Are You Ready? Probably more than you know.

But the passing life that we have here in our fleshliness does not know what our self is, except through our Faith.  And when we know and see truly and clearly what our self is, then shall we truly and clearly see and know our Lord God in fullness of joy.  And therefore, it is inevitable that the nearer we are to our bliss, the more we shall yearn -- and that both by nature and by grace.

~Revelations, Julian of Norwich, 46

We are installed!  Or rather, Seth is installed.  Praise the Lord.  The "Becoming a real pastor" process is finished.  He has studied, he has been examined, he has been ordained, and he is installed.  Now we can just settle back and grow into the role that God has given us.  One hundred and fifty people with all their worries and concerns, outreach to the community, expounding the Word of God faithfully and dynamically, administering the sacraments, church discipline, being model citizens of the kingdom below and the kingdom above.  You know, no pressure.

A lot of people have been asking me, "Are you ready to be a pastor's wife?".  And my standard response has been, "What does that even mean?". The days of a pastor's wife as a social institution, as a one-woman behind-the-scenes tirelessly working holiness machine are gone.  The jufrau is no longer a job title. I know pastor's wives who are teachers, nurses, social workers, crisis mediators, and pastors in their own right, and they all told me not to get pressured into any one role.  

However, Seth and I always dreamed of doing ministry together, and this is a great place to get involved.  Worship planning, special music, prayer and language ministries, and community involvement are all on my radar, in addition to the basketball schedules, volunteering for hot lunch, decorating for Christmas, and getting those gosh darn Christmas cards out that come with regular life.  Seth asks me to edit his sermons, and I am deep in the midst of three different books on prayer and devotion (in little pieces).  Does that sound like a pastor’s wife?    I feel a certain amount of anxiety because I have high hopes, and where hopes are high, failures are steep.  Am I ready to be a pastor’s wife?  Am I being what I ought to be? 

These are all unsettling questions because I feel like I don’t really know myself.  The older I get, the more flexibility I see in the parts of what I would ordinarily call “me.”  When I was a teenager, I could draw the outlines of “me” pretty starkly.  Life experiences have  stretched my personality so that the outlines have gotten diluted and fuzzy. I’m not as shy as I used to be. I’m also not as black and white.   I can see possibilities that I could never have entertained twenty years ago, and I am wise enough to know that possibilities are not necessarily givens. And I feel like the changes are still happening. How do I know when I'm ready?

As I’ve been pondering the question of readiness, I came across the above passage from the Lady Julian.  She wrote it when she was pondering something that puzzled her.  God had plainly shown her that He judged her in Heaven with grace and no condemnation.  And yet, here on Earth, Holy Church told her to judge herself sinful and reckon her failures.  She wasn’t sure how to reconcile the two until it occurred to her that we don’t really know ourselves in this life except by our Faith. In fact, we won’t really know who we are until we die.  

I can see that.  We know ourselves in a sort of retrospect.  We know who we have been.  I know how I developed as a Navy wife and a seminarian’s wife, but I don’t know what I’m going to become as a pastor’s wife, and I don’t know how the three of them will reveal themselves later in life.  I have been the mother of a small child, but I don’t know myself as the mother of a teenager yet.  We can’t know ourselves from the present forward because we are fluid and responsive beings.  Life shapes us, and until we get to the end, we don’t know what shape we’ll be.  The skills we've learned and will learn, the life lessons we've gone through and will go through, the gains and the losses, the triumphs and failures, physical and spiritual all get woven through the end product until we are finally ourselves. And if Julian is right, God doesn't judge us for being incomplete.

 Here is an idea echoed through all of Christian history.  The Apostle Paul wrote to the Colossians, “For you died, and your life is now hidden with Christ in God.  When Christ, who is your life, appears, then you also will appear with Him in glory”(3:3-4). So our future selves are a mystery.  We only know a bit of what Christ is going to be like when He returns, so how can we anticipate ourselves?  We are sown perishable;  we are raised imperishable.  What does that look like? Well, it looks like dying to self and putting away all the sins and weaknesses that we've been comfortable with thus far.  

I had to wrestle with this concept for a while.  And I had to ask myself, Why is the concept of not being complete yet so frustrating? 

Well, I have a life to arrange. I feel like I can’t competently make those plans if I don’t know who I am.  One of the questions Seth asked me as we moved into this phase of life is where I wanted to go from here.  “What is your ordination, and how do you want to pursue it?” were his words.   And I didn’t have an answer.  I couldn’t get a picture of myself down the road in order to choose my next steps.  And that made me afraid of developing incorrectly and damaging what I was supposed to be.    

But how do I get to know myself? As I get older, I see that the best way to know myself is to test myself.  Or to put it another way, the best way to know myself is to look to God and say, "Okay, Lord, what next?" Because in spite of the fact that I am a responsible adult, my life is not mine to arrange. As much as I cling to the anxiety and satisfaction that comes with control, life doesn't work that way. The running joke at our house is that we don't plan anything more than six months in advance because God will change our plans. There was a point not that long ago that Seth was in the tech industry, and we were buying a house to retire in. That was five years, three moves, and a Master of Divinity (Seth's) ago.  

When we go out on a limb, God gets a chance to show us  His grace for our weaknesses and to develop our strengths.  At the same time, we learn how to lean on Him, look for His leading, and follow Him more consistently.  And then he reaches into this bank that He's developed over our lifetimes and pulls out gifts and abilities and experiences that we can use to meet the challenge that He has drawn us into right now. And the process repeats itself and builds on itself until someday we stand before God. And on that day, He judges us. We see what we have done and what He has done with it. We see God as He is, and then He shows us ourselves as we were meant to be. And then we know ourselves completely.  

The fear of failing and the fear of going in the wrong direction pale considerably when they are washed in the development of God’s grace and the constant presence of God’s Spirit (and the Spirit is present, always).  But that kind of confidence takes time and repetition and a desire to know God.  I wouldn't have been able to understand this twenty years ago, and I am only beginning to grasp it now. And now is when I need to understand this. Because I have this question to answer: Am I ready to be a pastor's wife? Well, evidently, God thinks so because we are here. So yes, I am.