God Says Yes!

It was a cold but beautiful January day in coastal Virginia on the day that Ethan and I got ordained. My family had flown in from Louisiana and driven up from Georgia. Before the ordination service and council meeting, we spent the early afternoon walking around Colonial Williamsburg. I wish I could remember what all we did that weekend, where we ate or what we saw. Instead, I remember the deep feelings of anxiety I felt over my own ordination. My poor stomach was in knots at the idea of not passing the council. I kept having visions of someone coming forward to object my ordination. That day, my body was at war. It knew I was stepping into something that went against everything I was taught, but also was for everything I believed about God and my sense of calling.

Stepping into a calling and out in faith can be scary. I grew up in a church that did not ordain women, and in my work as a campus minister for the Virginia Baptists I regularly worked alongside plenty of churches that did not ordain women. At best, many of those interactions were lackluster, but at their worst they would leave me a little more scarred. It is amazing the kinds of things people will say to another sibling in Christ when they don't agree.

But that cold January day in 2020, my poor tummy had nothing to fear, because the pastor that set up the two different ordination councils for Ethan and I made sure that mine was filled with people who believed in me and believed that God had called me to serve. And as I looked out into the audience that Sunday evening during the service, I saw friends, other campus ministers, local CBF pastors, and my family who were there to support, love, and encourage me. There were even some who I knew didn't love the idea of women being ordained, but they too spent time praying for me during the laying on of hands.

That evening, I felt not only that I was publicly saying yes to God, but also that God was saying yes to me. Yes to the ways I felt called, but also yes to all the ways that God had created me.

That is what calling is all about. Calling is finding moments where we say yes to God and we feel as though God is saying yes to us. God says "yes!" to the things that make us unique or the experiences that shape us. Our initial yes is important, but not nearly as much so as the "yes!" that God has for all of us. Not everyone is ordained, or feels called to be ordained, but everyone is called at moments in their life. And most importantly, God says yes to you.

This week as a church we have the delight in saying "Yes!" to our very own Cameron Schroeder as she is being ordained. Come be one of the affirming faces in the crowd, be one of the people she will look back on and remember with joy—on a day that together with God we say yes!