Thursday, April 24, 2008 at 11:11am
No new-and-improved version of ourselves
Column: New Houses from Old Bricks
How old were you when you realized you wouldn’t grow into a completely different person?
It happened to me in my early 20s, when I was beginning to sense a call to ministry. However, I assumed I would be a pastor as a second career — when I was wise enough, loving enough, patient enough, and experienced enough. The person I was could not possibly have been any good at ministry, I believed. The solution was simple: I would just wait until I became a different person. Perhaps around middle age.
I set about looking for a first career. To make a long story short, I didn’t find one. Everywhere I turned, ministry was right in front of me. As inconceivable as it seemed, God apparently wanted me just the way I was. But how could that be? Wasn’t there a list of requirements, not only for what to do but also what kind of person to be? I was impatient with people. I used swear words. I often liked to talk more than I listened. What kind of pastor was that?
Within a few years, I found myself in seminary, still not quite believing that God wanted me to do this thing, but going forward anyway and waiting for God to zap me into the patient, compassionate, quiet pastor I intended to become.
More than 10 years later and six years into ordained ministry, I have finally stopped waiting. As inconceivable as it still seems that God could use my impatience, for example, I try to look at how God might want to use the gifts I have, rather than the gifts I want.
A children’s story I discovered in seminary helps me do that: The Secret Garden by Francis Hodgson Burnett. The 1993 movie is the version I rediscovered, though I had read the book years before. Written and placed in turn-of-the-20th-century England, the story begins with 10-year-old Mary Lennox as a stubborn, selfish and rather obnoxious little girl, deeply wounded by the death of her parents in India and her dislocation to England. At the end of the story, she’s still rather stubborn and selfish and a little bit obnoxious, though less wounded.
Along the way, however, she accomplishes some remarkable ministry. Bored and lonely in the large house of her mostly absent uncle, she trespasses the boundaries set for her, and discovers a “dead” garden and the sickroom of her cousin, Colin. “Everyone thinks I'll die,” Colin tells Mary. She replies, “If everyone thought that about me, I wouldn't do it.” With her stubbornness, she basically bullies him and the garden back to health.
Her “ministry” is not the result of her becoming a different person, but of her being precisely the stubborn, selfish, and rather obnoxious human being she was.
I found grace in that movie in seminary, during that time when I kept trying to change myself into someone who could be a perfect minister. The movie was the kind of reminder I needed — and I needed lots and lots of them — that God uses whoever we are in the moment to accomplish whatever needs to be done.
However, it’s not uncommon for us to be changed in the process. Mary does become less selfish through her connections with Colin and the garden. As the saying goes, “God loves us just the way we are, but loves us too much to let us stay that way.” These days I can be a more patient listener than I was, though it doesn’t always come naturally. Sometimes our vocations — parenthood is another example — draw out of us the qualities we need, even if we didn’t have them at the outset.
Other times, we stay stubborn, selfish, and a little bit obnoxious (or whatever our special gifts are), and are surprised to find ourselves loved and needed anyway.
— — —
Rev. Rebecca Schlatter is an ordained minister in the Lutheran Church (ELCA) in Reno, Nevada. You can contact her at newhousesfromoldbricks@hotmail.com. © copyright 2007 by Rebecca Schlatter
It happened to me in my early 20s, when I was beginning to sense a call to ministry. However, I assumed I would be a pastor as a second career — when I was wise enough, loving enough, patient enough, and experienced enough. The person I was could not possibly have been any good at ministry, I believed. The solution was simple: I would just wait until I became a different person. Perhaps around middle age.
I set about looking for a first career. To make a long story short, I didn’t find one. Everywhere I turned, ministry was right in front of me. As inconceivable as it seemed, God apparently wanted me just the way I was. But how could that be? Wasn’t there a list of requirements, not only for what to do but also what kind of person to be? I was impatient with people. I used swear words. I often liked to talk more than I listened. What kind of pastor was that?
Within a few years, I found myself in seminary, still not quite believing that God wanted me to do this thing, but going forward anyway and waiting for God to zap me into the patient, compassionate, quiet pastor I intended to become.
More than 10 years later and six years into ordained ministry, I have finally stopped waiting. As inconceivable as it still seems that God could use my impatience, for example, I try to look at how God might want to use the gifts I have, rather than the gifts I want.
A children’s story I discovered in seminary helps me do that: The Secret Garden by Francis Hodgson Burnett. The 1993 movie is the version I rediscovered, though I had read the book years before. Written and placed in turn-of-the-20th-century England, the story begins with 10-year-old Mary Lennox as a stubborn, selfish and rather obnoxious little girl, deeply wounded by the death of her parents in India and her dislocation to England. At the end of the story, she’s still rather stubborn and selfish and a little bit obnoxious, though less wounded.
Along the way, however, she accomplishes some remarkable ministry. Bored and lonely in the large house of her mostly absent uncle, she trespasses the boundaries set for her, and discovers a “dead” garden and the sickroom of her cousin, Colin. “Everyone thinks I'll die,” Colin tells Mary. She replies, “If everyone thought that about me, I wouldn't do it.” With her stubbornness, she basically bullies him and the garden back to health.
Her “ministry” is not the result of her becoming a different person, but of her being precisely the stubborn, selfish, and rather obnoxious human being she was.
I found grace in that movie in seminary, during that time when I kept trying to change myself into someone who could be a perfect minister. The movie was the kind of reminder I needed — and I needed lots and lots of them — that God uses whoever we are in the moment to accomplish whatever needs to be done.
However, it’s not uncommon for us to be changed in the process. Mary does become less selfish through her connections with Colin and the garden. As the saying goes, “God loves us just the way we are, but loves us too much to let us stay that way.” These days I can be a more patient listener than I was, though it doesn’t always come naturally. Sometimes our vocations — parenthood is another example — draw out of us the qualities we need, even if we didn’t have them at the outset.
Other times, we stay stubborn, selfish, and a little bit obnoxious (or whatever our special gifts are), and are surprised to find ourselves loved and needed anyway.
— — —
Rev. Rebecca Schlatter is an ordained minister in the Lutheran Church (ELCA) in Reno, Nevada. You can contact her at newhousesfromoldbricks@hotmail.com. © copyright 2007 by Rebecca Schlatter