The Story of the Pink Hammer

This Sunday is Women’s Appreciation Sunday at my church.  I am pretty excited about it because I get to speak for 5 minutes on my call to ministry.  I figured I would share my write up of what I am going to say.  It probably won’t come out this way exactly, and it might be too much information since I only have 5 minutes, but I am going to write my outline from this write up.  Anyway, it is also fitting that I put it up here because it will also explain the title of my blog.  Enjoy!

     A year ago today, I was still in the Navy.  If you had asked me then if I would be where I am in life now, I probably would have laughed at you.  But here I am standing before you a little nervous for sure, but excited to share a little bit of my story with you.

     Brought up in an Agnostic home, I had a general idea that God was some sort of Supreme Being.  I remember this world seeming very complicated to me…all the details of it…the social interactions between people…the messiness of it all.  I moved into adolescence wanting to know who I was and there didn’t seem to be anyone around who knew enough about who they were to help me out.

     I accepted Christ on a camping retreat that I said I wanted to go on because they were going canoeing.  Translation: The Holy Spirit was drawing me to God.  It was December 20th, at 12:20am that I made the decision to follow Christ.  I was 14 years old.  I went to bed assured of my right standing with God.  When I woke up, I went to the camp counselor and said: “I confess with my mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in my heart that God raised Him from the dead” placing myself in the verse he had given me to read the night before.  It was a powerful moment.

     Despite numerous shortcomings on my part, I remained strong in my faith throughout my college years.  I graduated in May 2003 with a degree in English and was commissioned an officer in the Navy the same day.  This day was the best day of my life second only to the day I accepted Christ.

     My time in the Navy can be summed up in two words: exciting and trying.  Two of the greatest things that resulted from this time were the fact that I was able to see a much clearer picture of who I was, and more importantly, who I wasn’t.  Thus I also gained a bit more clarity as to my purpose in this life.  I submitted my letter of resignation to the Secretary of the Navy declaring (from the rooftops if you will) that I was getting out of the Navy to go into full time ministry to “preach the gospel of the saving grace of Jesus Christ who died that we might live eternally.”  Yes, that’s actually what the letter said.  I wonder how many people read it…

          Most recently I realized that much of the discontentedness and anxiety I felt was linked to the restrictions that had been placed on me at the very beginning of my life in Christ: the role of women in the church is restricted to children’s church, women’s ministry, and hospitality.  A born leader, I was told my gifts were not welcome in the church.  Before I walked through the doors of this sanctuary, I had never heard a woman preach.  For over a decade, I attempted to cram myself in a box defined by other people’s ideas of what it looked like to be a woman after God’s own heart.  After much studying, wrestling with God, and quite a few encouraging words from many of you, I decided to let God define that for me. 

     By stepping into the freedom that comes with finding ourselves in Christ, I have been empowered to step out in faith and pursue a Master’s of Divinity and explore the path leading to ordination.  It is a very exciting and overwhelming time for sure and I am so thankful for those of you who have spoken into my life and lifted me up in prayer.

     So where does the pink hammer fit in?  Good question!  As I was writing an assignment for one of my classes, I remembered how my dad used to let me nail scraps of wood together with this very pink hammer.  I hadn’t thought about that little hammer for years!  It was odd to me as this thought seemed to come out of the middle of no where.  And then it dawned on me: I am the pink hammer (Coo coo ca choo).  Being a woman and being used by God to powerfully speak the truth into people’s lives are not mutually exclusive.  They are elaborately intertwined within me because that’s how God made me.  Though many might say that hammers shouldn’t be pink, some are created that way.  So it is with women and preaching.  Some say women shouldn’t be preachers, but there are gifted by God to do just that.

     In light of my journey, I feel I should end with a word for the women in the room: while there will be many people in your life to help you as try to figure out who you are, only God is qualified to define that for you.  The challenge is to let him.  And to that I say, “He who calls you is faithful, He will do it.” (1 thes. 5.24)

satan uses scripture too

okay…I am going to rewind my life back about 4 years ago or so.  I had not been out of college a full year yet and was working in my first “job” as an officer in the Navy.  I was struggling with a particular area of sin and remember sitting at my desk on the ship one day reading the Bible.  I read Ephesians 4:1 which says, “As a prisoner for the Lord, then, I urge you to live a life worthy of the calling you have received.”  I remember writing the verse down on an index card so I could post it and remind myself of my desire to do just that since I felt like I wasn’t doing that.  I just reread this verse for an assignment I am completing for one of my classes and I am completely amazed at how different it reads to me now.  While I did have a sincere desire to live a life worthy of the calling I received, what I was really reminding myself of, or rather letting the enemy remind me, was that I sucked.  I felt nothing but condemnation. 

When I read it just a little bit ago, the part about “the calling received” is what caught my attention.  So I ask you, if I didn’t know God’s calling for my life how could I live a life worthy of that calling?  True it could be applied more generally to the call we have as Christians, but at the moment I am thinking not. 

So reading it this time, I was encouraged!  Glory be to God I have discerned God’s call on my life in a general and yet very specific way and He is revealing to me more and more each day what it means to live a life worthy of that call.

Just goes to show you that satan definitely uses scripture too.  As if the conclusion of Jesus’ 40 day fast wasn’t a big enough clue for me…

Any thoughts on whether I am over spiritualizing this?

I felt beautiful today…

and that doesn’t happen all that often.  That is partially because I have not always believed that I was in fact beautiful.  Now I believe it (at least I believe it more frequently than not) but I don’t always feel that way.  Feelings are fleeting so that’s okay, but it’s nice to feel it sometimes.  And today I did.  To top it off, when my Pastor A saw me she said, “Well don’t you look gorgeous.”  That made me feel like a million bucks. 

Truth is (although this might sound really cheesy) ever since I have started walking towards God’s calling on my life I have felt more confident in who I am…in who God has created me to be.  As we were sitting around before Easter dinner tonight my cousin asked me how classes were going.  I told him they were going well.  He asked me if I was taking “theology” classes and I told him yes to which he said, “And you’re loving it, right?”  And I nodded my head.  And then he said, “I don’t know why you didn’t just do what you’re doing now from the beginning” (or something along those lines).  I can’t begin to explain how awesome it is when those who are closest to me, who have seen some of my worst moments, and who have beliefs different from my own, affirm my pursuit of ordination.  It’s amazing really.  Though there have been people I have told that do not agree theologically with women in ministry, for the most part many people that I have told are not suprised at all.  In fact, many of them wonder what took me so long.  : )  I tell you what though.  It doesn’t seem long to me.  It seems very short indeed!  And of all the things in life that I want to be sure of this is definitely high on the list!

God is so good to me.  I am so thankful for his patient teaching and gracious love.  Even when I haven’t felt it he’s been lovin’ on me this whole time.  My tears were his tears…my pain was his pain…Jesus is my hero.  That’s the short of it.

He is risen!  He is risen indeed!  He is alive and well and loves me well.