Wearing the “Minister” Hat

I went back and forth on attaching the ‘Minister’ moniker to my Minister Mama blog title.  I grew up with bad connotations when I heard the word Minister or Clergy.  Everything from: lame, boring, collar-wearing dorks who couldn’t marry, are likely depressed, don’t have sex, molest folks & hate black folks.

Talk about a bad impression, eh?

You see why I’m hesitant.  But I struggle with only one of those issues: depression.  I do have sex! I’m married! I am not lame nor boring and I love God’s people spread throughout the Earth of every ethnicity and culture. I have tat’s, multiple piercings and love fashion.  So there!

Even if you know those things to true of me why do I need to go by the ‘Minister’ moniker?

I never want to alienate my non-Jesus following friends, my athiest friends or my Muslim friends —-all who are very dear to me.  I also hate that the title alone will turn folks off enough not to give my blog a chance.

Yet, I am proud of who God is calling me to be: a student headed towards ordination and a Masters of Divinity.  A campus minister or a campus missionary if you prefer.  I don’t want to deny or hide that this is my life.  I do ministry.  I tell people about Jesus —mostly college students.

Not only that but I love what I do.  I’m excited by what God is doing through me and my hope is that my -newly personal focused- blog will be an open book of sorts to the life of a woman in ministry just trying to love my God, my husband, my babies and this crazy world I live in.

I feel like a normal girl with a big calling.  I want to write more about that to those who are interested.  I suppose my self-declaring Minister Mama title will weed out those who aren’t interested, and that makes me sad.

But, I want to be clear and honest about who I am and the direction my blog is heading.

Make sense?

Okay then.  Here goes…

For the last few weeks I have been solidly wearing the ‘Minister hat’ planning & directing a student conference for 131 InterVarsity students, staff & volunteers.

WHAT A RIDE! =)

All in all it was fan-flipping-tastic.  How could it possibly be more fun?  Yes, there was drama, there was stress, there was sleeplessness, there were tears.

Yet, it was easy-peasy to see the miraculous goodness of the Lord.

For example, I’ve been doing overtime for two weeks, at least. The night before the conference I went to bed at 2am and woke at 6:30am.  I drove 5 hours & hit the ground running in conference directing mode.  I went to bed at 12:30am but was awoken at 1:30am by a staffer who had some issues with a few students.  I fell back asleep at 2am woke up at 7am and WORKED ALL DAY until 1:30am which included 3.5 hours of one-on-ones with students dealing with incest, rape, sexual abuse, boyfriend issues, girlfriend issues, daddy issues, abdonement issues and every other sex/dating/relationship issue you can think of.  On Sunday I slept in until 7:41am and -finally- finished wrapping up the conference and fell into my hotel room bed at 4:30pm.

Do you want to know when during the conference I felt exhausted, worn-out, tired and sick of everything?

NEVER.

At 1pm, we began wrapping up with staff and volunteers and I finally started to yawn, got a major head-ache and began to wonder when I would collapse.

God himself was my strength, y’all.  It was my continuous prayer request, the one I asked everyone to pray for me because…when I’m tired I’m hopeless like it ain’t nobody’s business.

The students also experienced many God-sightings.  Things I’d love to be able to share but can’t.  Can’t even share a single picture.  Crusty legal laws!

What I loved was seeing the students experience new-found joy and happiness.  I loved hearing students say that my testimony impacted their life and a few students came up to me with hugs, thanking me for putting the conference on.

Even the hotel staff thanked me!  Said our students were the “best Church group,” they have ever had.  In fact, he went on and on with compliments.

After the conference was over I headed straight to one of my favorite things in the world: the hotel hot-tub! =)  Ate a big dinner, (after accidentally starving myself all weekend), watched Knight & Day -which I really liked- journaled and fell promptly asleep by 8:30pm.

Would you believe me if I tell you I didn’t wake up until 8:30am?  I ate another big meal, watched Short Circuit and promptly fell back asleep for 2 hours.

Due to weather, me being slow and getting lost…twice, I made a 5 hr. a drive a 10 hr. drive and pulled into my driveway last night at 1am.  Ugh.

My friend Joy said, “well you could have driven to North Dakota in 10 hours!” Very funny, Joy.  Very funny.

Now, I’m home for the week!  And the “Mama hat” goes on happily.