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Unlikely Rebel
A Church Girl's Journey out of Shoulds and Shame
By Kelli Gotthardt Kregel Publications
Copyright © 2015 Kelli Gotthardt
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-8254-4228-5
CHAPTER 1
The Beautiful No
I felt the tension come in waves washing over my entire body. My husband, Richard, and I were sitting two feet from each other in the car, but the distance was growing rapidly. I had just announced to him my resignation from the litany of volunteer ministry roles I'd accumulated under his pastoral leadership over the past ten years.
I hadn't been coerced into saying yes to all these things. I had simply let life happen to me. But underneath the put-together exterior, I felt my soul shrinking and an internal storm brewing. Unfortunately for Richard, one of the truths of marriage is there are no isolated storms. My storm was now his storm, and in an instant I had altered the fabric of our marriage.
I focused my gaze straight ahead in an effort to keep from losing my nerve. "I'm done with ministry," I said again and with a greater effort to hold back tears. My lungs were failing me as I attempted in vain to take a slow, deep breath.
"Just like that? No discussion? You're just out?" He had no category under which to process this new revelation. There had been no warning, no outward signs of distress. Surely, he believed he had misunderstood me.
"I guess." My mind was reeling and my resolve fading. "Not forever. Just for the next year. I need to regroup."
Silence.
His anger at my unilateral decision coupled with his disbelief and confusion rendered him speechless and, for a moment, allowed me to stop trying to put a coherent thought together.
The next stoplight turned red, and Richard slowed the car to a halt. We sat motionless, both encased in our separate pain. I sighed loudly and withdrew to my corner, slouching closer to the car door. Each of us had taken a blow, and with this round over, we needed to rest for a moment and regroup.
The light turned green, signaling it was time to keep moving forward. I attempted again to explain what had seemed so clear and reasonable only an hour earlier. His jaw was set, and his eyes narrow. He showed all the signs of anger, but I sensed it was deeper than that.
I wondered what he was imagining. Could he be envisioning the same beautifully framed pictures of us I had envisioned, crashing to the ground and shattering? Pictures of the perfect ministry couple. Laboring together. Hand in hand changing the world. I knew these pictures needed to go or there would be no room for what God had for me. What I was less sure of at the moment was whether it had been necessary to break all that glass in the process. Perhaps I could have found a way to carefully open the frames and remove the pictures without causing so much damage. But all I could do now was try to keep from cutting myself on the shards.
And so began my rebel journey. A single no that forever changed my path. A messy, imperfect, beautiful no.
Into an Unknown Future
Fifteen years later I'm forced to acknowledge that, as defining moments go, this was not really earth shattering. More of a whimper than a battle cry, this scene, nonetheless, marked a line in the sand to which I've often returned as a reminder of both my strength and my weakness.
After a well-established history of living in "I should," I took a baby step toward "I desire." Though filled with shame for even having a desire, I stumbled forward into an unknown future. But how did I get here? Why all the drama and buildup for a single syllable word?
In hindsight, I had a history of stepping out in a different direction. I didn't always do what I perceived was expected of me, but I rarely defied an established authority-like the church or my husband — in the process. At least not to their face. My rebellion was stealth. I waited until no one was paying attention, then slid in the back door — smiling my good-girl smile all the way.
Some people call that passive aggressive. I called it survival. Allow me to share a brief history.
The Early Journey
My gait was brisk and intentional. I wanted to run, but even more, I wanted to avoid attracting attention. Relieved to spot an open pay phone, I pulled the phone card from my backpack and mouthed the numbers as I pressed them on the keypad. I was a sophomore in college, cell phones had yet to be introduced, and I needed to talk to my mom.
I can't remember if she answered. I do remember why I called.
A few months earlier, my parents had dropped me off in Tempe, Arizona, where I began school at Arizona State University (ASU). After growing up in a Christian family in a rural, church-saturated community, attending twelve years of Christian school, and one year of Christian college, I had decided it was time to leave the protective bubble that was my life. From what I could see, the world out there seemed expansive and opportunity rich.
In a final act of maternal involvement, my mother had connected me to a fellow transfer from Iowa whose parents she knew, making my official friend tally one in a sea of forty thousand students. The weekend before school started, I attended a party at her apartment with enough alcohol, drugs, and sex to put us in the running for the soon-to-be- popular Girls Gone Wild series. Far from tempted to participate, I felt the deep ache of regret as life outside the bubble quickly lost its iridescent shine.
My first class — Anatomy/Physiology — convened in Murdock Hall and boasted more students than my small-town high school. In the first week, my professor used the phrase "the apes from which we evolved," and I knew I was no longer in the proverbial Kansas (or Iowa). In Holistic Health, we engaged in lively discussions about auras, chakras, and, unexpectedly, abortion.
The phone call I made to my mom came after the abortion discussion. In my class of thirty, I had been one of two students who stood up-liter- ally — as being opposed to abortion. You'd think I'd remember the other stander, but I was too terrified to notice. There were questions I couldn't answer, reasons I couldn't articulate, and I knew I had just failed the test of living in the world. I wanted to go home.
I decided to stay, but my year was rocky. Every day on campus was an exercise in loneliness and self-hatred. So much for the rebel life.
While it was true that I had wanted to break out of my sheltered life, I picked ASU for a slightly less noble reason. During my year at a Christian college, I had begun exercising compulsively, and the warm temperatures of the desert southwest meant an outdoor track year round. I was just beginning to binge and purge, and I hoped a change of scenery would give me a fresh start. But not only were my old demons catching up to my move, new ones were meeting me there. My little experiment was quickly being derailed by depression and bulimia.
My path changed with a connection to a church community that loved me. I began a journey of emotional healing and spiritual transformation. I entered treatment for my eating disorder and worked my aftercare program diligently. I grew by leaps and bounds, and I was living in a freedom I had never before experienced.
Life After Addiction
It wasn't long before I was discipling other women and being invited into broader leadership roles. Out of that community, I also met my husband, Richard. He was one of my first friends and remained so through both the lows of my eating disorder and the long recovery. We could talk for hours. I was captivated by his humor, kindness, and generosity. I'd never met someone so authentic, articulate, or able to bring such freshness to God's Word. Deep friendship ultimately blossomed into a dating relationship, and we were engaged soon after.
Our wedding seemingly marked the beginning of a great ministry partnership. We were both strong leaders who loved God and whose gifts appeared to complement each other. When Richard began seminary, I was able to be the primary breadwinner. When a ministry position became open earlier than we anticipated, I was his right-hand woman.
I would sing, speak, disciple, counsel, plan retreats, lead small groups, strategize — all while working a full-time job.
Ministry was difficult on so many fronts. We were at a large church where every Sunday our worth was measured by how many people showed up at our meeting. Every event was a gauge of our leadership and spiritual effectiveness, and other churches were viewed as competition.
In spite of all of that, I believed in the local church. It's where I had come to find my life and had received a second chance. I'd left a life of addiction and emptiness, and I wanted others to find that freedom, too. I certainly didn't want to go back to where I'd come from, and I filled my spare time with church activities — Bible studies, leadership meetings, camps, weekend events, and overseas trips. All that left little time for relationships with people outside the church.
I had returned to the bubble and by this time, I just wanted to escape it all. I wanted Richard to graduate from seminary and get a job so I didn't have to work and I could stay home and have babies and be the perfect pastor's wife. I knew I wouldn't be happy with that either, but it was the only other thing I knew to do.
Eventually, I got pregnant, but even with his full-time pastoral role I had to keep working part time to make ends meet. I was devastated. Actually, furious. So angry, in fact, that I didn't recognize the gift God had given me in working until many years later.
In retrospect, it was one of God's kindest gifts. It was during this time that I ended up leading a colleague to Christ and we started leading weekly Bible studies with our coworkers and their friends. None had a prior relationship with Jesus.
We met in the evening, and in spite of God's obvious favor and presence, it was a weekly battle to attend. I had to disregard the unspoken working-mom code: There shall be no evening or weekend commitments as penance for the regular abandonment of offspring. But it was the best decision I ever made, and I'm still amazed that God let me experience it.
There were no radical conversions, but lives were changed. Least of which, mine. It was so far from perfect and so beautiful. I made my boss cry, I got in an argument with a Mormon, and I missed a glaringly obvious good-Samaritan moment. But I had someone ask me straight out, "So how do you become a Christian?" and I was able to give an answer. She didn't want to be one; she just wanted to know what it took. And I was faithful to respond.
Moving from full time to part time took a surprising toll on my identity. I had pioneered a program allowing me to remain in management while working fewer hours, and I expected to experience relief and freedom. What I found was that I missed some of the perks and influence of my more profession-focused days.
But I did have the balanced life I was seeking. I was distributing mediocrity equally throughout my roles. Life as the mother of a newborn was more taxing than I had anticipated. I struggled on and off with depression, but I kept doing what was expected of me.
When our second child arrived, I stepped down from leadership at church but still attended most events and camps and overseas trips. In addition, I was starting to do more speaking with women's groups around the area.
But it was child number three that opened up the chasm. Surprisingly, taking all three kids on a college mission trip deep into Mexico with our conversion van pulling a pop-up trailer wasn't the final straw. Even the fact that I was nursing the youngest and potty training the middle child didn't put me over the edge. But the end was near.
A few months later, I sat in a friend's living room with seven other women, all of us sharing our stories. As I processed the pain and pace of the last ten years, the floodgates opened, and I realized I was done. With my body fighting exhaustion, my soul shriveling, and my emotions threatening mutiny, something needed to change.
The discussion moved to solutions, and I felt an enormous burden lifting. I was free and light and joyful. Feeling so good, in fact, that I didn't want to wait a minute to get started. I had to tell Richard immediately so I could embark on my new path.
Deep down I knew my announcement would be met with a bit of resistance. But I had no idea how complicated it would be to unwind my ministry from my marriage, how controversial my decisions would soon become, or how timeconsuming and difficult a new way of doing life would prove to be.
CHAPTER 2
The First Test
For most of my dating life, breaking up was more of a process than an event. I started with hints about my dissatisfaction, hoping my hapless beau would catch on and initiate a preemptive end to the relationship. If that didn't work (and it never did — not even once), I tilled the breakup soil with the revelation of some major emotional issue I was experiencing. This paved the way for the it's-not-you-it's-me talk, designed to convince him it was better for him that we not be together.
Even then, I rarely went cold turkey. I'd suggest more time apart, panic when he seemed fine without me, decide to try it again, remember why I wanted to end it in the first place, and ultimately become increasingly distant until the final conversation was just a formality.
Such was my breakup routine from a life of "I should."
Though I had been ineffectively hinting at my discontent for some time, the conversation with my husband in the car was an attempt to use my well-established emotional issues as a reason for my needed rest. This laid the foundation for next steps, but the journey was not over. It was just beginning.
The New Space
From that first conversation, I had asserted that lightening my load would bring more energy and freedom. But as the dust cleared, I found myself lost and alone in the open space. Far from free, I felt restless and ashamed.
What had I done? On the one hand I was ravenous for more rest, more alone time, more nothingness. I wanted time to pursue the path past "I should." On the other hand, without constant busyness (and therefore purpose) as my companion, I was floundering. I expected the act of saying no would produce immediate fruit, but I was as unhappy as ever. And now I had more time to consider my discontent.
Some days I doubted anyone had the kind of intimacy with God that they claimed. Other days I feared everyone had a better relationship with God than I and they'd soon discover my charade.
I was slowly sinking. And then, inexplicably, God intervened with a whisper.
At a gathering in her home, a wise friend read a section from Jan Johnson's book, Enjoying the Presence of God (NavPress, 1996). One sentence was all I needed. Jan realized, "I didn't need a great quiet time, I needed a God-centered lifetime."
Even now, as I recall this moment, I am undone. God's grace and kindness in revealing a new way was not in response to a request I had made. It was not the natural next step in a process of intentional spiritual maturing. I was out of ideas. I had no plan. I was a slave to my own hypocrisy and was too tired and stubborn to call out for help. I assumed this would be my existence, and I was resigned to a life of ineffective striving. I expected very little from God.
Yet he pursued me. Not confined by the small box in which I had placed him or limited by my lack of faith, he showed up to lead me on a journey I didn't know was possible.
I quickly realized I had grown tired of hearing myself talk in prayer and of putting words in God's mouth during Bible reading. I'd been analyzing and taking apart Scripture and was completely missing out on the enjoyment of God. I didn't know what it meant to have a "God- centered lifetime," but I knew it was what I wanted. I also knew my time with God was not helping me achieve it. So I quit. At least I quit practicing a discipline that was no longer moving me in the direction of God and love and freedom.
I began to get up every morning and simply sit with Jesus. I didn't read the Bible, and I didn't pray in the way I had in the past. I sat in silence, figuratively at the feet of Jesus, and waited. It had never occurred to me before that I didn't have to say anything during these times. But when I shut up, he suddenly seemed very near.
At the time, I didn't know there were hundreds of saints who had pursued God this way; that the history of the church had produced volume upon volume of practices that could guide me. But for the first time in a long while, I began to look forward to spending time with God each day.
And it was during these times that he began to show me a way forward.
Obedience Training
In the same way I had been reluctant to completely break up with my boyfriends, I was reticent to break off all ties to my former commitments. Any time I felt a burst of energy or a surge of shame, I was tempted to jump back into the things I felt I should do. Some days I couldn't remember why I had stepped out in the first place, and then I'd attend a meeting and be instantly thrown back into exhaustion and irritability. It was a toxic pattern for everyone involved.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Unlikely Rebel by Kelli Gotthardt. Copyright © 2015 Kelli Gotthardt. Excerpted by permission of Kregel Publications.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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