One of the people in my I-group (a group of people with the same academic advisor told me that I might want to start learning to share my call story. Here is my first shot at some of what is leading me to become a pastor. This is going to be a story in installments, so stay tuned to this journal. 🙂 (By the way, I am really open to dialoging with people about this, so please email me if you have questions or [civil] commentary.)
During my senior year of high school, I helped to run Club Jesus, which was our school’s Christian club. I had planned to just be the publicity person and I ended up doing everything from preaching to praying. It was really difficult at first but I really loved it once I got into it. I definitely think the Lord had a hand in me doing it to prepare me for something higher. When I went to visit colleges that year, one of my considerations was where I would be spiritually fed. UC Santa Cruz (of all the places!) had a really wonderful chapter of Intervarsity and that was one of my deciding factors. St. Mary’s on the other hand had people who were really not into living as Catholics and I didn’t get to attend one of their Masses. I decided on UCSC and planned to get involved with IV there.
That summer, I worked as a camp counselor. Staff training was a blast — camp itself was stressful. I think that every teenager that considers having sex before marriage should be a camp counselor — you are a mommy to 24 girls for a week. Sparrow, one of my friends on staff, and I took turns keeping each other sane. I discovered that summer that caring for my girls was one of the most fun parts of the job and that I did really love working with kids. My fellow staff however was another story. Many of them were really hostile to me being Christian (mostly because many were lesbian and had been hurt by the Church) and I realized the importance of community after that summer. While talking with Sparrow one night, she commented that I would make a really good pastor. I laughed it off at the time but I did go back to the moment a few months later and think about it. I was planning on being a Biology major in college and joked about having a Religious Studies minor.
When I hit college, I joined IV and got involved in Bible studies and all, but the best thing that could have happened to me was my church. They had a college fellowship and would have lunch with us on campus every week in addition to having lunch and Bible study with us after church. Dane, Kathy, Laurie, Gordon, and Joan became parents for all of us when we were up at UCSC. I attended High Street for two and a half years and it helped me to grow stronger in my faith. I also really started reading and studying the Bible during that time. The other really wonderful thing that happened to me in college was Mark Study. A group of twenty of us took 2 quarters to go over the entire book of Mark in manuscript form. It was hard to get into at first but I soon caught on and really got a lot out of the Gospel. It was like meeting Jesus face-to-face and He became a real person in my life. During my second year of college, things went from bad to worse really fast. I had suffered from serious depression since age 14 and I had post traumatic stress disorder from the teasing I endured all the way through school as well as the sexual harassment that came during high school. My relationship with the guy I briefly dated my first year ended and it left me heartbroken. I ended up on medication and in therapy. This wasn’t the greatest time of my life emotionally but it was wonderful spiritually. I saw God work in ways that I had never thought would happen. I saw ym faith in God strengthen as I had to rely on Him to get me through my present state. My therapist was a lovely Christian woman and I stayed in therapy with her for two full years.
During my first quarter of college, my Core class had been on California history and literature. As my professor had figured out that I *did* know how to write a good paper, he let me write on whatever I wanted to, provided it fit in with the class. I did a paper on biculturalism and a paper on Chicano spirituality. Those papers were probably the most fun ones that I ever wrote and I saw how much I enjoyed studying religion and the way it impacted society. During my fifth quarter, I decided to switch to a Religious Studies major because I was hating the Biology and Chemistry that I was taking. So I switched… and ended up graduating a year earlier than I would have if I had stayed with Biology. That year was wonderful because I was doing an independent major and taking classes that I liked. I also saw from visiting Jon that seminary was something that I really wanted to consider. I loved working with him at his MIC site and attending worship a couple times that week (which was the first Lutheran service I had ever been to).
At Urbana, I led a Bible study and I saw the results of missions and that really interested me. I tried to get some missions experience set for the summer after graduation but that fell through so my mission experience ended up being the weekends I spent in San Francisco doing ministry with the homeless and then being my Christian self on my campus. People say that it should not count but living a Christian life on the UCSC campus means that you are constantly telling people about Jesus and how He can fix the problems for which they are using drugs and alcohol and sex to remedy. I do not know if I “converted” people but that was not my aim. My aim was to get people to understand my position and why I believed so strongly in a God who most people thought was evil and hateful.
Graduation was fun because I graudated with most of my friends but at the same time, it was difficult to leave Santa Cruz. I was homesick for the campus for six months after I left and I think part of the reason was that it was where I truly found God and I truly came into my own as a Christian. High school was merely going to church with a friend until my senior year and I often felt like an observer. College was where I could live out my faith.
Coming up… seminary and the moment of my “call”