The Ending is Better than the Beginning

September 18, 2008

You should never have gone into ministry. You should never have worked with children. What you’re doing right now makes all that you’ve taught those children over the years meaningless. This will completely destroy everything you’ve ever done in ministry.

I remember thinking at the time, some 12 years ago, “She’s so upset she doesn’t even know what she’s saying.” I realized even as I reeled under the words that she had never imagined the day would come when her youngest daughter would be telling her she was a lesbian.

Being a children’s pastor and Sunday School teacher to hundreds of preschool-kindergarten children during fifteen years of full-time ministry had been the most important thing in my life. Actually it was my life. It was what I breathed, thought, dreamed, and did. I gave it all my time, energy, and passion. And while it came as a surprise to no one more than myself I was really good at it. The world of kids was easy somehow for me to enter, maybe because I never left my own childhood too far behind. I knew what children liked and so it was easy for me to shape stories about God around grocery carts and playdoh and frogs. It’s Christmas and there’s no snow? No problem. Just cover the classroom floor in shredded white paper four inches deep even if it means spending all Christmas Day alone at the church sweeping and bagging and vacuuming. These little ones who surrounded me were the most incredible human beings to have been unleashed on this planet and I couldn’t believe my good fortune that I got to be one of those to love on them and be a part of their lives.

And so those words, spoken in haste and shock by someone who had watched my ministry with the children over the years rocked me to the core and yet, I understood. You see, I believe to this day that no one has ever spoken a word of judgment or condemnation to me that came anywhere near to the words I had spoken internally to myself in the midst of my personal struggle. The most vicious assault, the most demeaning cruel words, came not from family or the church or strangers on a blog but it came from me to me. I called myself a failure, a disappointment, and an embarrassment to God. I judged myself and ridiculed what I found. Before anyone had a chance to say it to me, I had said it to myself and so once I had forgiven myself, the hardest person to forgive, then how could I not understand and forgive others who loved me for doing the same in their initial reaction? I’m not saying it’s excusable behavior or suggesting that anyone should be expected to be ridiculed or judged and just take it on the chin. I’m only saying that I understood the emotions that were driving such words and in understanding that, the way was left open to let compassion and forgiveness in.

So I understood why my Mom reacted as she did and I reasoned that once the emotions passed she wouldn’t really mean what she’d said in the intensity of the moment but knowing all that didn’t remove the devastating power of those words on me, and as I moved on with my life those words stayed buried in me. And I did move on with my life. After coming out as a lesbian and leaving that first ministry, I never stopped working with children wherever I worshiped; the Presbyterian Church, the Congregational Church, the Disciples of Christ Church. I’d begin teaching a small class of children and before too long I’d be heart-deep and full-steam ahead engaged in children’s ministry.

It was sometime in 2003 that I was sent by the Northern California region of the Disciples of Christ to Oklahoma to attend a training conference in “Worship and Wonder,” a Montessori-based method of Christian Education. On the evening flight from Oakland to Tulsa I spent much of it looking out the window into the darkness and reflecting on all that had happened over the years. Mostly I was grateful. When I’d come out I’d feared most of all that all the doors of ministry would close and no others would open. As the months and years had passed I’d come to realize how my original fears had been unfounded as one church community after another welcomed me among them and supported my ministry with children. Now here I was, being sent by my regional church to a training event so I could in turn train other teachers who in turn would teach their children. It felt in some ways that I’d come full circle and that God had redeemed all that I’d lost, and yet in a corner of my heart I still grieved. On that plane on a late evening as the lights from the city of Tulsa began to appear in the distance I wept silently, thinking of the children from years before who were now adults. What had their lives been like over the years? Were they happy? Did they continue to know God loved them? And selfishly, I wondered if they remembered me.

With Mapquest directions printed and laying on the passenger seat beside me I navigated the rental car through a freezing cold winter night in Tulsa to my hotel and no sooner had I checked into my room than my laptop was hooked up to the internet so I could check for email from my Beloved. As expected and hoped for, there was an email from D waiting for me along with another email from an unknown email account.

“Dear Teacher Anita, I don’t know if you remember me….” It was from Klarissa, one of the children from so many years before, the children I had been thinking about less than an hour earlier at 30,000 feet in the air. I regret having lost the original email but the general content I’ll always remember. She told me how thankful she was that I had been her teacher and how the lessons of God’s love had stayed with her through the years. She wanted me to know the influence I’d had on her life and that she was looking ahead to graduate school where she intended to focus her education on children’s spirituality.”Dear Teacher Anita, I don’t know if you remember me….” Those few words and the paragraphs that followed healed a place in my heart I hadn’t even realized was still in need of repair.

Since that first email whenever Klarissa and I are in the same town at the same time, we meet for early morning coffee and have slowly caught up on each other’s lives. We’ve leaned over tables at Peets and Starbucks over the years and gotten to know each other once again; not as teacher and child, but as friend and friend. It’s one of the most incredible gifts of my life and I’ve thanked God so many times for this one thing that by now I expect somewhere in heaven God is saying with a sigh, “Okay, enough already. I get that you’re grateful. You don’t need to say it again.” But I will. Again and again.