Suddenly I felt free, and the anger and bitterness faded. But it cost me more wounds from those I loved very deeply. My boyfriend just wanted a "submissive" woman, many of my girlfriends became the worst wounder making subtle comments that "eventually you will come to your senses" or "when you get married you will have to chose who you will obey" Those hurt and still haunt me as many of them are now married with children while am I still single. Their pity is now what feels more hurtful than those comments.

In Seminary I dated again, a guy who offered lip service to my call but at the end of the day felt as though I was disrespectful to his manhood. I too find more comfort in Jeremiah and Hagar. I still ask the Lord when the wounds start to ache or my bones feel arthritic from the breaks or when the loneliness creeps in or the doubt if he is sure this is what I am suppose to do. I am not sure those feelings will ever go away or that a man will ever understand what those wounds are like. I am glad to know that you are empathic though!

 



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