All posts by aporterfield2013

About aporterfield2013

I'm a minister and mother who is always interested in learning new things, listening to stories, and living into grace. View all posts by aporterfield2013 →

Nikki Finkelstein-Blair: Where We Are Now

February 5, 2014Uncategorizedministry and motherhood; living in the moment; military wife; discipleship; faith; movingaporterfield2013

You can spot us a mile away. My husband sports the requisite hairstyle, and in a military town like San Antonio, it’s a dead giveaway; so the people around us–church folks, neighbors, school friends–know we’re a military family. And one of the ways to make small talk with a military family is to ask them how long they’ll be here. It’s a pretty sure bet that either they’ve recently arrived, or they’re getting ready to leave. These are our two stages of life: “Where did you come from?” and “Where are you going next?”

After two years and nine months in San Antonio, we are now entrenched in the latter stage. We have our marching orders, so to speak. We know where, and when, we will be going next, and it is The Topic of conversation for whoever ends up sitting near us in the pews and at the potlucks.

And if talking about it near-constantly isn’t enough, we also have a chronic case of Senioritis. Graduation Day is right around the corner, and we really just want to coast from here on out; show up to class in pj pants and fuzzy slippers, phone it in on our final assignments, score our last few passing grades, sit through the obligatory reading of “Oh, the Places You’ll Go,” and throw our caps in the air. We are ready for the Next Thing.

The trouble is, we have a sense of winding down—but the people around us are just getting started! Back in Senior Year, we were in good company; our friends and teachers were all awaiting the commencement of a different life, or at least a peaceful summer. We were all feeling a little bit antsy and (truth be known) a little bit lazy. But now, when we are drawing back and slowing down, we’re on our own. All around us people are getting ready for the high seasons of spring and summer; in church, especially, the calendar is filling with exciting new ministries, preparations for Lent, and anticipation of summer music camps and VBS and mission trips.

I have never claimed to be good at Being Here and Being Now. But it is most challenging during this stage of our family’s life, which we revisit every three years. We are already invested–Here, and Now. We have fingers in the pies of ministries and friendships, we have been involved on planning teams and committees, we have pitched ideas and promised help. We are, ourselves, still learning and growing and feeling calls, and yet everything we do is tinged with the reality that our Here-ness and Now-ness are short-lived. Just in the past week I have received training for a new ministry, and I even made a new friend! And I have to find ways to silence my instinctive “Why bother?,” remembering that being here and now still matters. I have to remember that the next few, short, months are still real life and in them I may still be changed.

That’s life, though, and not just the military kind.

I can’t help but think of the disciples standing up on the hill, staring up into the clouds after Jesus in Acts 1:11. I imagine them waiting, expecting the Next Thing to begin, needing a gentle reminder that perhaps looking up into the sky isn’t the most helpful way to go about the life of faith.

We can only be where we are now. (I will be repeating this to myself constantly in the coming weeks and months.) We can’t follow Jesus up to the heavens, and we can’t just call Senior Skip Days. We can’t stand around waiting for real life to begin, and we can’t put all our energies into the future’s to-doing. We have to be here, to keep dispensing time and effort and love into people (even knowing it will make the goodbyes harder) and into work (even knowing we will not see its fruition firsthand). I have to do it to show my children, and to prove it to myself again and again, that this is God’s call to us: this place, this time. For now.

Nicole Finkelstein-Blair became a U.S. Navy spouse in 2000, graduated from Central Baptist Theological Seminary and was ordained in 2001, and became “Mom!” in 2004. She finds ministry wherever the military and motherhood lead: in four states and two countries (so far), as a parishioner and a pulpit-supplier, as a sometime blogger and devotional writer, and at countless dinner tables and bedtimes. She’s enjoying now… and looking forward to what’s next.

Jenny Call: Why I Left the Church…and Why I Returned

January 29, 2014Uncategorizedaporterfield2013

It seems that for every happy, churchgoing Christian, there is another who has a painful story of how they’ve been wounded by the church. As a college chaplain, I encounter more reasons for why my students don’t go to church than reasons why they do. Of the 58% of our students who self-profess the Christian faith, only a small percentage go to church regularly. This seems to mirror a growing trend as many articles and studies point out, and it’s not just among young people. I received a message from someone who had left the church and found life to be surprisingly comfortable without the Sunday commitment. She asked me, “Why do we need to go to church when it seems that churches only hurt people?”

I found myself an unlikely advocate for the church. I’ve have my share of scars from churches behaving badly. My beloved home church that I grew up in does not support women in ministry, and instead of celebrating my call to ministry, denied it. My first church internship was in a “purpose-driven” church that seemed to be more about stage lights, catchy music, and attendance numbers than authentic faith (although, to be fair, I met wonderful people there that are still part of my life, and the church has grown to create some wonderful outreach ministries for the community). I watched my fiancé (now husband) get battered by one church, then another, and the bitterness still rises whenever I see those self-righteous committee members that declared him unworthy, while the staff stood by silently, continuing to pat themselves on the back and rake in their big paychecks. After 5 years of being in a much better place in terms of our careers, finances, family, and church, I still struggle with anger over how we were treated, and how common our painful experience really is.

It took a lot of searching and a lot of healing (still in progress, obviously) to find a safe place for us to return to church, and that was only with the understanding that we would just be pew-sitters for a while. The community of faith that we found was not what we expected. From the surface, they looked like a dying congregation, their numbers decimated and aging in a large and mostly empty sanctuary that reflected better days. There were few programs, and no Sunday School class for us; our kids and the pastor’s children were almost the entirety of the children’s department. It did not look promising, but, oh, how they reached out to welcome us. Against our initial impressions, we felt like we had found a home. We knew things weren’t perfect, but we were able to let our guard down. As the first year wound down, we felt ready to get involved again. When the cracks began to show, we were already committed. Our kids had been dedicated, one had been baptized, and we had made friends as more young families began to join. Our pastor was a wonderful preacher, a compassionate leader, and a friend and mentor to me. We spoke up in strained business meetings, we stepped up to fill leadership roles, and we prayed that the ugliness of the past would not repeat itself. At least this time, we weren’t in paid staff positions.

But now, the brokenness is undeniable, and I wonder if it’s irreparable. We are saying goodbye to our beloved pastor who is resigning after doing her best to hold things together for the past 18 years. There is grief with all its stages: sadness, denial, anger, bargaining…I want to run away one minute and fight the next. So the question, posed the day before the straw that broke the camel’s back, becomes even more relevant and personal: “Why do we need to go to church when it seems that church only hurts people?”

My answer would be a little more hesitant and uncertain than it was just a few days ago, but deep in my heart I believe in the power of a church community . . .

Please continue reading at http://hopecalls.blogspot.com/2014/01/why-i-left-churchand-why-i-returned.html

Rev. Jenny Frazier Call is an ordained Baptist minister serving as university chaplain at Hollins University in Roanoke, Virginia. A graduate of the College of William and Mary and the Baptist Theological Seminary at Richmond, she learns the most from her precocious children, Brady (7) and Maryn (5). She couldn’t juggle it all without the loving support of her husband, John

Bailey Edwards Nelson: Identity Crisis

January 22, 2014Uncategorizedchildren, grief, hope, identity, job loss, ministry, stay at home momaporterfield2013

I can own the fact that I am one of those “I am what I do” kinds of people. Unhealthy? Perhaps. Many have tried to make that argument, particularly while sitting in CPE group sessions. Still, that’s me. It’s hard for a first-born, over-achiever, OCD, Type A personality not to get completely caught up in what you are able to “do”. Every day is a new opportunity to produce or create. It’s another chance to be reminded of your purpose and to achieve something great- or die trying.

I have had many titles- pastor, minister, chaplain, resident (just to name a few). Different periods of my life brought with them different titles and job descriptions. Honestly, it never really mattered what they were, as long as there was something. As long as I was able to call myself something, have somewhere to be and something to do, I was alright. You see, all of these things may read as nothing more than a great professional resume to some people. For me, they read as a resume for my life.

Eleven months ago I lost my job. Eleven months ago I lost my title. Eleven months ago I lost my identity. These days I wake with no sermons to write, no meetings to attend, no lessons to prepare, no parishioners to visit, and no emails or calls to return. I wake up with no requirement of showering and putting on one of those “business casual” outfits that have overtaken my closet. I wake up with no clue when all of this will change, when it will all go back to the way it used to be, or that it ever will.

Seven months ago, I took my (then) three year old son out of school. It’s hard to financially justify daycare when a parent isn’t working anymore. And with that, came a new title, “stay-at-home mom.” Shudder.

I love my son. I love his humor, intelligence, creativity, wild spirit, and even his over-talkative, OCD quirks. He is a lot like me- poor kid. Was it part of my plan to stay at home with him? No. Was it part of my plan to ever be called “stay-at-home mom”? No. And yet, here I am. This job is ten times harder than most would imagine (unless you’ve done it, in which case you know exactly how hard it is). I thought demands were high in the office: semi-sane parishioners calling every second while trying to be everything to everyone at every moment of every day. Forget that! At least those people didn’t follow me into the bathroom!

Now I am in demand ALL THE TIME. I am talked to incessantly and asked to play ridiculous games over and over again. I’m questioned about every smell and sound that enters our house and I’m screamed at when meals do not arrive on time and in proper condition. I’m hugged and kissed and punched and kicked.

I am mom and I am never alone. For an extreme extrovert, like me, that can be a very wonderful thing–unless you’ve lost your identity. Non-stop attention is tough when you don’t know who you are anymore.

You see, I am a good mom. I work hard to make sure that my son feels loved, accepted and supported. We play those silly games and we laugh at the bodily functions that boys love best. I turn food into kid-friendly works of art and I wrestle until my body is black and blue. I read and sing and put on dinosaur puppet shows. I correct and redirect when he goes too far. I listen to screams from the time-out chair one room over. I forgive and hug and move on. I fix boo-boos and fret over head injuries (of which there are many). I do it for hours until even the moon is weary in the sky. And then I get up and do it all again.

When it comes to this job, I am far from the over-achieving picture of perceived perfection that can be seen in the workplace. Rarely do I get it right and I often go to bed feeling like a complete and utter failure. The moments that I lost my temper or used the television to get just a moments peace or went with that sugary snack because I was tired of listening to him beg…well, they happen on almost a daily basis.

But do you want to know a deeper, darker secret? This is the best I can do right now. These mistake-riddled, temper-losing sugar-pushing days are often the only thing I can muster when I wake up and roll out of the bed in the mornings. Why? I don’t know who I am anymore.

OK, yes, I can hear fellow mothers screaming, “But you have an identity! You’re a mom! There is no shame in that!” I agree. I am a mom and that is a title I would never want to lose. Heck, that’s a job description I would never want to lose.

But…dare I say…sometimes being “Mom” just isn’t enough. There are days when I want to curl up in the corner and cry (sometimes I do). There are mornings when the sound of my son’s voice screaming me to rise to duty makes me want to bash my head against the wall. There are nights when I finally sit in silence and wish I were somewhere else entirely.

Depression, anxiety, stress…most ministers are familiar. We scream about our schedules and the demands our congregations place on our time and sanity. Often, we scream the loudest about the lack of time with our families, especially our children. I know that ten hour days at church that left with me a whopping half hour to spend with my son were torture. Ironically, my biggest complaint used to be not having enough time at home with him. Now, I wait and watch for the moment I can go back to work, back to ministry.

Now, are you ready for another confession? My son can smell it. Yep, he can smell the fear, anxiety, stress, pain, grief and longing on me just as strongly as the perfume I put on every morning. He sees in my eyes a lackluster glow where fire used to be. He hears in my voice a quick snap or depressive tone where excitement and joy used to be. He notices my preference of sitting down and being quiet over my once music to the max, swinging from the chandelier approach to life.

But here is the kicker…my son has become my minister. I joked over four years ago now that he also became a “reverend” the night that I was ordained, since he was furiously kicking inside me throughout the service! He seems to be living into that prophecy. When he senses my pain, he offers compassion. Many a morning has he wiped a tear from my cheek saying, “Everything’s gonna be OK mommy!” He can tell when I start sorting through all those bills, to him just a bunch of envelopes and papers, and the stress and worry builds in my body until I snap at his requests for my attention. He moves to another room gifting me with the space he can sense that I need. And when I do return to him hating myself for what I didn’t do for him, he forgives. I get a big smile and, usually, an “I’m so glad you’re here, Mommy!” Or the days when my heart is so heavy with the grief of past hurts and losses and holds little hope for a future, there is my boy ready to heal me. He runs for his plastic doctor kit and begins a thorough check-up, promising to make me feel all better.

My son is my minister. My son is as Christ to me: loving, healing and forgiving when I need it most. My son holds my hand as I walk through this dark valley and I know that when we spot the mountaintop he will look at me and say, “There it is, Mommy! I told you we could do it!”

Rev. Bailey Edwards Nelson has served on the pastoral staff of congregations throughout the southeast, most recently as Senior Pastor of congregation in North Carolina. She is a graduate of McAfee School of Theology and Furman University. Bailey holds a deep love for preaching and the creative arts.

Jenny Folmar: Other People’s Children

January 15, 2014Uncategorizedchildless, motherhood, other people's children, single, women pastorsaporterfield2013

Other people’s children. I don’t remember when I started using this phrase, but I do know that it began as a joke. When looking lovingly on a baby, I will sigh and quietly say, “Wow. I sure love other people’s children.” It always gets a laugh. The implication is that I am a single, childless minister who loves the freedom to nurture children for an hour or two and then send them home with their parents who then do all of the hard work. The phrase became a tool. It succeeds in circumventing any questions about children of my own.

With time, that funny little phrase grew sacred, but not until I began to embrace that part of my calling to ministry. I had to first grow comfortable with being a childless mother-figure in the Church. Accepting this part of ministry did not come naturally. I did not have a childhood that included joyful, thriving, childless women. If there were women without children, people spoke about them with a strong dose of sadness, as if they had a terminal disease. I needed to replace those fearful and sad images with new models that offered a bit of hope.

I stumbled upon Mary Salome when my spiritual director encouraged me to find a person of faith to use as an image of inspiration. Out of curiosity, I looked up the saint for my birthday: Mary Salome or simply Salome. Who? There was little more than a paragraph available for this person on the internet. Happily, I read that she was a different Salome than the woman who danced to have John the Baptist beheaded. She grabbed my attention when I learned that she walked with Jesus through his entire life.
In the Bible, Salome is listed twice in The Gospel of Mark among the women who witnessed Jesus’ death and who later encountered an angel at the empty tomb. Mark describes the relationship between Jesus and Mary Magdalene, Mary mother of James, and Salome, saying, “These used to follow him and provided for him when he was in Galilee; and there were many other women who had come up with him to Jerusalem.”

Early Christian writings, however, are full of her stories and conversations with Jesus. Some claim that Mary Salome was Jesus’ aunt. Others claim that she was Jesus’ sister or Mary’s midwife. In some traditions, she is married with children and in others she is childless.

Most scholars who study Mary Salome agree on the following: she was present at Jesus’ birth. She remained with Mary and Joseph as they raised Jesus. She followed Jesus through his ministry and witnessed both his crucifixion and resurrection.

Women of the early church were familiar with Salome. They had a model for what it looked like when a woman committed to caring for someone else’s child, who happened to be Jesus Christ. What a gift! Little girls long ago were told stories of their sister in Christ, Salome, who knew Jesus’ mother and became one of his disciples.

As I grow more familiar with Salome, I wish that there were t-shirts or blogs that celebrate her ministry. It would be great to have empowering slogans, like “Following Jesus like Salome,” or “Rockin’ Ministry Salome Style” to dissipate some of the extreme awkwardness for female ministers who walk into church doors without a child or a wedding ring.

But we have no bumper stickers or t-shirts. The reality is that Christian communities have a difficult time with childless women. We catch ourselves asking the unfair question that comes to mind when meeting a kind, smart, loving woman past a certain age. Why doesn’t she have children? The question itself can open wounds or add to the experience of feeling judged for lack of children.

Perhaps some women wanted children but were not able to conceive. Some might have lost a baby and could not bring themselves to have another. Still others are called to serve God and love others without having children of their own. Many of the latter feel as if they are somehow wrong or broken because they do not feel called to be a mother.

My awareness of this tension grows with each year that passes. Before I began pastoring in Iowa, I served in the South where most women marry and have children in their twenties. As I settle into my mid-thirties, I let myself laugh a bit when someone hears my marital status and age. There is always a flash of panic or pity in their eyes that is followed by change of subject or a comment about someone they heard about once who found love in their fifties. Apparently, being thirty-ish and single is the same as being fifty-ish when you are ministering in the church.
These predictable moments are why I adopted the phrase, “other people’s children.”

Other people’s children. With time, I embraced the life that God gave me and my sarcastic little quip began to grow sacred. The shift began when I earned my commercial drivers license to drive the church bus. They never told me in seminary that the most humbling and daunting part of ministry is the trust parents give you when allowing you to drive their child through stormy weather on a busy highway. I found myself saying things like “well, I spent church money on the more expensive brakes because I am about to drive to Florida with a bus full of other people’s children.”

It happened when I arrived in the emergency room to wide-eyed and frightened college students whose roommate had been victimized the night before. I came with doughnuts and Mountain Dew. I prayed with them and asked the nurses questions that college students do not know to ask. A week later, one of the girls said to me, “Thank you for being there. We were so scared. It was like you were our mom. I’ve decided that you are kind of like the mom of our college house.” Her tone had a genuine ring with a bit of humor in it, both funny and sacred.

I like to think that Salome would have showed up to the hospital with doughnuts and Mountain Dew. She, after all, was the first Christian to show us how to walk with another woman’s son as if he were her own. Her model of ministry is seen every Sunday in the church where women of all ages and situations seamlessly love and nurture children together. At its best, church is a place where children know the love of an entire community of adults.

Where else but in the church can a child receive a smile, a correction, or a comforting embrace from any adult who passes her way? Where else does God grant us the honor of covenanting together to raise and nurture newborn babies in baby dedications? Where else, but in our inheritance of saints, does a woman witness the birth of a little boy in a manger and decide to spent her life caring for and following him?

Practically, most of my days are spent in an office or car preparing for the few precious hours each week that we have together as a church. I often forget about the mothering nature of ministry until I am in the middle of a situation and find myself loving someone as if they were my own. Those lines between pastoral care and motherhood seem to blur quite often. My ministry is made much more beautiful by the sacred passing moments when I have the honor to love other people’s children.

The above was adapted from Jenny Folmar’s essay “Other People’s Children,” in A Divine Duet: Ministry and Motherhood. (Macon, GA: Smyth & Helwys Publishers, Inc., 2013), available from http://www.helwys.com.

Jenny Folmar grew up in Colleyville, Texas. She earned a Bachelor of Arts in Communications at Baylor University and then went on to Princeton Theological Seminary where she earned a Masters of Divinity. Jenny currently pastors Shenandoah UCC in Shenandoah, IA and formerly served as the Minister to Youth and College at Memorial Baptist Church in Buies Creek, North Carolina. Jenny most enjoys preaching, worship leadership, and late night conversations with students. She and her dog, Tina Turner, are happily adjusting to life in Iowa.

Resolution: Stare Out More Windows

January 8, 2014Uncategorizedhoops; window gazing; prayer; ministry; motherhood; grace; acceptance; works righteousnessaporterfield2013

I was designed to stare out of windows. In third grade, while my by-the-book teacher droned through another lesson, my eyes wandered to the window near my desk. Our trailer backed up to a steep hill where Georgia pines stretched up to a sky that could turn a shade of blue no painting could match. I used to look up at those trees and feel myself stretching, too, up out of that stuffy trailer with its stilted rules and into that endless blue sky—before the teacher jerked me back to her lesson plan with a pointed question about what she’d just said.

I started trying to create space so I could breathe a little, stare out of more windows. I opted out of the gifted program in sixth grade when it became clear that computer graphing would be our major project for the year, an announcement our teacher made with great joy. My heart shriveled and I went home that day determined to convince my parents that I needed to be un-gifted. Against all of my past experience, they agreed.

But somewhere on the same genetic code that shifted my eyes toward windows bubbled a compulsion for jumping through hoops. The homework assignment, the study guide, the paper due date all kept me moving past windows and buckling down. I could reduce some of the hoops, but eliminating them altogether was impossible.

So when I missed the cut off on the test that would bump me up to Algebra I in eighth grade, I felt both shame and relief: shame because my math classmates almost all made it in and I had no idea where I’d screwed up on the test . . . and relief because it was one less hoop to demand my attention. I could take higher-level classes in English and history, my natural loves, and maybe look out a few more windows in regular eighth grade math.

Then in ninth grade, after I had already accepted my place behind the leaders of the pack, my report card revealed that I was ranked higher than I had known in my class of five hundred plus. I must have obnoxiously mentioned this at lunch because someone reminded me that I was in the regular math, and thus science, class. The rank didn’t reflect those less demanding courses. That person was right.

But my hoop-jumping DNA marker had lit up like New York City at that dot-matrix printed ranking number on my report card. I didn’t want to lose ground. So buckled down and jumped high and aimed for the hoops in our no-minority, upper middle class “high school of excellence.”

Then right before my senior year, I found my eyes drifting toward the windows again as I plowed through the long summer reading list. I read a few pages; I stared out the window. Self-chastisement followed, but within a few pages, I’d again find myself staring out the window. Suddenly, the window-staring part of my DNA could no longer be squelched. And that was just the beginning.

All through college, my window-staring mind demanded at least some time alongside my hoop-jumping mind. As I got to pick more of my classes, I even discovered a sweet spot where the window staring and the hoops worked together: Victorian poetry, the short story, the 20th century novel.

In graduate school, I had to jump farther and faster to keep the competitive scholarship that allowed me to go to the school. But the higher I jumped, the more desperate the window–gazing needs grew. I caught every virus that even thought about visiting our campus. I tripped on the stairs I was running up one day and bruised my knee so badly that tears came to my eyes. I needed a nap everyday or my energy sagged so low I couldn’t keep up. And that wasn’t an option.

Yet, along the way, the window-gazing penchant drew to itself like-minded writings and people and practices. I read about contemplative prayer and women’s ways of learning for class and heard my own longings on the page. I went on a retreat and discovered that I craved the sound of quiet. I met the calmest, most grounded woman I could imagine and she befriended me.

I began taking baby steps toward honoring my call to gaze out the window. I took long walks. I prayed. I wrote. I gazed out the window. It was the only antidote I found to the hoop jumping. I felt healthier. Sometimes.

I began to accept in tiny, miniscule bites that I would never be enough or do enough. I am enough. We are enough, loved now, no hoops needed. When I gaze out the window, that’s what I hear. That’s what I always heard, all along.

Hoop-makers don’t want us to listen to that. Hoops don’t want us to think for ourselves or wonder or question or write poetry or sip tea in silence. And they certainly don’t want us to pray (unless it’s by rote) or combine window-gazing with praying. That’s dangerous stuff.

Thanks be to God for that little bright marker on my DNA that would not be silenced or shamed or worked away. Thank God for that window in my third grade room . . . and for my adolescent bedroom window . . . and all the windows that have offered new life through the years. I would never have survived without them.

Alicia Davis Porterfield writes for the sheer pleasure of words on a page in a household full of testosterone. One half of a clergy couple and mom to three boys, she finds herself fascinated by the world around her, including the birds in her own backyard and the love that bind us all together. A native of Atlanta, GA, Alicia lives in Wilmington, NC where history lingers on the corners downtown and the Atlantic bumps up against North America.

Melanie Storie: Resolution: A History of My Life in This Body

January 1, 2014Uncategorizedbikini, birth, body image, grace, ministry, motherhood, nursing, Psalm 139:14aporterfield2013

I will give thanks to you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made. Psalm 139:14

7
I am in the bathtub. I sing and play. I wash myself. There is a light brown spot on the back of my leg where the meat of my leg kisses the back of my knee. I scrub at the spot. I scrub and scrub. Until I realize the spot isn’t dirt. It is part of me. I can’t change it.

13
I am in junior high. I am pale and skinny. Knock-kneed and awkward. The other girls are getting boyfriends. The boys don’t notice me. If they do, it’s to tease how tall I am. How white. How skinny. My nose is big. My family gave me this nose like socks at Christmas. Later, I learn to make fun of my nose before others do. I call it a Mack truck nose so everyone will laugh with me and not at me.
I hate my one-piece bathing suit because it pulls uncomfortably and makes my hip bones stick out. But good girls wear one-piece suits – and tease girls with bony hips.
One day, Nostradamus predicted the world would end. That day, I forget my clothes to dress out for P.E. on purpose. I hate the way my legs look in shorts. And if the world ends, who cares if I have to walk laps outside in my favorite jeans and sweater? I walk and pray for Jesus to come now so I don’t have to dress out and show my knobby knees ever again.

17
I have filled out in all the places I am supposed to fill out. I get more attention from boys, but I am wary of them. After all, a few years ago I was knock-knees, Mack truck nose, brace face. I remember.
I can’t tan. I freckle a little. I burn. The other girls go to tanning beds before prom. My mom won’t let me. There is skin cancer in my family. I am white. White and bony like a skeleton. I am prone to fainting spells. The doctor tells me to drink milkshakes to gain weight. I think they are all going to my chest.
I am the lead in the spring musical at school with my best friends. I feel confident and strong. I love the dresses I wear onstage and how I look in them.
A month after the show, a lady recognizes me in the grocery store. She asks me if I was the lead in the play. Yes, I say with pride. You were good, she says, but so skinny. Don’t you eat? Believe me, I do, I laugh. I leave the grocery store and go get another milkshake.

21
I am about to graduate from college and go to seminary. I am still tall, still pale, still unhappy with my nose, but I can walk into any store and buy almost anything in my size and it looks good. I don’t realize at the time how good and wonderful this is. I have a lot of cheap bikinis. Even though I am white, I look good in them.
My hips aren’t so bony anymore. In conversation with one of my guy friends, I tell him how much I want to have children one day. He tells me I don’t have “child-bearing hips.” It bothers me because I’ve always hated my bony hips.
I work at a chain steakhouse restaurant. I hate my uniform. It is truly ugly. One night, a handsome guy (who meets my rule of being taller than me) sits in my section. He has the best blue eyes I’ve ever seen. He tells people later when we relate the story of how we met that he liked how I looked in my uniform.

26
I’ve just birthed a 9 lb. 1oz. baby boy. With the final push, the doctor let me reach down and pull this slimy, wailing love into the world with my own hands. (I briefly think of my guy friend who said the thing about child-bearing hips. Ha, ha!!) This little boy has relied solely on my body for nourishment for nine months. I ate tons of vegetables, drank gallons of milk, and consumed the more than occasional foot long chili cheese hotdog. For twelve months more, I will nurse him. He depends on me, on my body to survive.
When I take a shower for the first time after the birth, I look down at my body and I barely recognize myself. I will never have bony hips. Not bony anything. Not ever again.

37
My body has had two babies and nursed them. My body eats and exercises. My body hugs people who hurt. It watches too much TV and reads a lot of books. It laughs. It cries. It is wonderfully made.
My right foot has a bunion that makes shoe shopping a dread rather than a treat. Where I used to grab a pair of jeans from the clearance rack as I breezed through a store, I now take ten pairs to the dressing room. Which pair will be long enough? Which ones will cover up my belly?
My belly. In college, I wore the popular midriff bearing tops. Now, I laugh at the thought. My belly is stretched and fleshy. The nine pounders demolished it. I shop for tankinis, bathing suit bottoms with skirts, bathing suit tops with extra support. I nursed two boys for a year apiece. They literally drained the life from my chest.
I go to my family reunion. My grandpa has died. Cancer took him from us. But I see his nose everywhere. On uncles and aunts and cousins. It is my nose too. It spreads out all over my face when I smile. And I like to smile.
This white, white skin is my grandma’s skin. She was beautiful and pale. She loved to hold my hand. My soft, white hand.
I make a decision. I get out the tape measurer and measure the body I have. The one that was given to me. The one that I’ve earned with healthy eating and Zumba and chocolate cake and nine pound babies and belly laughs with my husband. Maybe it’s not the one I want or the one from my twenties when I didn’t realize how good I looked because I was always comparing my body to someone else’s. I realize that one day I’ll look back on this thirtysomething year old body and wish I’d realized how wonderful it was.
So, I order it: The green and white polka dot 1940’s style bikini. Maybe I have no business wearing it. Maybe I’ll toss a t-shirt over it in a panic whenever we take to the beach. But, I’m wearing it. I’m fearfully and wonderfully made. I’ll see you on the beach in my bikini. You can bring the milkshakes. This time, we’ll drink them just for fun.

Melanie Storie is a graduate of Catawba College and Campbell University Divinity School. While in seminary, Melanie married Matthew Storie, served as a youth and children’s minister, had a son (Aidan, 12), and finally graduated – while eight months pregnant with her second son (Owen, 9). Melanie has served churches in North Carolina and Virginia as Minister of Children. Recently, she served with the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship in Alabama. Melanie currently lives in Independence, Virginia.

Meredith Stone: Preaching Pregnant in Advent

December 18, 2013Uncategorizedpregnancy; preaching; women ministers; Advent; Maryaporterfield2013

When I was pregnant with my first daughter, I was working on a Master’s degree and my husband was serving on a church staff in a small rural community. As the minister’s spouse, who happened to also self-identify as a called minister, I sought ways to be a part of the ministry of the church in whatever place was open to me. One of those places in that particular church was the worship ministry. So in 2003 on the Sunday before Christmas, I was asked to pull my massively pregnant self up the stairs to the platform during the service, read Mary’s song in Luke 1:46-55, and then sing a solo. In other words, I was asked to be the surrogate Mary.

While the service that day didn’t include an examination of what being birth-er and nurturer to the Christ-child meant, the people in that church were given a meaningful snapshot of Jesus’ mother. Sometimes Jesus’ miraculous birth makes us forget about the tangible details. Jesus was an actual human being who grew inside of a woman. Mary did carry him in her belly for nine months and he grew from tiny embryo to fetus inside of her. She had to think about what she ate and the activities she engaged in so that she could be sure to nurture this tiny creature into a fully functioning human being. Mary’s womb was the first minister to the Christ as it provided a place for the baby human Jesus to grow.

It was with this picture of the pregnant Mary that I approached my second pregnancy-filled Christmas season in 2007. By then I was serving on a local church staff as a Teaching Pastor and one of my responsibilities was to coordinate worship and preach during Advent. So when one of the lectionary passages for the third Sunday of Advent that year was Luke 1:46-55, I just knew that, again, I brought a unique perspective into reading Mary’s song.

As I read and re-read Mary’s song that week in preparation for Sunday, I felt a strong connection to her. I imagined her looking just like me – gigantic belly and all. I envisioned her responding to each kick and punch of the baby in her womb by placing her hand on her belly. And as her hand rose and fell with the movements of her unborn child, I wondered what she thought about and how she pictured that little person growing inside of her? Being almost eight months pregnant myself, at that point my imagination had constructed a very detailed vision of who my second daughter would be. So who did Mary picture her son to be and what did she dream for him?

Then as I read through commentaries and articles about Mary and her song for my sermon preparation, I began to see her mother’s dream unfold in the words of Luke 1:46-55. Mary dreamed about the new world her son would bring into being. It would be a world where the poor, the downtrodden, and the powerless are restored. It would be a world where the strong, the rich, and the proud no longer dominate, but the lowly are lifted up and the hungry are fed, where God fills, helps, remembers and is merciful by turning the entire order of society upside down. It would be a world where her son starts a revolution.

And there she sat.

Pregnant.

With the hope of a revolution of justice and redemption inside of her.

And with the expectation that she would deliver that hope to the world.

And looking down at my own pregnant belly, I was reminded that Mary was not the only one pregnant with that same kind of hope.

So when I preached that December morning in 2007, I tried to paint a picture of Mary that is sometimes forgotten – the Mary in-between Gabriel’s visit and the manger. I attempted to use her pregnancy to illustrate the kind of hope we should all have. When we hope for redemption and justice, we should have Mary’s kind of hope. It should be a hope that is assured since we can feel it kicking and punching and growing inside of us. It should be a hope that is active since, like labor and delivery, bringing our hope to fulfillment is not a passive endeavor.

And you can only imagine the congregational gasps as I said, “In fact, who better than Mary to illustrate to us the fact that we are all humble virgins whom God has impregnated with hope? That’s right, you heard me – I’m not the only pregnant one in the room anymore. As followers of Christ we have all been made pregnant by God’s hope and like Mary we have the privilege of giving birth to God’s revolution of justice!”

After church that day, one male member of the congregation said to me, “I will never forget today – the day you made us all pregnant.”

Note: The above is an excerpt from Meredith’s essay “Pregnant and Remembered Hopes” from the collection A Divine Duet: Ministry and Motherhood (Macon, GA: Smyth and Helwys Publishers, 2013).

Reverend Meredith Stone serves as women in ministry specialist for Texas Baptists. Her work includes resourcing and supporting women serving in vocational ministry across Texas and consulting with churches and institutions that support women in leadership. Meredith is also working on a PhD in Biblical Interpretation through Brite Divinity School at Texas Christian University. Meredith’s husband, James, serves as Director of Church Relations for Hardin-Simmons and they have two daughters, Hallie and Kinsey.

Joanne Costantino: A Grammy, An Angel and “Todzilla”

December 11, 2013UncategorizedAdvent; angels; granddaughters; Oriental Tradingaporterfield2013

Advent: The Coming of Something Momentous.

Advent for me is always what the definition is: waiting, lying in wait for something to happen. Growing up in the Catholic Church, my memories of Advent are of the dark purple vestments the priests wore for the four weeks at Sunday Mass, the Advent wreath, the hymns of waiting for the Savior’s birth (“Oh Come, Oh Come, Emmanuel”), and the bare altar that suddenly exploded on Christmas eve into a stage of brilliantly lit Christmas trees lining the altar and a spectacular manger scene complete with the Holy Family, a crèche with lots of hay spread around, shepherds and angels in diaphanous white gowns with wings that looked like Michelangelo himself had created them. Fast forward into my younger Mommy years, and immediately after Thanksgiving my Advent was coupled with that feeling of “lying in wait for something to happen”– and always with the angst of did I get it all done?! right up to midnight of Christmas Eve.

In my Grandparent years I still feel the “lying in wait for something to happen.” But the angst is replaced with anticipation for how I’m going to knock the socks off my grandkids with an experience they might not have had the opportunity to enjoy with their overbooked and exhausted parents. Sometimes it’s an expensive event, but the memories are priceless. This year it cost me less than $25 for my granddaughter Meghan.

Meghan is tiny in a family of non-tiny people. She is also “affectionately” nicknamed “Todzilla,” and lately, “Toddy.” She actually is proud of the moniker. Her small size is a shrewd disguise for her huge temper, the volume of her articulate voice and not the least of all her razor sharp intelligence. Her brain never shuts down. I find it amusing more often than not, but she gives her parents an emotional workout.

The application for which role a child would like in the Nativity play came home last week. My daughter Kate asked Meghan if she’d like to be something different this year, maybe a shepherd or a reader. Meghan’s response was without hesitation, direct and terse: “No! You said I could be an angel.” Okay, we won’t dwell on the double entendre in the statement, but this is life with our Todzilla.

Meghan’s mom was in that very place of anxiety I remember so well. When she called, I could hear in her voice the restrained panic: “Toddy wants to be an angel in the Nativity play, we don’t have a costume. The play is in two weeks.” We dug out last year’s costume. Because she is so petite the angel dress still fit her. But then we found the homemade wings and the halo. Toddy looked at them and stated, “I thought we threw those away.”

We had bought fairy wings at the Dollar Store and covered them with foil, because all we could find was pink ones and had no time to do anything else. Meghan had declared she could not have pink wings in a white gown, so we improvised. The foil did the job, but apparently other parents’ angels were adorned with real feathered angel wings trimmed in maribou. There was nothing homemade about their wings. Meghan looked angelic throughout the Nativity play, but she continued throughout that evening about how she was the only one with “silver wings.” That was last year.

This year, Meghan’s had no change of heart about the homemade wings and halo. Kate tried to convince her that her wings were special because they were different. But Toddy wasn’t having any of that nonsense and walked away. With two weeks until the play, I was confident I could find a set of angel wings that would be suitable to Meghan’s standards.

Naturally, I consulted the internet. The initial search resulted in a lot of “sold out” or “out of stock” findings. It was beginning to look bleak. The feeling of anticipation and confidence that these wings were going to be a slam dunk was ebbing. After taking a break from the search, I went back online, determined we were going to have feathered wings for Todzilla in time for the play. Thanks be to God for persistence, patience and OrientalTrading.com: feathered angel wings, trimmed in white maribou, $8.50. Expedited shipping was more than the cost of the wings, but it did not matter.

They were delivered as promised and when I displayed them for her, Meghan exclaimed “Oh my God! They are HUGE!” Although the wings are almost the same size as Meghan, they are beautiful and look like real feathered angel wings.

The halo never fit well on her head, so we’re going to forgo the halo and go with a trimmed white headband. Toddy is just fine with not wearing a halo. As she so astutely observed, “it’s always slipping off my head.” No kidding.

Joanne Costantino is a Philly girl living in the wild suburb of Washington Township, NJ, where she still pines for city life. She graduated from College in 2008, two weeks shy of the birth of her 4th grandchild. The “accidental matriarch” of a life she didn’t sign up for, Joanne will never run out of writing material with her family of daughters, nieces and their youngsters, all living close enough for weekly Sunday dinners. Joanne’s short stories “The Philly Girl in Jersey” and “Leaving the Leaves” appeared in Tall Tales and Short Stories from South Jersey. http://weneedmoresundaydinners.blogspot.com.

Advent Week 1: Practicing Watchfulness

December 4, 2013UncategorizedAdvent; ministry moms; watchfulness; Matthew 24:36-44aporterfield2013

Matthew 24:36-44

(36) “But about that day and hour no one knows, neither the angels of heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father. (37) For as the days of Noah were, so will be the coming of the Son of Man. (38) For as in those days before the flood they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, until the day Noah entered the ark, (39) and they knew nothing until the flood came and swept them all away, so too will be the coming of the Son of Man. (40) Then two will be in the field; one will be taken and one will be left. (41) Two women will be grinding meal together; one will be taken and one will be left. (42) Keep awake therefore, for you do not know on what day your Lord is coming. (43) But understand this: if the owner of the house had known in what part of the night the thief was coming, he would have stayed awake and would not have let his house be broken into. (44) Therefore you also must be ready, for the Son of Man is coming at an unexpected hour.

Several years ago, I had a powerful encounter with this passage. I had just preached a sermon on this text that week, focusing on the call to be awake to God and each other in this season of hope and anticipation. I heard the text inviting us to set aside the distractions of this day and age and delve deep into God’s presence. As I prepared the sermon, I imagined a long, pensive season set to the haunting tune of “I Wonder as I Wander.” I longed for such a reflective, angelic season (with more ancient Enya-like songs as background music, of course).

Not 24 hours post-sermon, I found myself frantically searching travel sites trying to firm up plans for a vacation over spring break. The trip was a major component of our children’s Christmas gifts that year—and one of the only true surprises. I’d been researching for months, reading travel tips and restaurant reviews, trying to be a good steward of our time and money. We’d probably only visit this spot once. So I was working hard to make sure we could squeeze every last drop from the experience.

By 10:53 p.m., which is late for me, I was hunched over in bed, trying to read the fine print on a confirmation e-mail, without my contacts in or glasses on, of course. My shoulders were tight and sore, my temples throbbed and I suddenly sat up in a moment of un-OCD sanity, thinking I just wasted an entire evening of peace and quiet! In our household of three young boys and two ministers, an evening of peace and quiet is worth its tick-tocks in gold.

Sound familiar? From Cyber Monday deals to calendar juggling to sugar overload, the distractions of the season are legion. They aren’t intrinsically bad, just powerfully tempting. Seeing as I am human and live in the real world, I probably won’t ever be able to resist fully and that’s not such a bad thing. Advent will keep happening; Christmas will still come.

So my prayer is that the time between the slipping into distraction and the wake-up What am I doing?! moment will lessen. My Advent discipline this year is to carve out time in each day—OK, maybe every other day—to breathe, think, be quiet, listen. A little ritual of stillness, a time to be awake to God, may be just the antidote to a season of constant distraction. Four days into Advent and this discipline, accompanied by some Enya-like background music, is already helping. Thanks be to God. Amen.

A native of Atlanta, GA, Reverend Alicia Davis Porterfield is a writer, teacher and Board Certified Chaplain. She is a graduate of the University of Georgia and earned a Master of Divinity and a Master of Theology from Duke University Divinity School. After graduation, Alicia completed two years of chaplaincy training at Rex Healthcare in Raleigh, NC. For six years, Alicia served as chaplain at Quail Haven Retirement Village in Pinehurst, NC before her family moved to Wilmington, NC. Her husband Eric is senior pastor at Winter Park Baptist Church and together they stay busy learning and growing with their three sons: Davis (12), Luke (10) and Thomas (8). A frequent retreat leader and guest preacher, Alicia enjoys reading, singing and re-learning piano–to make some use of those four years of lessons her parents funded long ago.

Melanie Storie: Thankful for My Call and My Bikini

November 20, 2013Uncategorizedwomen ministers; bikinis; call to ministry; ordained female Baptist ministers; Pastor's wife;aporterfield2013

The Pastor’s Wife

“I think I’m called to be a Pastor’s Wife,” she said with her head back, sunglasses on, soaking up the sunshine in her one-piece bathing suit.

It was the summer after my junior year in college and I was a camp counselor at Camp Mundo Vista, a Baptist camp for girls. The air was heavy with talk of calling and one-piece bathing suits.

Some talked of calling to be missionaries. One girl wondered if she was called to be single, but two summers later married a boy she hadn’t even kissed. I didn’t know what I was called to be yet, but the idea of being called to be a Pastor’s Wife – or called to be anyone’s wife for that matter – seemed a little 1955 and June Cleaver to me. And I really hated my one-piece bathing suit.

Fast forward to present day. I am an ordained female Baptist minister who is currently not employed as a minister. And I am a Pastor’s Wife.

There are a lot of reasons I am not “working” as a minister now, but the main ones are:

1. After serving as a missionary in Alabama, I started to feel that I might be of more use to God being “Church” outside of “church.” I am now a substitute teacher and PTO president at our local elementary school.

2. I am writing a novel. It is something I’ve always wanted to do and now that I am doing it, I want to actually finish it.

Right now, I know I am doing what I am supposed to be doing. Living in a small town (we have two stoplights) where people knew exactly who we were within the first ten minutes of our arrival (my husband, Matt, was asked to do a “shotgun wedding” while we were unloading the moving truck) has made me realize that a lot of people have a lot of ideas about what a pastor’s wife should be.

I have been asked to do certain responsibilities at church just because the last pastor’s wife took care of those things. I have been used as sermon illustrations and then chastised for my behavior in the illustration. (Apparently, I shouldn’t have told my stressed husband to go for a run. I should have told him to pray.) It has been assumed that I should know how to play the piano, that I should be an excellent cook, that my children should exhibit perfect behavior, that I shouldn’t fraternize with the wrong sort of people, that I should keep my house immaculate for unexpected guests… and only half of these are expectations other people have of me. Most of the time, I have unrealistic expectations for myself.

The Pastor’s Wife in a small town lives in a fish bowl. In a town this small, we all socialize at ballgames, parades, and other hootenannies. If I get a little (ahem) vocal at my children’s sporting events, I hear, “Well, listen at the Pastor’s Wife!” Or if someone lets a colorful epithet fly, “Oh, I need to watch my tongue around the Pastor’s Wife!” I went on a girls’ weekend with friends, none of whom attend our church. “My mama felt a whole lot better about me going on this trip when she heard the Preacher’s Wife was coming too.”

Being in an area where there are a lot of “jack leg preachers” is interesting too. One teenager who has done some babysitting for us marveled, “I have to come to your church sometime. I can’t imagine Matt yelling.”

She came. And heard no yelling. So, she came back.

Everybody has their expectations of how the Pastor should be and how the Pastor’s Wife should be. But at the end of the day, we have to be true to who God has called us to be. So, I have written children’s plays at Christmas and taught Sunday School. I preach when the Pastor asks me to and I sing a solo now and then. I volunteer at the elementary school and host a ladies group where our laughter is our purest prayer. Sometimes I bring store-bought baked goods for pot luck dinners because I am not anyone else but Melanie. And sometimes, Melanie is just too worn out to be perfect.

I love my husband. I love my church. I have learned to adjust my expectations of myself. Being a Pastor’s Wife is part of my calling. I’ll live it out in my unique, God-blessed way. Even if it means I am chatting up moms at the community pool…in my bikini.

Melanie Storie is a graduate of Catawba College and Campbell University Divinity School. While in seminary, Melanie married Matthew Storie, served as a youth and children’s minister, had a son (Aidan, 11), and finally graduated – while eight months pregnant with her second son (Owen, 8). Melanie has served churches in North Carolina and Virginia as Minister of Children. Recently, she served with the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship in Alabama. Melanie currently lives in Independence, Virginia.

ministryandmotherhood

A divine duet of calls