Just Because

I really wanted to be a pastor. I mean, I really want to be a pastor. But I’m not going to be. The reasons are unnecessary. But reality dictates that in the foreseeable future I will not be a pastor.

I will not wear a collar. I will not have an office in a church and be called Rev. anything. I will not get to preach every Sunday or preside over communion or visit anyone in the hospital. I’m glad I’m not doing some of these things. But some days, and most recently, every day, I feel like I’m missing something of myself that I once thought I had figured out. I was going to change the world, one parishioner, one church, one synod, one region, one religious organization at a time.

And now I’m Catholic. And I like being Catholic. But things that matter to me don’t matter to me anymore. Maybe they don’t matter the same way. I mean, God is female, male, not human, whatever but really… whatever. (Though God is definitely NOT  just male.) Women will not be priests in my lifetime. And I’m kind of ok with that. At any rate, I don’t care to fight for it.

But then what do I do with the yearning? The vocation that says, “Change the world.” With the call that says that ministry of some sort is meant to be a part of my life? How do I discern what I am meant to be when I grow up? I’m studying to be a teacher, but really, that can’t be IT. Or JUST IT.

So as I twiddle my thumbs at another job, that better NOT be forever, what do I do? And how do I become ok with the fact that so many other people get to be what they want to be, fancy schmancy title and everything, and I’m not there yet… AGAIN?