When Easter finally comes

Exciting personal news & reflections on grace

Yesterday, the congregation of Mount Olivet Lutheran Church in Minneapolis called me to be an Associate Pastor!

🤩🤯🥳😮🥰🥹😊😃

Mount Olivet’s chancel.

If you would’ve told me a year ago—or even three months ago—that I would be crying in joy over a traditional pastoral call to a (massive) church in Minneapolis, I would have laughed in your face. I nearly did that to my seminary professor when he shared this opportunity with me in April.

Are you kidding me? Don’t you know me at all? No part of this is interesting to me.

Yet here I am, my smile brimming ear to ear. Totally confused and astounded at how this came to be. Giddy to have beautiful stoles headed my way. Excited—I’m excited???—to be a pastor.

Though this is far from anything I would have designed for myself, it has brought me more peace and belonging than I’ve felt in some time. It’s given me the inner intuition I’ve been longing to feel throughout this call process. It’s provided me and my family with everything we desired in a new home.

It is nothing short of a miracle.

After 12+ months of networking and applying to jobs and connecting with people all over the country and taking zooms, this call came to me outside of my control. This fell in my lap without me doing anything. It broke down all the endless (and I mean endless!) barriers in front of me and made a way when there was no way.

This call was the handiwork of God, a true gift of grace.

A gift of unconditional love that I did not earn or deserve or work for or bring about by my own will. A gift from God through the hands of people who love and trust and affirm me. A gift given by close to 300 complete strangers who have never met me yet voted to call me as their pastor at yesterday’s vote. Grace upon grace upon grace.

Now before you think this is some sappy post where I say wise things about grace, I want you to know how profoundly bad at grace I am. Like, horribly bad at it. I loathe grace. It is by far the hardest part of my faith, which is ironic because I’m a Lutheran and it’s kinda a big deal to us.

My experience of grace is usually as Richard Rohr describes it, as humiliating. Grace is humiliating because it’s a reminder that I am not enough, have failed, have not achieved what I was supposed to, or not lived up to my own expectations. Grace is humiliating because it’s a reminder of my own limitations and imperfections.

As someone who works really hard to be perfect and seeks to earn what I get, grace usually feels like judgment. Grace is really hard for people like me.

Given that, this call should feel like humiliation. It should feel like I failed at finding my own job and that I required help from other people. It should feel like embarrassment that what I’ve been saying I wanted in a call was not the full story. It should feel intimidating and terrifying and confusing and like I can’t trust myself.

And yet, to my complete and utter surprise, it doesn’t feel like any of that.

The grace I’ve experienced and received around this call has not felt like judgment or humiliation.

Instead, it has felt like empowerment. Liberation. Healing. Belonging.

After 30 years of fighting with this gift, wrestling with it to try and prove that I can earn my way in the world, I think I finally understand its beauty and power. And it came right in time for me to share this empowering, liberating, and healing grace with people on a daily basis.

At the end of a year-long Lent, it feels so good to make it to Easter morning.

This is nothing short of a miracle, friends. I am so damn excited.

A few words of thanks

For my husband, Cameron, who has faithfully stayed by my side when this call I signed up for took us literally all over the country; who has set his vocation to the side until mine was settled; who has done the profound but un-sexy vocational task of working to put food on the table even when the work wasn’t fulfilling; and who has been my rock and email translator and shoulder to cry on and grief group and seen me when no one else has. He did not sign up to be a pastor’s spouse, but he’s been a damn good one and I am eternally grateful.

For my parents and brother, who have surely prayed hundreds of hours of prayers for me, bearing witness to my struggle and strife but helpless to do anything.

For my friends, who have listened to me rant and complain and held space for my despair and hopelessness over the course of these three years; who prayed extremely specific prayers on my behalf; and who were ready as ever to celebrate when things finally broke my way.

For my seminary professor, Rolf Jacobson, and who did the divine matchmaking that made this gift possible.

For all of my new colleagues, especially David Lose, who have made me feel like I belong at this church and I belong as a pastor.

For the community of Mount Olivet, for trusting me to preach, teach, and lead faithfully, and for allowing me to share God’s grace-filled gifts of Word and Sacrament with them.

And (obviously) for God, who has made a way when there was no way; who knew the desires of Cameron and my hearts and put all the pieces together in an unexplainable divine way; and who never ever abandoned me in my most despairing moments, even and especially when I did not feel it.

My heart is full.

Praise the Lord! Hallelujah!

🙌🏼

P.S. Keep your eyes peeled for more information about my ordination. Scheduling is in the works. 👀