The Single Rev's Guide to Life
Searching, Searching, Searching...
A post appeared recently in the closed Facebook network for The Young Clergy Women Project that caught my eye. In this post, a fellow YCW asked about the search process with her husband. He’s a pastor. She’s a pastor. They have a baby. And it’s time for them to search. So, she was looking for wisdom -- as so many of us do -- from her clergy sisters. The married clergy sisters with babies, that is.
That sounds bitter. Maybe it is. Whatever. I’ll talk about it with my therapist. That’s not the point. The point is this: I read this post only to think of another friend who has just completed a search process, a friend that bemoaned the fact that it’s harder to discern God’s call when you’re married. I imagine this is further compounded when you have a baby, but I have neither. I am not married. I have no baby. But I am indeed searching.
Shame
An online engagement announcement. In one second I was thrown from a bored moment at the computer, idly Facebooking between tasks, to crushing doubt, self-criticism, and questioning every decision I had made in the last four years. The last thirty five years, really.
The last guy I had been in a serious relationship with was engaged. Statistically, I knew it was bound to happen at some point after our parting four years earlier. He wasn't a bad person, and our relationship had ended as ideally as a relationship can end. So I was shocked that when I read the announcement of his engagement my first reaction wasn’t joy for him and his future wife, but a sinking in my chest and a surprising swell of self-pity. Quickly followed by guilt- I should be happy for him that he found a life partner, not feeling like a failure because I was still alone. I briefly wondered if this was a sign of full-blown narcissism. It certainly didn’t seem like the sort of reaction a clergyperson should have to news of a wedding. Nevertheless, there I was, sitting in my office, crushed by someone else’s good news.
And it wasn’t the first time.
Open Relationship
I never thought I would end up in an open relationship. I never dreamed that this is the way my life would unfold. But then, as a young clergywoman, I followed God’s call to a small town in northwest Pennsylvania.
The town is a typical small town. There’s a downtown committed to keeping chain stores out and so there are mom and pop diners, antique shops, and a pizza parlor/movie rental combo. But with only one stoplight in town, I was in for some major culture shock, having just graduated from a seminary within minutes of Atlanta. Yet as I settled into a new place, a new home, I began to love the small town feel and charm.
Blessed Be the Tentmakers
Editor's Note:This article is one in an occasional series called "All About the Benjamins," running this fall on Fidelia's Sisters. As many congregations and organizations are running stewardship campaigns and lining up budgets for 2012, we'll be taking a look at the sometimes-taboo topic of money, and the roles it plays in our ministries.
I haven’t had a boyfriend in a very, very long time. Or even a good date.This long stretch of singlehood has made me identify more closely with the women in the Bible who are dealing with their barrenness. Not the literal lack of children in my womb, but the inability to form the family I long for, to fall in love and find a partner to share my life with. Like many of those Biblical women, I sometimes wonder what I have done wrong to earn this fate – what deficiencies keep me from experiencing what seems to come naturally to so many other women? I wonder,like Sarah, if after so many years I will ever get to experience the pleasure I dream about. I struggle, like many of the barren women of the scriptures, with how to define my worth as a woman in ways that don’t fit with society’s expectations.
Two scriptures, in particular, have stuck with me recently, and led me to sit with the ideas of barrenness and hospitality, and how they relate to my life as a single woman. “Sing, O barren one who did not bear,” urges Isaiah 54, “burst into song and shout, you who have not been in labor.” Sometimes the hardest thing is keeping hope, after a string of uninspiring dates, that there is someone out there I can connect with. Isaiah urges not just hope, promises not only joy, but reminds me to LIVE like I believe in the promises these verses contain. “Enlarge the site of your tent,” instructs the prophet. Make your home, your heart, your world big enough to hold all that you dream will happen. Make room for the people you want in your life.
Sex(ism) and The Single Rev
Feminism seems to be a dirty word these days. At a recent all-women roller derby practice one of the organizers cheerfully described the league as being run by women, for women, but not, you know, "feminist" (the scare quotes were implied), and I was baffled. This denigration of the women's movement is a shock to me, particularly when I hear it from a female peer. Our generation is the first to truly reap the rewards of the struggle of the women who came before us and made our vocational choices possible, both in society in general (like this roller derby league) and in the Church.
Where our foremothers had to endure being hissed at as priestesses, snubbed at the altar rail by disaffected churchgoers who refused to receive the sacraments from their hands, I grew into adulthood in the reality of a Church that had ordained women as priests since before I was born. When I discerned my call to ordination, it was in a parish that had called a woman as rector when I was 7. I didn't have to experience the front lines of that fight, and I continue to be profoundly grateful to the women who did, often sacrificing personal happiness along the way. And so it troubles me to admit that one of the last great bastions of institutionalized sexism today is the Church that I love.
Stuck in the Middle with You, Part Two
As I considered where I might go on vacation this summer, I knew it had to be somewhere tropical. Having visited some beautiful beaches before, I knew deep within me that this would be the most relaxing, rejuvenating and restful experience that summer vacation had to offer.
Right about when I was dreaming up this idea, I met someone. Over these last few months, I’ve had to adjust my independent and sometimes selfish life to once again include someone else in the constant push and pull of time and compromise that lives within a relationship. And to be honest, I’ve loved every minute of it. It seemed to make perfect sense to both of us that we would vacation together.
Stuck in the Middle with You
I am a single rev. At least I think am. At least for now. And for a while to come. I think.
I am falling into that “liminal space” (thank you seminary vocabulary) that comes between single-but-dating and single-but-engaged. For some couples, this space is short, maybe only a minute or two, but for my significant other and me, this space is turning out to be extremely long. We have known for two years that we want to marry each other, that it's okay to talk about “when” rather than “if,” but right now there is no end in sight.
We are choosing to do it this way because neither one of us is ready to leave our call to a congregation, and while it's certainly not ideal, there's no one way to negotiate this part of a relationship. Every couple has to figure it out for themselves. It seems to be working for us so far. But I have a feeling it won't work forever.
Single Rev...and a baby?
Throughout seminary, I knew several women who were single mothers and facing the surmounting task of ordination, exams and sermon preparation. Their diligence to their calling and their family always impressed me. They never claimed it was easy. However, the idea of single women choosing to become mothers without a partner was never even discussed. As women have finally gained a place as pastors among us, it is time to discuss the ideas of single clergy and the role of motherhood. Perhaps it is past time.
The Show Must Go On
It’s not every day that a greeting card changes the way you live your life, but several years ago I saw one that did just that. On the cover it said, “Approach love and cooking with reckless abandon.” From the first moment I read those words, I knew they were spot-on, and I have tried my best to live them out. Sometimes it means getting hurt, though, whether through splattering oil or things that seem like they should have tasted good or even the occasional broken heart (much longer lasting than the dinner that shouldn’t-have-been).
Usually I only get to cook, but for the past year or so I had the opportunity to approach love with reckless abandon—I have been more open, more real, more honest, more vulnerable in this relationship than any other I’ve been in. I’ve given myself away to another person more than I ever imagined myself doing. I allowed myself the fantasies, the idea that he might be The One, the hopes and dreams and girly chatter, the pondering of great mysteries of life, love, and God all intertwined.
But in one important way, I was neither reckless nor abandoned: I did not allow my church to know.
Enter Salvation
I am a woman whose love language is touch, and as a single woman--let alone as a reverend--it’s been a big black vortex of emptiness in my life. It’s always present. Sometimes it’s entwined lightly enough I can ignore it or rationalize it away, but other times it feels more like Davy Jones’ Kraken--the sea monster that has wrapped its tendrils around me and is about to break me, throwing me into its devouring, insatiable maw.
Okay. Maybe that was a tad bit dramatic, but I do feel emotionally starved sometimes. When I end up dating someone and he holds me, I know I turn into a bit of an insatiable monster myself, trying to fill that emotional emptiness that’s been aching for so long. Memo to myself and the reader: This is not healthy.
But how do I meet that need of touch, of emotional input, when so many of the necessary boundaries of my vocation make that impossible? I’ve tried dancing, aikido--and have had friends actually suggest guys not as prospective boyfriends but as cuddle buddies. Suffice it to say, all this has left me still wanting (and rolling my eyes).
Enter salvation: The Korean Spa.
