Because God is so good, He's so good to me

My dad's been a pastor my whole life. I tell people proudly that, before I was born, he was a high school football coach. So were my uncle and my grandpa. My cousin plays for the 49'ers. I told Sarah earlier that if we didn't believe in God, my family would worship football. Lately I've noticed how much I brag about the football legacy my family has, as opposed to getting excited about the legacy of faith I'm so blessed to be a part of. I brag about the pancake block my brother got in his game last week or the fact that my cousin's starting center now more than I tell anyone about my great-grandparents who spent their entire lives in virtual poverty because my great-grandpa pastored a poor church where they paid him in things like home-grown vegetables instead of an actual salary. The football part of my family is so fun, and over the last couple of years I've really started to embrace it. But I don't tell people how cool my great-grandparents were, or about my uncle who pastors a mission church in Abilene where people are so hungry for the gospel they stop and ask questions in the middle of the sermon, or the fact that I've lived two decades now watching a man so devoted to fulfilling the call of the ministry in his life and the woman who faithfully supported him the entire time.

My dad's been a pastor my entire life. He was in seminary when I was born. It's not something I'm embarrassed about, it's just that my entire life, I've been known as the preachers' daughter. It was nice to get to DBU and have people not know me as that. I know this note is all over the place, and it's probably not going to make sense to people who didn't grow up with parents in the ministry, but something amazing happened today, and I have to get it down before I forget how incredible it feels.

I've heard stories my whole life of people who have supported my parents throughout their ministry. When I was a baby, my dad pastored this little country church. He was still in seminary...they couldn't afford to pay him full time, and he couldn't go to seminary and BE there full time. So Saturday nights, we'd come in and there was a couch in the fellowship hall that folded out into a bed. My parents slept on that, and my mom got a crib from the nursery for me. Some of the older ladies in the church freaked out because I was sleeping in a crib on a tile floor. That was absolutely unacceptable, they decided, and our family needed carpet to be more comfortable. So the church carpeted the fellowship hall for us.

It's stories like that that I so easily forget. I remember a lot more things like the people that wrote my dad letters telling him what a horrible pastor he was because he had a beard and allowed someone to play an acoustic guitar during Sunday morning worship. (Doesn't sound right with the organ, I guess?) Those of you that I've really sat down with and talked to about it know that I have struggled for a long time with the church my dad pastors right now. They've been there for...gosh, I guess it's six and a half years now, which seems so long. A lot of stuff happened there, and being the pastor's oldest kid, I always heard about it.

My junior year of high school, the church split. I don't know if any of you guys have ever been through a split, but they're hard and messy, and a lot of the time, they're made personal. This one was. I'm not trying to turn this into a "woe is me, everyone feel sorry for me because of what I went through" kind of thing, but I think most of the other pks I know will be able to kind of understand what I'm going through. I'm not going to go into too much detail, but some of the claims that were made were downright ridiculous. One woman went around telling people my mom gave her the finger during Sunday morning worship. I'm not kidding. People were coming up to my brother, sister and I at school literally every day saying that their parents said they couldn't be friends with us anymore, or asking why our dad was such a bad guy. Someone asked for my dad's resignation in deacons' meeting, and when he refused to give it, they told him to his face they were going to fight until he was fired. In a business meeting, someone said that "our church had all the people it needed, and we needed to be more focused on taking care of the needs of the members we already had rather than trying to bring in more people." Since my dad and the rest of the staff thought it was more important to reach lost people than devote the entirety of the church's resources to the members we already had, they needed to be gotten rid of.

I didn't understand it, and to this day, I still don't. I don't get how, as believers, we can treat each other the way we do. It's been said a million times, but "the Christian army is the only one that wounds its own soldiers." I've been guilty of it. The whole point of this is, my junior year, the church split (during football season, no less,) and I honestly felt like my world was falling apart.

Since then, my parents have spent a lot of time trying to convince me that the people that stayed at the church are supportive, they're dedicated to reaching the community for the Lord and they love their staff. It seems like every time I start to believe it, something else happens that I allow to make me bitter, angry, and cynical about the entire conversation. Sometimes it's big things, like my mom's best friend spreading rumors about my parents. Sometimes it's smaller ones, like the woman in the pew in front of me putting on blush in the middle of the worship service. I finally broke down to my dad this summer and told him I didn't know if I could do it anymore. I surrendered to the ministry when I was thirteen, and I still believe with every fiber of my being that that's what God has called me to. But I've asked myself a million times if I'm crazy, wondering why I'd spend the rest of my life in a ministry that I've seen wound people I love so many times. And I know that this situation is not unique to me. The specifics are, but people who are in the ministry face problems. People say things they shouldn't say and do things they shouldn't do because they're human, and we get hurt. Like I said, my parents have been trying to get this through my thick skull for the last three years, and I can't even imagine how frustrated the Lord's been trying to get my attention. And today, He did something for my family that I finally saw, and I let it get through.

October is Pastor Appreciation Month. I've known this most of my life, because when I was a kid, one of our school projects was to come up with what we thought should be a national holiday. I told my mom mine would be Preacher's Day, and she told me that the whole month of October was devoted to honoring pastors. I was shocked and asked her why no one had ever done anything for my dad. So I've always known this fact, but aside from the occasional card, no one's ever really acknowledged it. And I'm not saying my dad deserves to be showered with praise every day throughout the month of October for being such an amazing pastor, even though I think he is...I'm kind of biased. I'm not saying anyone owes it to us. It's just never been really acknowledged by anyone we knew. And I'd get jealous, my best friend's dad is a pastor, and in high school, their church members did things for her family. It was just another thing I used to be more mad at our church for NOT "supporting" my dad, as it were.

And I realize that support for a pastor is a lot more than a card saying "Happy Pastor Appreciation Month" or whatever, it's a "good sermon today, preacher" or a smile, or a hug, or even a handshake. Something the congregation at Hutto Baptist Church has LONG done for my father, but I only wanted to see the hurtful things the people had done.

I called my mom tonight to ask her a question, and she got really excited and said she had to tell me a cool story. She said "You know it's pastor appreciation month, right?" I was like..."Okay?" Apparently, at the end of the church service today, one of the deacons called all the staff and their wives up to the front of the sanctuary. They gave all the women flowers, and they gave them some gift cards or something, too, I don't know, that's not important. But my mom said the deacon that was talking about it being pastor appreciation month started talking about how much he loved the staff (and you guys, it seriously is the best church staff ever. The youth/music minister & childrens' minister = BEST ON THE PLANET, I'M NOT LYING. I LOVE THEM. Anyway.) and he got choked up! Then my mom said she looked up, and the whole church was giving them a standing ovation. I was in the middle of the cafeteria, getting a sandwich when she said this, and I seriously just froze. I got chills, and I'm getting them again writing this. I'm so mad I wasn't there, because I want to go hug the deacon that got choked up and every single person who was clapping. It might seem like a small thing, but to the little girl in me who's always wondered why no one did anything for her daddy on pastor appreciation month...a standing ovation from the entire congregation blows me away.

Isaiah 19:11-12 says: "The LORD said, "Go out and stand on the mountain in the presence of the LORD, for the LORD is about to pass by." Then a great and powerful wind tore the mountains apart and shattered the rocks before the LORD, but the LORD was not in the wind. After the wind there was an earthquake, but the LORD was not in the earthquake. After the earthquake came a fire, but the LORD was not in the fire. And after the fire came a gentle whisper."

I've always loved that passage, loved the reminder that God speaks to us in so many different ways, but it's so convicting to think about how many times He's come to me in a whisper and I've refused to hear it. I'm just so glad He doesn't ever give up on me, even when it takes more than a whisper to get my attention.