Seven years out

Brief notes on my life since graduating from seminary and law school

When I went to Candler School of Theology in Atlanta, I didn’t think I’d actually do church work. I thought I would brood and think theological thoughts for a few years and then use the legal education I was receiving simultaneously from Emory Law to whip the church’s justice-seeking game into shape. As if adding some burpees and extra stretching to the routine of deeply entrenched institutions would do the trick.

I did not expect to actually fall in love with either the work and rhythms of ministry or the practice of law. Upon reflection, I think that what I secretly loved all along was other humans, especially the ones who had room in their lives for a buddy in the struggle. And the tools I learned in school opened up a thousand paths for the gritty work of walking alongside other humans.

I first worked for Legal Aid representing children in the child welfare system - which most people know as foster care. Along with many other things, this meant explaining to a small boy with his tiny fists clutching matching toy zebras why he still couldn’t go home with his mom, talking with teenagers across prison glass on a black, clammy phone, and chasing a runaway girl down after court and driving her back to the institution where she lived, wondering whether the child locks would actually deter her from jumping out of my car if she wanted to.

After I had a child of my own, I could no longer muster the emotional energy to walk with people in that churning system, where shifting responsibility for failure seemed so much more important than the consequences of those failures for families, for children. A thousand tips of the hat for the lifers who can do this work forever. You are heroes.

I headed back into ministry, where the humor was decidedly less dark and the language sometimes so soft it was devoid of meaning. There aren’t failures, there are “growing edges” now. Measuring success is very different than when a judge hands down a ruling and you know in an instant how safe the toddler sitting next to you will be for the next 6 months.

I had relied on the church to nurture the bruises my spirit sustained while walking with my clients for three years. I sobbed through an Ash Wednesday service the day I got my first “broken baby” client, who was eventually sent back to his family after receiving truly miraculous care in a foster home. I sat angry in the pews after a client had a stillbirth at 34 weeks and I picked her up from the hospital, bought her clothes and a stuffed animal from Target, and then drove her to a psychiatric clinic because no one whose job it was to care for her would do it. I tearfully pondered the great love of an adoptive mom who called me to ask about the blood type of her prospective daughters, so she would know if she could give them blood if they needed it. Blood spilled, blood boiling under the surface, blood shared.

I felt some guilt for leaving, but joy in knowing how much more physically and emotionally present with my baby daughter I would get to be. I used to hold her and imagine the types of trauma and misdirected pain that would lead someone to hurt a child like her. It’s been 3 and a half years, and I hardly ever do that now when I hold my small son. I feel less guilt.

I came to my role on a church staff to work with youth and adult small groups fully aware that the church holds great power to look squarely at trauma, to help people weave meaning through their experiences and to build a web of connection out of hurting souls, holding the lights for each other and looking towards the dim vision of a different Kingdom. God comforts the afflicted and afflicts the comfortable. We hold mirrors for others and learn to see ourselves differently. The church also churns, but in theory the systems are in place for a productive churning that leads to transformation. I didn’t often find the Holy Spirit in courtrooms, though it seemed like the exact place the Advocate should be. Surely, the Spirit would be more present in the churning of souls at church. I was ready for these rhythms.

Now, I walk with people whose fears are generally less proximate, but no less real. I use different tools. I learned to be less intense. I name the growing edges and sit in tension and dwell in grief. I tell and retell and tear at and cry over the stories in a very old and very mysterious and very consequential book. I feed people pizza and homemade soup as God feeds them grace. I sing and pray and preach and improvise. I marvel at people’s capacity to be generous to each other. I speak of warm places in hearts.

I sometimes find excellent resources for this ministry of walking along together, but generally the offerings don’t accomplish what I seek. I have written grumpy letters to publishers and marked up far too many catalogs that can’t seem to print the phrase “women’s ministry” without using a flowy scripty font or restrain from plastering the pages with stock photos of tea cups. I often write my own studies to beef up shallow pop theology books, create Bible studies to parallel resources that aren’t expressly made for churches, and try to make dense theological material more accessible for small groups. The youth curriculum out there is especially bad (with a few exceptions), though that may be in part because my youth are particularly great and would often rather talk seriously about grief and death than easier subjects.

The consequences of doing this work badly are real, no matter the softness of the words you use to describe failure. To leave souls without any resources or community to salve trauma or to treat the wounds on our spirits is to miss an opportunity to intercept the cycles of violence and abuse and despair that plague us all. So I do not want studies and tools for discipleship that will tell me how wonderful I am for showing up to an event that isn’t Sunday worship and offer me a fluffy, placating, faith. I want ones that expect me to read and wrestle and confront and yield. This is the aspiration of my ministry.

I’m seven years out from graduation and have spent my days doing the two things I said I didn’t want to do. But I get to walk with people as we seek healing for our tender places and our broken world, and to dream a better way. For this, I am grateful.

Lately, I’ve been nurturing a vision of how to share the best of what I’ve created and learned along the way with a broader audience. I love teaching and equipping. I have volunteered and trouble-shot and you-tubed and googled my way into quite a bit of tech knowledge that I’m sharing with others who want to fill their communities with powerful and meaningful things.

Will you join me as I build some new things? Subscribe below to keep in touch.