There was a time I visited a large couples Sunday School class years ago at a church. Their prayer request time took up most of the session and the burdens were significant for some. It became so oppressive and overwhelming to me I had to leave the class. Later on a woman in the group became a friend. She opened up to me privately about some things in her life that were shocking and alarming. Over the next few years I walked with her through some very hard emotional grieving and relationship boundary work that reoriented her and strengthened her to set some necessary boundaries to stop the abuse (not physical, but worse in many ways). It was my baptism into and early testing for the work I do now. I didn’t recognize it at the time. A pastor didn’t know what to do with it when I took the situation to him. He turned away from us both. He was’t even sympathetic enough to pray with us and encourage me to journey with her in it. She couldn’t tell these things in a larger, but one on one with Christ’s comfort, strength, and guidance she and I muddled through the hard emotional work. From my observation, her perseverance, worked in Christ, renewed her soul, saved her marriage and a family business, and children’s relationships with both parents. I watched God work a miracle just because I was willing to be present with her in her pain. That’s when I learned that the Holy Spirit would bring the wisdom and resources needed for such a circumstance. I think that is what equipped me for the trial of refining fire I faced which led me into counseling and healing ministry with women. Seeing the need, knowing Christ would do the work if I simply joined Him in the yoke.
That was long before I changed careers and got a masters in counseling, and nearly 10 years before I felt God call me to ordained deacon ministry.
Once the call to ministry was clear, I went through the process to find myself several years later with a Board of Ordained Ministry group that had changed during the two years of my commissioned provisional period to a very liberal board, most of whom did not know me, unlike the previous board, many of whom I had shared in Emmaus Walk work with for over 20 years. The shock of suddenly going from encouraged and valued in ministry in my church, district and conference to being a pariah with the new Bishop and his handpicked new liberal leadership because of my Asbury credentials, my on-the-margins-of-society ministry that would never put money in UMC coffers, and my love of the Word in a very, as they referred to it, “literal” interpretative manner. It was a deep hurt within the UMC but quite revelatory to me and some others of my own orthodox posture during that time. It is why I am so firmly anti-UMC institution now though still very Wesleyan Methodist. I know I am a burr under the saddle of some few in the UMC and I intend to remain so until this projected split happens, if it ever does. Patience with such things is not my strong suit, being the ENTJ type I am. I am totally ruined for denominationalism at the hierarchical levels now and see it as a total corruption of the Body of Christ. It’s not as punitive against the UMC, since I no longer identify as UMC, but I know it still needs work for my heart’s sake. I am not angry and the individuals involved, just firmly opposed to the system that locks people out in such arbitrary ways.