Prayer in the Jason's Deli

reflecting on 20 years of ordained ministry

Yesterday was the twentieth anniversary of my ordination as a Minister of Word and Sacrament in the Presbyterian Church (USA). I spent the day visiting church members and offering home communion. The body of Christ, here at your coffee table. The cup of new life, nestled between morning tea and lunch.

The journey has been surprising in ways both big and small. And yet I’ve felt a gracious rightness, maybe even an inevitability, in each step my career has taken—even in the setbacks. (2014 was a tough year: three high-profile vocational possibilities, none of which panned out. I went the other way the following spring, going completely free-range.)

Can’t easily put my hands on ordination pics, but here I am after receiving my M.Div. two weeks prior. That’s baby Caroline.

Some people say, “If you’d told my younger self where I would end up, I’d never have believed you.” Certainly High School Me would have been skeptical of being a pastor, because I was, well, a skeptic. But if you’d pulled me aside after that ordination service on a Sunday afternoon in Houston—cornering me over a piece of grocery store sheet cake with red roses—and whispered a summary of the last two decades, I would have said, “Well, that sounds like me, and it sounds pretty fun.” It mostly has been. 

But today I don’t want to talk about me, I want to talk about Jade. 

Ministry is hard in a lot of ways, but it’s simultaneously very simple. Much of it’s a matter of showing up, listening, bearing witness to the truth as you see it, and leaving the rest to God/Spirit/the Great Whatever. That last step is the tricky part, and why ministers benefit from therapy, coaching, and/or spiritual direction. Showing up at our best means being the adult in the room, even if no one else is, even if fear and reactivity are thick in the air. Parishioners benefit from a pastor whose nervous system is as regulated as possible, even in stressful situations. That takes work. Plus, we are so very competent, and we’re desperate to be helpful. But the more we believe it’s our job to fix stuff, the faster burnout comes a-calling.

Anyway, Jade.

We were in a Jason’s Deli this one time, our soups and baked potatoes laid out before us. I prayed for wholeness for Jade and the abundant life that Jesus preached about. And when we looked up after the Amen, she had tears in her eyes. Nobody had ever prayed for her by name before.

What you should know is that when I met her, Jade went by Josh, and had since birth, when her parents made what must have seemed to them a perfectly innocent decision—indeed, it probably didn’t seem like a decision at all: to assume that this newborn baby with male genitalia was, in fact, male through and through. That turned out not to be the case. From a young age, Jade knew, sensed deep in her being: this is not who I am. 

When we met, years later, there was something about the “man” I knew as “Josh” that struck me as… I guess the word is “unsettled.” Nervous. Stressed and discontented, like someone with the perpetual jitters. Here is someone who’s not comfortable in their own skin, I remember thinking early on, not knowing why. Only over time, after she began socially transitioning, then underwent a series of physical changes, did I come to appreciate how discomforting it must have been to live as “Josh.” 

I remember the day she walked into that Jason’s Deli as Jade. We hadn’t seen each other for a while. She walked in—no, she glided in. Yes, the makeup was impeccable, the blouse and skirt lovely and soft. But it was the smile that took my breath away. She radiated peace. She was settled. She was Jade. All that remained was to address her one last nagging question: Is this OK with God? Yes, honey, it is more than OK with God. 

I won’t claim to fully understand. I have days when my body annoys me, but the body I was born into has always felt fundamentally mine. There may be people reading this who don’t understand either. Here’s what I think is true: you don’t have to fully understand in order to love and accept. And you don’t have to be perfectly briefed on the latest terms and definitions in order to see the beauty of someone living in full integrity as themselves. Metamorphosis doesn’t happen every day, but when it does, it’s a thing to behold. Don’t let yourself miss it.

Despite being a pastor, I’m still a bit of a skeptic like that high school kid, and I’m in a perpetual lovers’ quarrel with the Church. But I know that transformation is possible and that new life is real, partly because of Jade. I saw it happen with my own two eyes.

I will admit something: the name and pronouns were awkward for me at first. The words felt strange in my mouth because they were new. So maybe that’s another job of the pastor, to risk being awkward for the sake of grace, to be willing to be uncomfortable in the service of love. Maybe that’s the job of a good human too. 

Thank you for listening to some of my story. I’d be honored to hear some of yours. 

Here’s to many years of service still to come.

And Happy Pride Month.

A few more lines on that there face.

~

What I’m Up To

I’ve got a special series going this summer for supporting subscribers (you can join for as little as $5 a month). I can’t wait to get started on Monday! (Members and friends of Trinity Presbyterian Church in Herndon are eligible for complimentary gift subscriptions; just ask.)

Read more about the series here:

And here’s the final Ted Lasso post (sigh).

Steady on.