Roughly a year ago, I stood in the sanctuary with Pastor Debbie and told her for the second time that I felt a calling to the priesthood. Like the first time I mentioned it to her, she didn’t question it. And, in fact, this time she told me that if I was serious about the calling the first step on that journey was signing up for the Conference on Ministry held each September.
In the Episcopal Church, if you want to be a priest, you don’t just simply attend seminary and “poof” become a priest. Before all that happens, the Episcopal Church asks that you go through a yearlong period of discernment during which time you are known as an aspirant.
This period of discernment involves paperwork, reflection, interviews, more reflection, a physical so detailed that my own doctor said it might qualify me for the space program, and a battery of psychological testing and evaluation. During the discernment process, there are many opportunities for someone, whether it be the Bishop’s Advisory Council, or your own Parish Discernment Committee or even the psychologists, to say no, we don’t think you should be a priest.
I started the discernment process ironically the day before I actually became an Episcopalian. I attended the Conference on Ministry on September 11th and was confirmed in the Episcopal Church the next day September 12th. I was surprised that someone didn’t stop my journey right then. How could I possibly want to be a priest in the Episcopal Church when I wasn’t even an Episcopalian yet?
Every time someone interviewed me, I shared with them my story. I told them how I had always felt a special connection to God even as a child, how in college I had felt called to the ministry even though I didn’t have a church. I told them about walking into Hope Episcopal Church for the first time on Easter, 2010. I told them how everything clicked into place, how God had finally shown me the picture to go with the puzzle pieces I had been trying to put together blindly all these years.
I told them how I knew, how I absolutely knew that this was what God wanted for me, what He had always intended for me. I could finally see how He had used the events of my life to bring me to this point.
Everything made sense now. My life had purpose. All my life I had been afraid, but now I knew that God walked alongside me. There was exuberance in my life now. I was the person in Matthew 13:44 who finds treasure in a field, hides it and then, in joy, goes and sells all that I have to buy the field.
My calling was my treasure.
A few weeks ago, I completed the last of the psychological evaluations. And then yesterday, I received my letter from Bishop Howe stating that I was no longer an aspirant, but that I had been accepted as a postulant.
The discernment process was over.
Of course, discerning God’s plan for our lives is never truly over. Though the technical discernment process is over, I will still be discerning what God intends me to do as I continue this journey. For example, do I continue with the plan of going to seminary part time, or do I find a way to go full time?
Please continue to keep me in your prayers.
