Tell Your Story, Jackie

I loved this post by my friend Jackie Roese. I will be posting about Jackie Roese’s book one of these days soon.

I’ve taught for over a decade. I’ve weaved my story into the teaching, but I’ve never sat and spoken solely about my life story. The focus was never just me.

But the woman who hired me to teach insisted. I was to speak about my story – for an hour!

That’s when I realized I fear telling parts of my story because I may be hurt.

See, I’m a female preacher. That’s part of my story, a woman preaching, sometimes on a Sunday in front of the whole church, but most often in smaller arenas in front of women. That’s part of my story. It’s a part I’ve rarely said publically, especially to women I’m not familiar with or who aren’t familiar with me. The women’s issue is a heated issue. So I don’t share it.

But this woman insisted.

So I did. I did because I could tell she had been in prayer about this and felt confident that it was what God wanted for this specific retreat.

So I said it. I shared how our church went through a year and a half long process to decide whether or not women could preach from the pulpit. I shared how I was thrown in the middle of that debate and my face became the poster child for our “church going liberal.” I shared how it hurt. It hurt to have friends leave and men refuse to shake my hand and … it hurt.

Whew. I did it. I got through it, and no one walked out. It’s all good. So I thought, but at the end of the day a woman in the audience asked, “What is the prayer you’ve been praying for the women of our generation? Where do you see God moving the most on His women?”

Read the rest at the link above.