Picking Up the Phone

Yesterday, I took my first real step into ministry.

Cue the record scratch, right? Let me back up a little.

About six years ago, I was invited to attend a church Pam attended. This was big, since Pam was firmly agnostic, but they insisted this place was different. I looked at my queer, cane dependent self and braced for impact, but agreed. The Michigan State University ballroom dance club was going to be attending after the message and performing/teaching people to swing dance.

I sat through the message, uncomfortable and feeling so out of place. I had tried the church thing before and didn’t enjoy it. The only religion at all I had any kind of comfort in was Wicca/Pagan leaning faith. I prayed in the sense that I believed in a higher, universal power, but I’d found organized religion to be a harsh world of guilt, shaming, and exclusion; the worst offense, of course, being that they claimed to love and accept all…except for anyone that wasn’t a white, straight, cisgendered, able-bodied Christian.

Then the pastor invited me to swing dance upon learning that I used to live to dance and sing and perform. I must have looked at him like he was from another planet. I remember looking at him, then at my cane, then back to him and saying “how is that going to work?”

“We’ll figure it out.” He smiled back.

So we tried. And it worked. Cane and all, I was swing dancing with a pastor in a Christian school gymnasium.

About a year later, I joined the “worship arts team” and, for the first time in nearly five years, I stepped onto a stage again. I sang songs about God and Jesus and I felt so, so out of place. I felt as though, at any moment, someone would notice I didn’t fit in and call me out.

That moment never came. Something else started happening instead. I started attending more, serving more. And every time I did, what was being said in that day’s message spoke to something in my life that I needed to hear. It would, as if by fate’s designs, force me to look at things I wanted to ignore, assure me of facts I didn’t believe could be true, and encourage me to keep going, despite every instinct of giving up.

I chose to be baptized and officially become a partner of the church in 2015, the day of my 25th birthday.

Then, about a year ago, I met with the worship leader and told him I was considering ministry. He was encouraging, told me he believed in me, but I hesitated. It felt like a lie. That couldn’t possibly be what I was supposed to be doing with my life. I was everything a church had always told me I couldn’t (and shouldn’t) be. Even though my church had welcomed me with open arms.

Fast forward to this year. In fact, zoom in on the past month. I was finally going to see Hamilton! The show that saved my life, that forever put the notion of dying before my time firmly out of the question. My church decided to do a series based on a book called “God and Hamilton” by Kevin Cloud and the first day of the series would be a celebration of “faith and arts in the mix”. We would start with a message delivered by Kevin himself. I felt the tug I had been decidedly ignoring for a while, the demand for my attention to be turned towards ministry.

Following the message, Kevin hosted a workshop about how Faith and Creating were intended to be one thing. That we were meant to create, that it was no coincidence that we call God “The Creator” and were created in his image. I had a pen in hand and a poem scrawled on a napkin in an instant. The first time I had ever simply written with no inner voice telling me it wasn’t worth it or trying to edit as I wrote.

The small tug became an impatient push.

The day concluded with a panel of artists of all kinds; authors, singers and songwriters, musicians, poets, and people of faith. They spoke of how faith and their craft worked together, how it shaped their lives.

The push became a shove.

Then we saw Hamilton.

Seeing this show, this experience that had not just saved my life, but become a part of my experience, it’s lyrics weaving through my day to day, my thoughts and actions, became something more.

The shoving ceased. Instead, I felt peace.

I recognized what I had been experiencing was so much more than I had thought. Not an unfortunate string of events with moments of happiness or celebration thrown in for my sanity.

This was a calling.

This was everything in my life, every single experience culminating into a force beyond my understanding or comprehension, showing me that this was what I was supposed to do.

I gave in. Despite terror at the idea of pursuing something so much bigger than myself, fear that brought me to tears when I spoke of it, I knew this was it. That creating was my passion and my purpose, but that I was being told that my calling was to minister with grace and compassion to help heal others, just as I’ve always tried to do, but in a way I had never imagined. I could become a force for change and guidance and leave a legacy of creation, compassion, and inclusion so that others could find a place they felt they could belong. Where faith wouldn’t be a condemning or exclusive experience.

Am I still just as anxious about my purpose and my future? You bet. Am I terrified of messing up or getting it wrong? Absolutely.

Am I sure this is really a call I’m ready to accept?

I already answered.

Find Kevin Cloud’s book, “God and Hamiton: Spiritual Themes from the Life of Alexander Hamilton and the Broadway Musical He Inspired”, here and learn more about Kevin’s workshops and story and read Pam’s perspective of the same series and the experience that it inspired featured in their blog, found here.