why I love the church who told me "no"...

Consider this a chapter in a future memoir I'll write when I'm 50.

My mother is remarrying in less than two days, and as I started considering the location to which I'm about to drive with my husband, I suppose it's natural for a flood of memories to resurface in my brain. Memories of growing up. Bible sword drills. Sitting totally opposite of the male gender, lest I brush a shoulder and get pregnant. Memories of teen camp-outs, of laughing so hard I wet myself, of trying to please everybody, and of hard conversations on Facebook that you should have had in person because you're an adult and you've read Matthew 18 enough to quote it by heart.

(Of course, some sarcasm and hyperbole are present here, but you get the point.)

So by now it definitely sounds like I'm playing the Bitter Betty or Pitiful Polly card; not so, I assure you. In fact, quite the opposite: I will always have an affinity in my heart for the first church who discipled me. It's my old stomping ground, so-to-speak. I know how to speak the lingo ("well bless your heart...") and how to agree on the same things ("guns are awesome!" and "why yes, Obama IS the antichrist!"). But being a little more grown up gives me a little more retrospect. This church body wasn't trying to cram bad doctrine down my throat; they were just loving me and teaching me their doctrinal views and convictions through their lens of Scripture.

And I've realized I do the exact same thing when I throw an adult-sized hissy fit over a disagreement on women serving in all offices of church ministry. Then Leonard Sweet's words ring all too true in my ear: "Do you want to be right, or do you want to be in a relationship?"

Well, ideally, both - whereby the second person affirms my right-ness....or, uhmmm, "righteousness"?! Ooo.

Okay, I take it back.

I'm pretty positive that if the 9-year-old me, the 19-year-old me and the 29-year-old me all met, my 19-year-old self and my 29-year-old self would eventually surrender and join my 9-year-old self on a bike ride around the trailer park in which I used to live. And that half hour or so of gleefully riding hands free or jumping speed bumps or skinning my knee on the cul-de-sac like that one day right before fourth grade would easily out-rank any day I cared about being right.

There is no possible way I can hold anger, bitterness, or un-forgiveness against the church who gave me a deep love for the Scriptures and encouraged me to study it. So no, I will not intentionally draw people into debate about women in pastoral ministry on my mother's re-wedding day. But I also refuse to deny who God has clearly called me to be. My goal, as my pastor so wisely put it, is that when I'm on stage delivering a sermon (as I've done several times already, glory be to God), people don't see a man or woman; all they should see is Jesus.

(Well, and the Father and the Holy Spirit...you know, that whole Trinity thing. But I'm focusing on relationship, here...)