The Journey Home

To the Women of Faith from my formative years, I say hello… again.

To the Women of Faith from my formative years, I say I’m glad I found you… again.

A whole-hearted thank you:

To the Women of Faith from my formative years, I say thank you for the work you are doing, you have done and you are going to do. Your courage, growth, and resilience to be the women you are meant to be is greatly inspiring and encouraging.

To the Women of Faith from my formative years, I say thank you for writing, speaking and giving us words, for naming the anger, heartbreak, and anguish this journey holds, and great love and authenticity that awaits.

To the Women of Faith from my formative years, I say thank you for questioning, grappling, deconstructing and walking through the wilderness with me, even when I didn’t know you were there.

To the Women of Faith from my formative years, I say thank you for providing me a safe place to land in this messy, beautiful faith I have come to find true home within.

And a heart-felt blessing:

To the Women of Faith of my formative years, Blessed are you who open and hold these hard, sometimes painful and lonely spaces for me and others to feel held and loved as we undo what has been done and build up what is and is to be.

To the Women of Faith of my formative years, Blessed are you who unapologetically know and express who you are, who you have been created to be, and continue to co-create alongside a Creator that unashamedly and unconditionally loves those that have been created.

To the Women of Faith of my formative years, Blessed are you who broke free from the mold of conservative evangelicalism and Southern Baptist oppression, misogyny, and making yourself small to belong to a faith community that devalued you due to your gender and continued to place you under men, to serve men, withholding power, leadership, and value out of fear, dominance and control.

To the Women of Faith of my formative years, Blessed are you who have created spaces of safety and healing from spiritual trauma, abuse, shame, and rejection.

And finally, to the Women of Faith of my formative years, Blessed are you who love ALL, accept ALL, and affirm ALL no matter gender, non-binary, sexual orientation, race, ethnicity, socio-economic status, religious affiliation, political affiliation, background and past. You have shown us how to love like Jesus, live like Jesus and honor and serve a living and loving God that is in all, through all, and with all.

Growing up in a conservative Southern Baptist church (at the time), I never saw someone who looked like me in a pulpit, much less in leadership. When we ordained our first Deaconess in the late 80s, it caused an uproar and from what I remember a split within the church. Today, I feel sad and regretful that I did not understand how monumental that was though I was a child. In college, I continued to fit the mold of a “gentle and quiet spirit,” “a good Christian girl,” and I loved the sense of belonging to a greater “good.” I led the girl’s youth group from a lay position though I started to notice and feel the discrepancies and gaslighting, all as I served the men in leadership. I also felt the call to seminary, to lead in ministry, only to be squashed immediately when I gave voice to it (“not a minister, but a minister’s wife”). This is when I began to shift.

I went to seminary and the incredible first Deaconess of my home church sat on my ordination council in 2005. Referring to these Women of Faith of my formative years because I’m talking about those that I read, listened to and studied. These women were who I followed and attended conferences with. I even got the Women of Faith Study Bible from Lifeway and worked all of their bible studies. These Women of Faith fed my soul, gave my life direction and helped me believe and grow in who I was as a person and Christian. These Women of Faith I write to gave my life and love for Jesus passion and meaning. The Women of Faith in my personal circle gave me hope, courage and assurance my call to ministry and the call of God on my life was real, defined and good. They assured my importance as great as any male counterpart and with their support and push, I knew I wouldn’t and couldn’t back down.

Some of these Women of Faith (personal and universal) are no longer alive. Thank you for being the pioneers, the way makers, and the inspiration and building the foundation for the rest of us. Some, if not all, of these Women of Faith of my formative years are no longer part of the Lifeway and Evangelical “Women of Faith” in their original circles. Some do not affiliate themselves with evangelicalism, Christianity or religion. Some have been kicked out, ex-communicated, and rejected due to their love of others, ALL others, their support of ALL those created in the image of God that give me (and I hope others) an even more beautiful and greater image of that God, and their understanding of who they are and who they are created to be as they write, preach, interpret scripture, study and live out life following and loving Jesus, serving in his honor and in his name and doing a damn good job of it if you ask me! These are my Women of Faith!

When I began my work in CPE (Clinical Pastoral Education) and hospital ministry almost 20 years ago, my faith shook hard and my understanding of God and what I had known unraveled. The seeds were deeply planted in seminary, watered and weeded in the beginning of and throughout my hospital ministry and continue to grow deep roots today. For a time I turned away from voices of my past, looked at new ways of being and understanding spirituality. I found myself one of the “spiritual but not religious” folks. I loved and ministered to those that were not like me and the respect, joy, and openness that I felt for them grew exponentially. I questioned, teased a part what no longer fit, and found myself alone but growing firm and grounded in my own understanding and knowing of God. I found myself rooting in Rachel Held Evans, Kate Bowler, Nadia Boltz-Weber, Sarah Bessey, Barbara Brown Taylor, Brene Brown, Sue Monk Kidd, Lettie Russell, Jen Hatmaker, and Anne Lamott’s work. Podcasts that included “On Being,” “The Liturgists,” “Queerology,” “Unlocking Us,” and Mayim Bialik’s “Breakdown” were constant listens and currently “For the Love” too. For lack of a better term, I found myself falling back in love with Jesus, the faith community of my origin just looks different and progressive, and found my home firmly planted in the Christianity I have found alongside the marginalized, those cast out, the doubters, the lonely, and the misfits. I was and am proud there. I have found my people and myself. I am happy and thriving here, but dammit if it wasn’t one of the darkest and hardest journey’s of my life.

To end, because honestly this may be more blogs to come, one of these Women of Faith that I have become incredibly overwhelmed and grateful for, the OG Woman of Faith herself, is Beth Moore. If I could speak to her today I would say:

I honestly stopped following you after you continued to call yourself a teacher and not a preacher. I felt you were not being true to who God called you to be out of fear or not even understanding in the moment due to the environment that had emmeshed you. It hurt my soul to hear you name this. It made me angry at you and for you, and I could not support you for a long time. You preached to my soul, and many women’s, more times than I can count and had more impact on my life and ministry than any male. Your honest and clear words, directed at a truly demeaning, misogynistic man, touched my heart and made my soul wake up. When you spoke out against the sexual abuse and immorality of Southern Baptist male leaders, ministers and the patriarchy, I stood up in hopes that right would be done in this world. And when you left the only denomination you knew, you loved to your core, and held so dear, my heart broke with you. I am deeply touched by your courage, your prophesy, your unashamed and untamed truth, and your passion and love for scripture. You had everything to lose walking away from all that you built, and you were willing to blow it up knowing you were following God and choosing to love and speak truth like Jesus. In the words of the late, incredibly loved and forever cherished Rachel Held Evans, “Eshet Chayil!” Woman of Valor.