Last week was pretty momentous in my life as a woman, a minister, and a wife. On Wednesday, Sam and I found we were pregnant and expecting a baby in November. The next morning dawned my thirtieth birthday.
My twenties were filled with school and searching (in America and in Germany) for who I was supposed to be and what I was supposed to do in this world. I know this isn’t everyone’s experience because I have many friends who figured out what they were supposed to be half way through their twenties. I taught beside them, I went to school with them, and in a very real sense as I watched them I hoped I would be as certain about my professions, my job, my calling as they were about teaching. Although teaching was wonderfully fulfilling for me, there was always something more I was looking for, hoping for.
When I was called to be interim pastor, I found that. I only found my calling and myself because I first found my husband. Sam has always seen through the smokescreens I had so carefully constructed to portray a contented life even from the first time we met. It was unnerving to just be around someone who was able to hear and understand me better than I understood myself.
Although I have found my calling, I know I don’t have all the answers to what it means to be a person who is a witness to God’s work in the world and in the lives of people, I know that by becoming more of who I am, I am becoming more of that witness every day.
So, as I began my thirties, I am not expecting less searching, but I am expecting less self-doubt. I am expecting to experience life in a new way as this little life grows inside me. I am expecting to be more awed by God’s work and the work of God’s people. I am expecting to fall even more in love with Sam as we continue to take this crazy journey to a called life serving God and serving God’s people.