here we go

After some suggestions from friends and with my current unemployed status killing any good excuses, I thought why not write a blog. I mean there are so few out there and people really tell so little about themselves on the Internet these days,  I'm sure I have something to add. So here goes...

When I started dating Billy, the person who would later become my husband, my close friends made a point of remarking how hilarious it would be if I ended up marrying him, a MINISTER, and became a pastor's wife. I laughed with them. Irreverent, often inappropriate, sarcastic me? That really is funny. And then I did marry Billy, a jointly ordained United Church of Christ and Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) minister, and lo and behold, I was given with much reluctance and outright chagrin the title of pastor's wife. It's not that I am not religious. It's that I have a rather complicated if not downright contentious relationship with organized Christianity (really organized religion in general) and becoming the "First Lady" of a congregation, as a former work friend calls me, is the exact opposite of what I imagined for my life. Let me explain.

I was raised at a relatively liberal church in the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) denomination in Nashville, Tennessee where I learned acceptance of all religions and people, a nice little pluralist window within the Bible Belt. I am also a product of the absolutely fabulous religion department at Texas Christian University (Go Frogs). When most people think of religion and Texas in the same sentence, some scary images come to mind, but the religion department at TCU is unique. Conservative religious schools in Texas called us atheists. In actuality, it was and still is a department of awesome professors who teach world religions, history of religion in America, philosophy of religion, Hebrew Bible, New Testament, and much more. For many students, whether they came from a liberal or conservative Christian background, these classes literally blew our minds. By the time my friends and I were in senior seminar for religion majors, our understanding of faith and religion had been deconstructed and much of what was left for me of my faith was small seedlings of new understandings about pluralism and academic understandings of the Bible. I left with a lot of academic knowledge, faith questions, and a whole lot of anger towards conservative Christianity. My complete confusion about what I believed and how I understood religion in general led me to study some more religion at Vanderbilt Divinity School. I wound up studying history of religion in America and earned my Masters in Theological Studies, which provided a whole lot more academic knowledge, but unfortunately no newly reconstructed faith or job prospects. While I was finishing up at Vanderbilt, I met a friend of a friend, a minister in the Chattanooga area, and despite the fact that he loves Jesus and the Church a lot and I have a few questions for both before we can really start something serious again, a relationship grew and now here I am, a pastor's wife.

Billy just completed his first year as the minister of a congregation in the Chicagoland area and for the first time, I am a very visible person within a congregation (before he was the associate minister and no one paid me much attention, which was awesome). I am asked questions that range from the insanely personal to downright odd. When are we having children? Do I need help finding a job? Am I certain that I can't sing in the choir? Do I think I can handle the winters up here? You should be impressed that so far I have managed to smile and provide a simple, vague response to each question because that's definitely not the response that I'm thinking in my head.  To be honest, I really do like the people at our church and have enjoyed our first year here. It may not be what I had imagined, but I like it and it sure makes for some funny stories. Plus, Billy got me a dog.