My memories of Advent from my childhood involve being given Advent calendars with chocolates behind each of the little doors by my Catholic relatives and being terribly excited about opening each day’s little door. That is the extent of my exposure to Advent for nearly thirty years. Though I was raised in a strong, Christian home, we were Pentecostal and didn’t celebrate the Christian Year, except for the normal Christmas and Easter. As an adult, I simply didn’t think of it, because it wasn’t part of my culture.

Until two years ago, that is, when I read a short editorial about it in the Religion section of the Sunday paper, and suddenly Advent took on a great deal of significance. The very theological concept of it intrigued and excited me, because theological concepts do intrigue and excite me. My soul is enlivened when my mind is stimulated by some lovely theological idea, and the idea of Advent certainly did that. But it’s also become significant over the last two years because of the current situation I find myself in, a kind of perpetual Advent.

Advent is a state of waiting. It’s a short amount of time that symbolizes the whole history of the Jews waiting for their Messiah, the whole longing of creation for a Redeemer. This is the time where we sit back and wait as if we were old Anna and old Simeon (Luke 2:22-38), recognizing God’s promises that He is going to change everything for the better and yet not seeing how or when. The Jews waited for thousands of years, and we Christians join them during Advent in waiting for Christ, the Messiah, to be born and turn the world right-side-up again.

Advent is a state of liminality, and that is where I find myself these days. Liminality is a term used in anthropology to describe a state of in-between-ness, and I have in a way reframed it to my own context. To me it means the state of waiting between the promise and the fulfillment, the period of time that stretches out for seemingly eternity while you wait for something to happen. It’s Christmas Eve night when you were a child and couldn’t sleep all night for anticipation of the next day. It’s sitting in the hospital waiting to find out whether your loved one is going to make it or not. It’s the time of numbness between a death and the funeral, of waiting backstage for your cue to go on, so nervous you think you’ll throw up, of the hundreds of years between Isaiah prophesying that the virgin would conceive a son and name him God With Us and the time when Jesus was actually born. It’s Christians for the last two thousand years saying, “Even so, come quickly, Lord Jesus” and not yet seeing it. It’s me, stuck between a call to missions and that undefined, tantalizing time in the future when I will be financially in the position to go do it.

Tantalizing, aggravating, frustrating…just waiting. Waiting and hoping. It’s a time for hope, this liminality, and for trust. Liminality gives us room to learn a quiet trust in our Father, who is not slow in keeping His promises. Isaiah, the prophet we quote most when it comes to Christmas, says, “You shall triumph by stillness and quiet; your victory shall come about through calm and confidence” (Isaiah 30:15, Jewish Publication Society version). We’ve been given promises by the God whose nature we trust; I’ve been given a call to missions by a God who has never broken faith with me. I think of this little piece of Hebrews, in between two verses: “Yet at present we do not see everything subject to him. But we see Jesus…” (Hebrews 2:8c-9a). We see what God has already done, and that gives us room to grow in faith, hoping for a promised future we cannot yet see.

I am in a state of liminality, and Advent reminds me to hope that more is coming.

Later he and his wife and I talked about the concept of being a female intellectual. He said that many times it is used somewhat pejoratively, as if appending “female” to “intellectual” brings down the impact of “intellectual.” And it occurred to me that even when that doesn’t happen, “female intellectual” is used as the exception that proves the rule. There are intellectuals, and then every once in a while there’s a female one, an abnormality even if just as intellectual as the “real” ones. “Female” is unusual among intellectuals, and “intellectual” is unusual among females. Very few people would come right out and state such an attitude, but it’s often present, invisible and implicit.

I’m thankful to this particular pastor for treating me not as a female who wanted to take part in his theological conversation with another pastor but as a fellow lover of theology and a welcome part of his district convention experience. And I’m particularly thankful for an upbringing that taught me not to see “female” as a barrier to anything I was suited to do nor as a detriment to any profession I might enter or activity I might want to take up.

In my family growing up, boys washed dishes and girls cut wood; boys learned to sew and girls learned to fish. These things were things that needed to be done, and everyone did them, and they benefitted everybody. Everybody was expected to get good grades in science as well as in English. Captains Courageous and Tom Sawyer were not books pushed on boys and not on girls; they were on the bookshelf, and anyone could read them who wanted to. My older sister was interested in the small engines class in high school, and I was interested in taking Spanish and Russian at the same time, and both were perfectly fine choices. I grew up recognizing that my parents would be fine with any career choice I made, as long as it wasn’t selling drugs or being a mob boss or something. There was no bias that said girls shouldn’t take up certain interests or professions any more than there was a bias that said people with brown hair shouldn’t do them. You could do whatever your mind was fit for.

Add to that the conviction I had that I could do anything God called me to and gave me the talents to do, and that God called me to ministry and gave me talents for education, language, theology, analysis, contemplation. I’ve never felt out of place in my various educational and ministry settings; in fact, I felt very firmly in place, because I knew I was where God had designed me to belong. For a great part of this I owe thanks to the Assemblies of God, which welcomes women in the callings God has given them. My ministry and theological education has only affirmed me and my place in God’s mission.

and beautiful landscape

Don’t get me wrong: I love being female. I may share my personality type with far more males than females (INTJ in the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator), and I may share interests with more males than females (ministry, theology, science fiction, superhero movies, programming), and I would really, really prefer to have a nice theological conversation than a nice conversation about children or shoes or most anything else that’s stereotyped as belonging to women—but I love dresses and teacups and figure skating and Pride and Prejudice and—well, many things stereotypically assigned to the feminine persuasion. I love being who I am, and being female is part of who I am. Part of who I am. Not the single deciding factor in who I am.

The thing is, I’ve never felt like a “woman in ministry,” that separate and special category assigned to separate and special ministers who happen to be female, and I’ve never felt like a “female intellectual.” I am first of all me, a human being with a brain and a soul and interests and talents and weaknesses and struggles. I am not a female modified by “intellectual,” nor an intellectual modified by “female.” I am me, and I am modified by “intellectual” and “female” and “introvert” and “short” and “quirky” and “American” and everything else that coalesces to describe me. They all have varying effects on each other and on the totality of who I am. Take any one of those things away, and I wouldn’t be me. They are all valuable parts of who God has made me to be.

Before you ever start to classify someone, as, for instance, “the female intellectual” or “the woman in pastoral ministry” or “the introverted youth minister” or “the teenaged writer” or anything that may in any way cause you to discount that person, stop yourself for a moment. Recognize that that person is first of all a sovereign human being, a bearer of God’s image, a person with a calling and a soul, a personality and point of view that has something to offer which you don’t. And only then begin to examine the characteristics which make up that complete person: her gender, her nationality, her race, her interpersonal style, her talents, her weaknesses, her interests. Don’t let “female” or “intellectual” or anything else force you to make assumptions about what that person can or can’t contribute or about that person’s value in ministry or any other situation in life. This is first of all God’s child, a divine, sovereign person valuable in and of herself. Only secondly is she your pastor or your professor or the short, brown-haired missionary who wants to join your theological conversation.

In January, I was discouraged because I’d meant to start full-time itineration in the beginning of January and had to put it off until February because I hadn’t scheduled enough services for Headquarters’ approval, and also because I felt very much alone in the process (even though it was just the beginning). Missionaries who are married have a built-in support system (which is not to say that being married doesn’t have its own struggles), and I felt like I had none and like no one really cared what I was doing. Then a person from church sent me a card in the mail with words of encouragement in it, and then I went to the Montana District’s Ministers Renewal and was reassured that actually Montana does care about its itinerating missionaries. We were all introduced to the whole gathering, who were encouraged to welcome us to their churches, a top district official randomly gave me money, I had lunch with his wife, and a pastor I had known in my Bible Quiz days gave me a solid dose of unsolicited encouragement.

In February I started crying because my windshield wipers didn’t work in a freezing rainstorm. Probably it was really just because I was tired after a long weekend of traveling in blizzards and doing services and staying with strangers, but inanimate objects that don’t behave as they should have the capacity to make me crazier in the head than anything else. A three-hour drive turned into a five-hour drive, and I had to turn around twice and go back to a friendly Napa Autoparts to get my windshield wipers fixed, and I got stuck in the snow. Small problems indeed, but on the way home there was a rainbow in the snow, which rarely happens. (You can barely see it in this picture, but it’s there.)

Rainbow in the snow

In April, the truly hard part about itineration hit me. The raising money part. Last June or July, when I had my first interview for the missions application process, I was told that there were some people reviewing my application who wanted me to go to Europe as a short-term Missionary Associate rather than a fully-appointed missionary because they didn’t believe I could raise a full budget for Europe in Montana. Montana is a massive state with few churches, the majority of which are struggling financially. Blithely I declared that while I was willing to do what they thought was best, I had always intended on being fully appointed and I knew God could make it happen if He wanted it to. I have continued to believe that, but still, in the back of my mind has always been that naysayer…Headquarters doesn’t believe you can raise your budget… (which is not true: it was only one or two people on a vast committee). And now I see what they mean. I’d hoped to have $2000/month in commitments raised by the end of April, and I don’t even have $1000. Churches are so generous in giving me cash, and I’ve raised far more than I expected every month in offerings, but it is harder for them and for individuals to commit to what I really need, giving monthly, when they are poor, when there are so many missionaries, missions projects, and local ministries clamoring for them to give.

Then just at the end of last month, a friend mentioned to me something God was reminding her of in a difficult situation she is in: He is the God of the impossible. Then I went to Montana’s District Council, and the speaker the first night spoke on the council’s theme: “Mission: Possible.” His altar call was on asking God to restore one’s innocence when difficult situations have made one jaded. While I was praying (and crying, ‘cos that’s what I do), the same district official’s wife came and prayed with me and seemed to get a vast deal of encouragement of her own out of it. It was lovely.

Directly after, a board member from Trinity Bible College spoke to me about what I’m up to and how itinerating is going, and he reminded me that if I want people to give me money, I have to ask them. Durr. That’s kind of the hardest part. I’m jolly good at getting up and telling people all about my work and calling and so forth, but the part where I say, “I need you to give me money every month or I can’t go”…that part’s hard. I tend to forget it, or shy away from it. But he told me people expect me to ask and they’re disappointed if I don’t. So next Sunday, when I speak about missions in Europe, I will explain how expensive Europe is, and I will ask them to support me monthly. That will be hard. Because itineration is hard.

But, my goodness, it’s fun.

(P.S. Here’s a lovely link where you can go to support me in missions in Europe, if you want…)

*”Lover of God,” sort of a quote from Acts. 1:1 for no good reason at all.

Because I have no pictures to represent a missions application, here is a completely random picture of a chandelier in a Serbian Orthodox church in Croatia.

Applying for AG World Missions is quite a process. They take great care to make sure you’re called, able, prepared, and willing to abide by the rules and procedures of one of the world’s biggest and yet most family-like missions-sending agencies. You’re not only representing yourself and your church as a missionary but you’re also representing a fellowship that spans the globe. They invest heavily in you as a missionary. You’re not just going out as an individual facing the world. You have a whole vast group of people behind you supporting you, from the leaders of the World Missions Board to the person designing the program that sends you emails when you get new supporters.

To prepare before ever applying, I studied for two theology degrees, applied for a ministerial license, and worked to pay down my loans as fast as possible. Once all those things had come together, it was time to do what I’d been looking forward to doing since college and requested an application for full-time missions from AGWM.

An outtake from the photoshoot.

Just to do that, I had to go through my district (Montana) and ask them to recommend to AGWM that I be sent an application. This means that as a missionary, I have my district behind me. They knew of me from my licensing application process.

The application was massive. I received it by email in July 2012, and it took me until January 2013 to complete it. I had to have eleven references from such people as district presbyters, college professors, and assorted friends. I had to have a physical. I had to poll all my family members for any obscure diseases in our history. I had to write a ten-page paper on my call, my family history, my strengths and weaknesses, and so forth. I had to have a professional photograph taken. I had to hunt down my immunizations and take a psych/personality test. I had to permit a background check and a credit report. I had to evaluate my language proficiency. No simple thing, this application.

Once I turned it in, by email and by mail to two or three different AGWM addresses, I waited until February to get news that it had been received. In April, I took a second psych/personality test. In June or July I received the news that my application had made it past the first round of approvals. There are multiple levels that you have to pass through: an initial examination of your application, an interview with someone from Personnel and Member Care, a second examination of your application if the interviewer recommended you to continue in the process, an invitation to Candidate Orientation in the fall of that year, a round of interviews at Orientation, verbal approval by the World Missions Executive Committee and Board, and finally official approval in writing.

It’s scary but a bit neat going through the levels. Every time I received a notice that I was approved and passing on to the next level, it was a mini celebration. I had my Member Care interview with Butch Frey in July 2013. It took about an hour and a half, and I cried through the whole thing. Despite the fact that I am quite an even-keeled sort of person, I do tend to cry rather a lot at certain things, such as talking about my call to missions and watching the end of the “The Dark Knight” Batman movie. Butch started me out talking about my call to missions, I lost it, and never regained it during the entire interview. It didn’t seem to faze him. He asked about everything. My strengths, my weaknesses, my family, my personality test results, my dreams for the future, my views on authority and marriage and local church leadership… I felt utterly wrung out by the time we were done. But he told me he was going to recommend my application to proceed in the approval process.

In the end of August, I received an official invitation to Candidate Orientation in Springfield, Missouri, in October. And there was much rejoicing. I’d been told before that if you’re invited to Orientation, there’s only a very, very low chance that you won’t be finally approved.

I’m going to have to write a completely new blog post about Candidate Orientation, because it was so terribly splendid and long that it deserves its own blog post. Suffice it to say that after 8 days of meetings, classes, and interviews, I received a letter on October 17, 2013 welcoming me to Assemblies of God World Missions.