Our Little Pebbles: Day 10: My Calling...

Today I am grateful for my calling into ministry. As I've mentioned before I felt a call to ministry at a young age and began to vocalize and answer that call when I was in high school. I then spent 7 years obtaining the education I needed and all the while seeking and praying and finding full assurance that ministry is what I intend to do with my life.

There's a book I've written about before called, This Odd and Wondrous Calling by Lillian Daniel and Martin B. Copenhaver and the title of the book so concisely sums up my feelings about ministry.

There are aspects that are really difficult to get used to, in fact I'm still working through a lot of the kinks and quirks and oddities that go along with ministry.

But those are minor compared to the great wondrous gift.

Lillian Daniel in her book writes the following:

I love being a minister. Even when the ministry is hard, it's more fun than any other job I can imagine. Where else can you preach, teach, meet with lead abatement specialist and get arrested for civil disobedience all in the same week?

Where else can you be invited into the living room of new mothers and into the hospice rooms of the dying, and find hope in both places? I do love being a minister. I love agility it calls forth, and the chaos that only Jesus could organize into a calling.

But mostly I love observing God's presence in the lives of people of faith. Mostly I love those moments when, from the position of paying holy attention to my own community of faith, I notice the power and presence of God. There are moments when we are practicing our faith together in ways that have become ordinary, but God's grace breaks in and we realize that we are part of something extraordinary. (pg 2-3)

Isn't that beautiful. I have the privilege and honor of being trusted and invited into some of the most sacred moments in peoples lives. I will be honest the before actually entering into my own church I was really nervous about doing funerals. Wedding and baptisms yes please. Funerals... I was just scared.

Scared that I would not be enough. Scared that I couldn't offer the families all they needed in the midst of their grief. Scared I wouldn't be able to find the words. Last month I did my first funeral and it was beautiful. Family and friends gathered to share, remember, and say good-bye and we ushered this woman home to be with her parents and her late husband. In that moment I knew I was doing the work I was called to do.

I no longer was afraid I didn't have the words or that I wouldn't be enough.

I am grateful for this calling to ministry and I am grateful to mentors, professors, friends, pastors, and especially to Marcus who helped me answer this calling.