My spouse Jonathan is an active duty Army chaplain and ACPE Certified Educator, so I have the unique situation of having lived and served all over the country in the last few years, thanks to frequent Army moves. I most recently served for three years at a congregation in San Antonio, Texas, and ended my ministry there as the congregation faithfully discerned to close.

Jonathan and I have three fierce, curious, compassionate, confident children. We’ve now left the Land of Littles and are now a family of tweens and teens, which is by far my favorite season yet!

At the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, I noticed that the way I was responding was very similar to how I have learned to orient myself headed into one of Jonathan’s deployments. With that in mind, I wrote a series of posts called “Deployment Lessons for COVID” and continue to write and speak about how the Church can adapt to creative possibilities of what’s ahead, just like our family has learned to do with all the changes in our lives. 

I’m a pastor’s kid, married to a pastor who is a pastor’s kid. 

In other words, church work is in my DNA. My earliest memories are in the second pew on the right side of the sanctuary of a Baptist church in Michigan, and nearly every significant milestone I’ve had since can be traced back to church (that’s even where I met my spouse!).

Church matters to me because that is where we connect with God and with each other. It is the community where we manifest what the Spirit is doing, where we can collectively bring the Kin-dom to the world around us. It’s so important to me that, when my theology started shifting and I knew I couldn’t continue to see the Bible the way I always had, I still never left the Church.

As a kid, I told people that I wanted to be “a pastor’s wife” when I grew up, but after that theological shift I was able to claim God’s call on my life to be a pastor. I began working on my MDiv at Lexington Theological Seminary when my kids were in diapers and preschool. Four years, three states, and one spouse deployment later, I graduated and was ordained in 2017.