Wait for the Lord!

September 2007. I took a deep breath and entered seminary at Northwest House of Theological Studies in Salem, Oregon. Twenty credits of theology and scripture and I could hang out my shingle as an Associate in Ministry [a lay rostered ministry status]. But God had other plans. Three months later I sat before the candidacy committee of the Oregon Synod explaining how I had misunderstood God’s call. “Please reconsider my candidacy for Word and Sacrament instead. Oh, and by the way, it will take five to six years to complete the requirements.” When I told my adult children that I would be 62 years old before I would finish seminary, they answered with the age-old reply, “How old will you be if you don’t do this?” Graduation Day, 2014 at PLTS was three days before my 63^rd birthday and there was no realistic first call option on the horizon.

My whole journey was interrupted by astonishing revelations of the Holy Spirit, present and active in seemingly ordinary events. The physical and emotional challenges of Clinical Pastor Education [a graduation requirement] nearly crushed my determination to complete seminary. The summer of 2012 I lived with my daughter and her family in Tacoma and commuted by bus to Seattle’s Harborview Medical Center. One evening I was able to attend women’s Bible Study with my daughter. This is the prayer a faithful woman prayed over me, “We give you thanks, God, that you have already chosen the congregation where Dorothy will be called”.

Her prayer sustained and comforted me when doubt and uncertainty clouded my trust in God’s call. I had already been absent from my husband and cats for sixteen months. An internship away from Oregon was not an option. The seminary and my home synod scrambled to put together an internship that would keep me at home. Once again, God intervened with a solo site five miles from home and a supervisor three miles from home.

Her prayer sustained and comforted me through my disappointment at being assigned to my home region and home synod. I thought it would be a grand adventure for my husband and me to move across the country. But it would prove that the call was real. Instead, we were consigned to wait for a rare vacancy in the Oregon Synod. Once again, God had a sacred plan in place. Within days of assignment we heard the devastating news that my only sister was dying of cancer. She died one year later. I was free to be with her, my nieces and their families with no restraints.

The prayer of the woman at the Bible study sustained and comforted me through nearly two years of supply preaching and a difficult temporary assignment. A surprising vacancy arose during this time. In spite of the two male clergy who predicted that I would probably never get a call because “you’re too old and you’re a woman,” members of this congregation asked the synod to supply them with my name for consideration. Even though the call committee was not keen on considering a first-call pastor, three months later they voted to call me as their settled, full-time pastor.