What Does It Take?

Yes, Ephesians 1:6 and Philippians 1:6 are my life scriptures, but Luke 9:23 is my living scripture. I know, I know, all scripture is alive, but when I say living scripture, I mean that which I need for everyday living, the scripture by which I must live in order not to revert to my Donna-Rule church girl ways.

Luke 9:23: "If any [wo]man would come after me, let [her] deny [herself], take up [her] cross and follow me daily.

There are three facets to this scripture to which I must pay attention each and every day if I want to stay Christ-centered and God-focused.

1. The Cost - Deny Myself

I eventually realized that the psyche, the total self, has to be involved in this process of; all of me, the mind/will/emotions, have to let go of the controls.

The Mind (seat of reasoning & intellect) must say "I surrender."
The Emotions (my visceral reactions/responses) must say "I will not interfere."
The Will (conscious decisions/choices) must say "Let's do it!"

The declaration Jesus made was not an invitation to First Ladyship but rather an invitation to discipleship. Wherever we are, we are expected to be His disciples. This is an internal discipline that manifests itself in an external behavior. The internal state is one of being totally submissive to the will of God which is reflected in my every day behavior.

The Cost is all about Self-denial which is the same as self-sacrifice. Sacrifice is never about giving up that which I do not like. Sacrifice and Denial requires that I turn away from doing those things I want to do, the things I like to do, to relinquish control of me to Jesus. I will not lead anyone to believe that to do this is easy; it is not; in fact, it is a real challenge to let go of those things and all that stuff that makes me feel sooooooo good, but I cannot and will not consistently follow Jesus when I'm weighed down by all those wants and desires. I have to let all of it go and trust Jesus to supply my every need. Besides haven't I read somewhere that if I delight myself in Him, He will give me the desires of my heart?

Galatians 2:20 - I am crucified with Christ, nevertheless I live, yet not but Christ liveth in me and the life which I now live in the flesh, I live by the faith of the Son of God who loved me and gave Himself for me.

Romans 12:1,2 - I beseech ye, therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God that ye present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God, which is your reasonable service. And be not conformed (molded/shaped) to this world; but be ye transformed (changed) by the renewing of your mind (John 17:17), that ye may prove what is that good, and acceptable and perfect, will of God.

Can you hear the old hymn: "What shall I render for all His mercies? What shall I render, tell me what shall I give?" What, indeed?

Just a thought: If Jesus died for me, why can't I live for Him?

Confessions of a Former Church Girl: What Does God Say?

My quest for sanctification without too much angst led me to three scriptures, two of which I call life scriptures and one of which I call my living scripture.

The life scriptures are those scriptures of promise that I needed in order to keep my focus on God and not on me. My living scripture is that scripture that I must continually refer to in order not to become distracted by the "isms" of everyday life.

My Life Scriptures
Philippians 1:6
Ephesians 1:6

Philippians 1:6 reminds me I do not have to be the quintessential church girl rushing about to make things happen. God's promise is that now having begun the work in me, He will continue that work until the day of Jesus Christ. All I have to do is submit to His will and His guidance and take my marching orders from Him. This frees me from performing, self-compelled to show off my great church girl skills even as I struggle internally with my imperfections. Ephesians 2:10 reminds me that I am God's workmanship, the field in which He works in order to prepare me for the works He has already designed for me. I don't have to make anything happen when it comes to my place or purpose as a member of the body of Christ. I am not an appendage to the church; I have been baptized into the same body like every other member. To decide that I have to be some kind of superwoman Christian simply because I am the First Lady is an extreme. I am called to follow Jesus and if I allow God to do His work in me daily, I will be freed from my church girl nonsense.

Ephesians 1:6 simply tells me I am accepted in the beloved. There have been more times than I like to remember when I have been deemed unacceptable. I was raised in a community that labeled my hair texture and my skin color as unacceptable. I was the consummate overachiever during a time when smart girls did not have boyfriends and they were not included in the popular crowd. My socio-economic status still denies me access to most high society events. I may want to go to places where everybody knows my name, but most of the time I am the obvious "Who dat?" surrounded by people who are going places and doing big things. In spite of what some may see as negatives, Ephesians 1:6 reminds me that regardless of how I am perceived in this life, I am accepted in the beloved. I am a part of God's royal family and nothing can separate me from His wonderful healing love. He knows me from the inside out, yet He has set a place for me at the family table where I am accepted, warts and all. His grace is still amazing to me.

Where Do I Begin?

So there I was; church girl extraordinaire; introvert par excellence; scab picker.

I marched into that fishbowl of ministry life prepared for absolutely nothing other than anger, bitterness and frustration. I soon became the miserable and negative First Lady. If there is a saving grace to my story, it is this; I never acted out in public. I just drove my husband crazy with private negativisms, so much so that he banned me from riding in the car with him on Sunday mornings because I always managed to bring up some negative issue, always, always blended with my pessimistic view, either about home or church people or both. (I must hurry to add a caveat here, that wives do this, sometimes, because this is the only time they have their pastor/husband as a captive audience.)

The good thing is that in the midst of all my “stuff” when my husband came to the pastorate he began to teach the basics of Christianity in weekly general assembly sessions and I attended each and every one. As I sat in those sessions and learned not only the word of God, but learned about God and His plan for His children, the Holy Spirit began the promised transforming work in me. First of all, I was astounded by the fact that though I was “church girl bar none,” I was woefully ignorant about biblical doctrine. Oh yes, I did learn the requisite bible stories in Vacation Bible School and I learned how to find the books of the Bible in Baptist Training Union, and I memorized passages from the Bible for Easter and Christmas programs, but I would not have been able to tell you what I believed, and I barely had a nodding acquaintance with the God in whom I professed to believe. This church girl was more than a little dismayed that I had spent all of my life in church and yet I knew very little about that which I professed to be my faith. The more I learned, the more I wanted to learn. I began to ask my husband doctrinal questions and when we went out to repasts with our ministry friends I wanted to eavesdrop on the conversations of the pastors as they held court on doctrinal issues (the rapture, before trib, after trib/in the middle of trib, fascinating topics like that). My enthusiasm grew and God gave me a facility for quick scripture recall.

My pastor/husband became my mentor and my encourager. I will admit, however, that he did go a little too far in his encouragement when he began to buy me books and commentaries and study guides every Christmas and on my birthdays. I loved the idea that he thought of me in that vein, but I was still very much a wife who wanted baubles, bangles and beads.

I was blessed to have a husband who invested his ministry in me as well as in the people of God. Still, I must have been as much of a challenge to him as some of those recalcitrant sheep who sat next to me in the pew every Sunday. I, therefore, do not want to give you the idea, dear reader, that the transformation from church girl to committed disciple happened overnight. Though I became voracious for the Word, sanctification the process was an up and down journey for me. I had to willingly enter into the process, and sometimes I was not so willing even as the Spirit poked me. Ultimately, the Holy Spirit led me to three scriptures that would impact my resistance to trusting God with my all, scriptures that would help me to begin to replace my “I can do it” mentality with a Philippians 4:13 mindset, “I can do all things through Christ. . .”

THE FINAL F: FAIL PROOF?

I was FALLIBLE, imperfect, mortal and frail. I was liable to make mistakes at any given moment, at any time. This drove me nuts. I did not like to admit that I was subject to the frailties of humanity. I was Super-Donna, able to overcome anything through the sheer force of my will. I had intestinal fortitude. I knew how to grit my teeth and bear anything. My motto was, “Never let ‘em see you sweat!” I often turned down help with a work or a project because to accept help meant I was not capable of doing it on my own.

Do you know, dear reader, how much energy one needs to keep up the front that all is well and everything is under control? I have lost count of how many nights I spent “rehearsing my misery,” going over in my head the mistakes and mis-steps of a day. I had more moments than I can count of borderline depression, days when I would declare to myself (and sometimes others), “I’m standing up, but my spirit is sitting down!” There were times when I didn’t want to pretend any more, moments when I just wanted to cry out in my distress and hope that someone would come to my rescue. But the church girl in me did not want anyone to know that she was insecure. “What will they think of me?” was always my main concern. The knowledge that I was fallible always led to self-loathing because I would never be perfect.

I remember the Sunday I stepped into church and mentally noted that most of the women wore white. Talk about things that make you go “Hmmmmmmm.” I had chosen that particular Sunday to wear a forest green outfit so I stuck out like a green sore thumb in a garden of white flowers. The mission president finally told me that telephone calls had been made to the women asking them to wear white that Sunday. How had the person making the calls forgotten to call the pastor’s wife? In spite of the fact that this situation had nothing to do with anything I had or had not done, the perfectionist in me was horrified that I was not “correct” that day. I spent the rest of the service waiting for the benediction so I could bolt away from the reminder that I was not as much in control as I thought I was.

Here is the issue that often adds fuel to the church girl’s fire: The expectations that some congregations lay at the feet of its First Lady are often unrealistic. There is no manual for the “role” of the pastor’s wife, yet there are churches that act as though there is a Standard Order of Procedures for the Pastor’s Wife and the wife is supposed to be well acquainted with the text. Surely the wife can sing, work with the children, play the piano and keep her composure while people critique her clothing, assess the behavior of her children and bad mouth her husband to her face as she smiles and pretends that all is well and nothing is amiss. The church girl, the overachieving people pleaser, steps into that place of unrealistic expectations and immediately goes into church girl mode to work and work and work and work, hoping her hard work will satisfy the unspoken demands of the congregation as well as still the turmoil in her soul. Unfortunately, the foolish church girl builds on the wrong foundation, a foundation that is fake and flawed, one that is subject to failure. It is a foundation that someday will collapse under the weight of her pretense.

F #2 and #3: Fake and Flawed

F #2: I Was Fake
Proverbs 3:5, 6 pops up again. I trusted me for my walk as a First Lady. I clothed my Donna persona with an image of confidence and self-assurance. But, away from the ministry limelight, in the deep shadows of my life, I was quivering bundle of doubt, anxiety and fear. What if someone discovered that I was not all I seemed to be, that I was just as human and subject to the failures of humanity as they were? What if it were found out that I was just projecting an image of piety, that my relationship with God was more form than substance? A national bible study teacher, Beth Moore, says that anxiety is a result of our wanting to be in control; I definitely wanted to control how others perceived me, so I faked it!

I remember a mini-conference in my hometown, a series of which the State Convention President was holding to get better acquainted with the local associations. I had been asked to assist at the offering table and I made sure that everything about my appearance was, well, perfect. I made a short but eloquent talk to encourage giving (again, from my perspective). Smug and satisfied with Lady Donna, I sat down next to the President. I had known this man and his wife for years and I greatly admired both of them for their work in the ministry. I had only sat there for a few minutes when he turned to me and asked, “Well, Donna, what are your doing? A little studying, a little praying?” I was doing neither at that time. I was faking my way through ministry, confident in my church work thesis, that the works I did would speak for me. I do not remember how I responded to this pastor’s query, but I do remember what I felt. I felt the façade of my pretense crumble as that pastor seemed to look into my soul to see the emptiness, the void I was trying to fill with myself. As my late pastor/husband so succinctly labeled it in one of his sermons, I was “dressed up on the outside and messed up on the inside.” I was Fake.

F #3: I Was Flawed
There is an old gospel song that contains this line: “I may never reach perfection, but Lord I’ve tried.” The church girl in me took that song to heart, that church work was paramount and boy, did I try. And since I could not stand being imperfect, I became a perfectionist.

Pefectionism
Refusal to accept any standard short of perfection
Philosophy: A doctrine holding that religious . . . perfection is attainable, especially the theory that human moral or spiritual perfection should be or has been attained.

Are you kidding me? Was I really so foolish as to believe I could reach perfection? YES I WAS! And because I was flawed and I was so determined not give any appearance of flaw or imperfection that Donna the perfectionist became the self-appointed critic of the flaws I observed in others, a way of proclaiming myself as "not as bad as" or "better than." This is a flaw of the perfectionist's psyche, the determination to hold every other person’s feet to the fire of that perfectionist’s exacting standards. For example, I would tune out a speaker or preacher who used incorrect grammar in a talk or a sermon, irregardless of the biblical content and context. I would critique the teaching method and style of a bible class instructor or facilitator, silently comparing their pitiful effort to how much better I could “perform” in their place without a thought as to the biblical principals and concepts I could learn.

Yet, in spite of my determined effort to overcome my flaws, my melancholy temperament lent itself to scab picking. I am not trying to gross you out, dear reader, but I was a scab picker, I spent a lot of time taking out my imperfections to mourn over them. I would hold them up to the light of how other women looked and what other first ladies did and I always, always, came out dead last. I was a perfectionist who was also a pessimist, so I was never good enough even as I stalked perfection. My glass was always half empty; my life was always a mess, and I knew how to sing the blues loud and long. My perfectionism drove the church girl in me, but my pessimism always put the brakes on any progress I thought I made by raising the question, “What’s the point and why bother?” In my foolishness and my fake-ness, I cloaked my flaws with a perfectionism that I undermined with pessimism. All of which ran a poor second to the good work God could do in me if I just got my Fake and Flawed self out of the way.

The First F: I Was Foolish!

As a church girl I did not know Proverbs 3:5-6:

Trust in the Lord with all thine heart and lean not to thine own understanding
In all thy ways acknowledge Him and He will direct thy path.

Even if I had been acquainted with this scripture, I probably would have just used it as a tool in my church work, a weapon to wield against those people who were not living up to my expectations. To use the lines from the poem “Invictus,” I was “the captain of my fate, the master of my soul.” I was in charge of me and I would be the only one who would chart my course for church work even as I did it under the guise of humility and submission.

I was a true legalist; I judged not only the church worthiness of people by what they did or did not do, but also my standards determined if they were worthy of my church girl attention. Heaven help the preacher who used bad grammar in a sermon; I immediately tuned him out, deeming him illiterate and sub-standard. If I knew of a particular “sinful” predilection of an individual, then that individual became persona non grata, always under the purview of my jaundiced eye. If anyone offended me, he or she made my hit list which meant I did my best to avoid any contact with the miscreant. I became very skillful in ignoring people without their ever having a clue that they were being ignored.

Since I was in control of my world, I was also correct in my assertions and my assessments. In my foolishness, I established the rules by which I measured everything and everyone. When some mere mortal did not meet the standard of my expectations, I became judge and jury. There was not a smidgen of grace or compassion in my scrutiny. I was hard-core. I saw all the negatives in life and it was my responsibility to not only point them out to my pastor/husband and anyone else who would listen to me (one reason why my pastor/husband, for a period of time, banned me from riding to church with him on Sunday mornings since I always seized those moments to voice my negatives), but it was also my duty to provide the cure.

I was foolish, because I was in control of nothing even though I did my best to control anything and everything around me. In spite of my "good intentions," my thoughts, my words, my reactions and my responses were still subject to the whim of my personality and the tenor of my circumstances. While I did a pretty good job of controlling me, myself and I most of the time (meaning I never snapped or lost control of myself in public), I still had my moments and most of the time I had those out of control "moments" with family. I was Foolish!

I. The Church Girl In Me

I hear you, dear reader. “Duhhhhhh. “A pastor who has a church girl for a wife? Where is the problem? Isn’t that ideal for every pastor, a church girl wife?”

Okay, so let me hasten to define “church girl.” A church girl, from my perspective, is that woman who is very experienced in church work and said experience supplants any spirituality, any genuine relationship with Jesus. A church girl is that female in the church who works hard to perfect her church work skills, one who takes great pride in the work she does. The church girl’s efforts are not about the love of Christ but her works are about labor for praise. Her efforts are not about John 4:24 worship but they are about work for accolades. It is not about the work of the ministry but it is about church busy work. I was that church girl.

I have a memory that I suspect reveals the genesis of the church girl in me. It was Easter Sunday morning and I was about four or five years old. I was sitting on my mother’s lap in all my Easter finery in some large probably Methodist church in Texas. You know how we used to do it back in the day. I had on my little straw hat with the ribbon around the crown, my frilly little dress, the white socks with the lace around the cuffs and my white patent leather Mary Jane’s. The crowing accessory was, of course, my little white gloves. As I sat in my mother’s lap I considered the back of the pew in front of me and then looked at my white gloved hands. Another glance at the pew and back to my hands and it came to me in that moment; I could dust the back of that pew with my gloved hands, which is exactly what I did. Voila! A church girl is born!

My church girl mantra was “I’ll do it!”
You need someone to make the announcements on Sunday morning: I’ll do it!
You need someone to type the church bulletins? I’ll do it!
You need someone to copy the bulletins? I’ll do it!
You need someone to work with the youth? I’ll do it! ,
You need someone to be president of the choir? I’ll do it.
You need someone to do anything, anywhere? I’ll do it!
I’ll do it; I’ll do it; I’ll do it!

Whew! The problem with my being a church girl was that while I was prepared to do the work, I was not prepared for the challenge of the labor. I understood the work, but I did not understand real worship. I was well acquainted with the work, but I had barely a nodding acquaintance with the Word.

Oh, and one more thing about this church girl. This lack of sincere Christianity was not evident in my life because I knew how to front, how to wear the mask and appear to be that which I really was not. Yes, I knew how to front; I just did not know how to follow Jesus.

1 Timothy 2:3 says, “Endure hardship as a good soldier of the Lord Jesus Christ.” I was not prepared to endure, forbear or long suffer in anything. In fact, since I was a church girl whose work was peripheral to any genuine work of the ministry, I was not prepared for any kind of warfare. Though I had been in the church all my life, I did not even know there was such a thing as spiritual warfare, which also means I had no clue about the need for the whole armor of God.

Had there been a draft board for the army of the Lord and the board called me in to test for my fitness potential as a soldier, I would have been classified as 4-F, “registrant not fit for spiritual service.”

4-F. I was 4-F. I was Foolish. I was Fake. I was Flawed. I was Fallible. This, dear reader, is an accident waiting to happen in the church.

Next: I was Foolish.

CONFESSIONS OF A FORMER CHURCH GIRL

I was not raised a PK. I knew about pastor’s wives, but I did not know any pastor’s wives personally. The pastors and wives we had in my small town church did not live in that town. They came to town on Saturday and usually returned to their home in the city on Sunday afternoon. The members of the church rarely had a chance to get to know the wife. I was not acquainted with any ministry families. In fact, I thought all pastors were rich because their wives were classic and elegant dressers to my small town eyes.

A few years after I moved to California, the pastor of my church in Oakland ran into some difficulties with his music staff. Suddenly, the musicians could not remember how to play any of the choir’s repertoire and the choir director allegedly lost his list of songs, songs he could not remember how to teach. The pastor thought of a young man from his home church who had directed and taught the adult choirs from the age of twelve. The man, now a young adult just coming out of eight years with the Jehovah’s Witnesses, became the minister of music at the church. I was the president of the choir. Can anyone say divine providence? We eventually got married. One year after we were married, my husband announced to me one week before he announced it to the church, “I have been called to preach.” He admitted to me he had known about this call for some time, but he had been “running from it.” What did this simple statement, “I have been called to preach,” really mean? I had no idea how this announcement would impact my life, but I did understand that this declaration was between my husband and God, so I got out of the way.

I became an associate minister’s wife for almost six years, which was not too worrying. But, somewhere around the sixth year my husband began to believe God was calling him to pastor, so he began to “court” churches. Sure enough, a church decided he was the man for them, the man God had called to be their under-shepherd, so he packed up the family, his one wife and three daughters and moved them, not to Beverly, but to a church on the corner of 8th and Peralta in the heart of West Oakland, California. I was not clear on the concept of First Lady, but once again, I did not balk. This business was between my soon to be pastor-husband and God. I was so innocent, So trusting. So unclear on the concept. So without a clue.

When my husband was called to pastor the Trinity Church, he had two concerns. Actually, he had one concern that manifested itself in two persons, his youngest daughter, who was almost two years old at the time, and his wife, who was just a little older than two. Neither of us seemed to like people. We were not friendly. Now the almost two year old could be forgiven for this proclivity, but the wife who was just a little older than two, well that was a horse of a different color in another story (sorry for the mixed metaphors). The heart of the matter was not that we did not like people, but that we were both introverts, and we two introverts just had a hard time figuring out how to talk to strangers. How do you talk to someone you don’t know? What else is there to say after, “Hello” and “How are you?”

Extroverts will not understand our dilemma. Extroverts are startled by the idea that there are strangers in the world. Certainly my husband did not understand. He was an extreme extrovert. He could talk to a rock rolling down a hill on a stormy day. We were on a beach sitting on a blanket in Puerto Vallarta, Mexico, and my husband struck up a conversation with a couple next to us who were from England. The husband wound up giving my husband his recipe for Yorkshire pudding and tips on how to get it just right (the oil has to be really hot, or something like that). Now if any of you know Yorkshire pudding, you will understand it is not a dish I am going to serve with my fried chicken, collard greens, blackeyed peas and rice. But my husband, the extrovert, acted as though it was the best thing that could have happened to him on that sandy beach in Mexico. I must hurry to give props to my husband in that he also engaged the gentleman in a salvation discussion, as well, so it just “shows to go you” how creative these wily extroverts can be when it comes to sharing the gospel.

Yes, my husband was concerned about taking his wife and his youngest daughter to his new parish, especially since he was taking us to a church full of strangers. But, as we all know, our God is a God of miracles and my daughter and I went into that setting actually talking to and interacting with those strangers. Today, I am (as the comedian Mike Myers puts it) a site-specific extrovert. I am so much the extrovert today that people who have only known me as “our pastor’s wife” scoff at the notion that I am an introvert.

My husband was concerned about my introverted ways, but what he should have been concerned about was the fact that he was married to a CHURCH GIRL!