The last time I was here by myself, I was a very different person.
The thought hadn’t struck me until about halfway through the drive from Houston to Canyon Lake, Tx. The last time I had made a solo trek to this same destination, it was during some time off from my former job. A job I would be fired from one month after my return.
For the last half of this drive, occurring nearly 3 years later, my mind became filled and fixated on who I was and all that was happening within me that week in September 2021.
That was a big trip for me. Things had gotten bad enough at my former work environment that a reason to unplug and get away wasn’t just nice, it was necessary. I spent a majority of that trip wrestling with what I was supposed to do—or rather, who I was supposed to be—when I got back. It had become clear by that point, who I was was no longer welcome, appreciated, nor enjoyed.
I spent the week weighing the many options that I felt were before me— stay and learn to shut the hell up, stay and make the most of this dead-end job that I knew I wouldn’t be able to endure for much longer, leave and try to find another complementarian church that was open to female ministers who also maybe sorta kinda want to expand on what that looked like practically within their midst, or finally, leave complementarianism all together.
This was the first time in my life that this final option seemed even remotely possible.
It still seemed unbearably terrifying.
I didn’t know anything else but this world. Every contact I had, every mentor I depended on, every friendship I had forged, I knew they all came with an inseverable tie to the complementarian world.
At the time, so did I.
Even still, I took one timid step toward a terrifying and unknown world that weekend: I brought a book about female pastors.
And to this day, I look back on that decision, on that week long trip in a secluded cabin in Canyon Lake, Tx, as the moment I ceased to be complementarian.
Now I know what you may be thinking: what book was that!? Must have been good to convince you to finally abandon a framework you had spent the 7 years prior in full devotion to.
Truthfully, the book wasn’t that great. If anything, it kind of terrified me even more as it spoke of realities and denominations I didn’t know the first thing about. It overwhelmed me in showing me just how much of this new world I was still so unsure and confused about. It was also hella depressing.
But I get it, over the last two and a half years, I have been asked quite consistently “what finally did it.” What convinced me to make a full on 180 on the topic of women in ministry.
Was it a book that I read?
A speaker I heard?
A revelation about a greek or hebrew word that changed everything for me?
Or, (they ask in judgment and concern) was it simply a traumatic experience that allowed my emotions to take over and change my mind for good?
Up until this point, I have done my best to explain that it wasn’t any one thing. Like most beliefs, opinions, or changes of heart we experience in this life, it happened over time, progressively, and was thanks in large part to a series…of books…of speakers…of traumatic ministry experiences.
But as I find myself here, yet again, sitting surrounded by the noises of nature, of a breeze through the trees, of subtle waves of water stumbling over muddy pebbles, birds chirping, no, singing, into the silence of my seclusion, I think I have a different answer now.
I think it’s always been my answer. I just never quite felt like I had the right words for it. I knew it would leave those who asked disappointed, unconvinced, and unsatisfied.
But it seems to be the truth all the same.
You see, women like me, we don’t get an “opinion” on this topic. We don’t get the privilege of choosing our belief. To suggest so would be to suggest I take up an opinion on breathing. Maybe there is a choice somewhere in there, but to choose wrong would mean the end of my life. And I mean that in every literal way possible.
Nothing convinced me, I didn’t simply change my mind.
I was changed.
I was sanctified into a new creation whose simple existence defied the reality of death and decay that to continue to choose would have gone against the very nature of life itself.
Being a woman in ministry, a woman who pastors, a woman who leads, a woman who creates and forges new territory and tills hard ground, it is not something I choose to do, it is something I simply am. To have an opinion on that, becomes then, simply about having an opinion on myself. Is my existence theologically accurate? Is who I am God honoring, glorifying, and “right?”
I didn’t used to believe so.
I did, in fact, used to believe, as many desire I continue to do so, that my existence was sin. That who I was was displeasing and disappointing to God. That my entire life’s purpose was to guard and protest and shed and flee from everything that came most natural to me.
“Changing my mind” regarding women in ministry then, was simply “choosing” to not loathe my very self any longer. It was choosing to rest, to find peace, to find joy.
And even then, I am still unsure of how much purposeful “choosing” occurred throughout that process. It’s more like I was carried. Against my will and in the midst of grave protest, I was carried to a place of peace where I didn’t have to try so hard anymore. Where, after 7 years of striving and fighting and paddling as hard as I could upstream and against the wind just to not simply be swept away, here was the place I could simply float. I could lay my oar down and finally surrender. I could finally just be.
Here is the place where the Spirit of God is finally allowed to blow wherever she pleases, no longer any protest from me.
And while there will continue to be protest from those around me, from those who choose to believe it is their right to have an opinion on me and women like me and whether or not our existence aligns with their current interpretation of a handful of bible verses, such opposition no longer has any effect on the trajectory of my journey. In fact, it never did. Because no matter how strong or determined we believe our fighting against her may be, the wind that the Spirit blows is greater still.
We will reach the shores of full flourishing, my sisters. Where the breeze never ends and the birds always sing and in the silence of our solitude we hear a still, small voice that whispers and says, “well done.”