Fault Lines

Yesterday was my day off, which I spent mostly cleaning and cooking.  Some people think taking a day off means you don’t work.  Myself, I try to do whatever nurtures my soul at the time, which is typically either something creative or some sort of project.  The thing that makes it relaxing, work or otherwise, is the freedom to do as I please.

In my quiet place before I started working, I drew a picture of myself.  This is the way I saw myself while in prayer recently and represents how I’ve felt for months.  It’s power locked up in a shell, but the shell is cracking.  The spirit-filled being inside the shell is bursting forth.  It’s not the sudden explosion of a volcano but the gradual moving of fault lines, revealing the heated glow of what lies beneath.

My earliest childhood dreams had me doing life as either a farmer or a baker.  I cannot pinpoint the time I switched to dreaming of serving the Lord full-time.  First I pictured myself singing with a traveling group like the ones that visited our church frequently.  I loved to sing, in fact that was what I enjoyed about church even during the years that I went only because my parents made me.  My favorite services were the ones with guest singers, even if they sang only one special.

In my teen years I dreamt of being a pastor’s wife, like Jane, my pastor’s wife.  My senior year I felt called to missions, so I started imagining myself as a missionary’s wife.  After four years at Bible college I married a pastor, not one by position but a man with a pastoral calling.  Four kids and seventeen years later my husband and I were finally privileged to step into full-time ministry.

I had a rough start.  It wasn’t the people.  They have been very kind.  My problem was that I could not figure out where I fit in John Mark’s ministry with his leadership style.  I pulled back, withdrew from trying to contribute other than playing keyboard on the worship team and attending minister meetings.  At the time we were meeting together with another church, which only complicated my issues.  Things changed for me when the church moved into our own building and I agreed to take over as Treasurer/Bookkeeper.  I began to see myself as having a place.

When I recognized this past April that the Lord was directing me, myself, to be ordained, I pondered it long.  In fact, I have been pondering that for the past seven months.  What is my place?  Where do I fit?  I’m not going to go pastor a church somewhere myself.  I’m going to stay right here and serve with my husband.  I suppose that on the outside, people see me pretty much the same as I was before, but on the inside something has come alive.  That living thing inside me is welling up.  It is putting pressure on the shell that has covered me.  I see the fault lines appearing.  This is me.