Recently a pastor told me that she felt God called her to ministry without a masters so she could "relate to everyday women."
I have a masters, and I find the only thing it does is make others think they can't relate to me. People expect me to know more than I do. Sometimes they're intimidated about working with me. I teach Sunday school solo.
Other people's assumptions may make them less likely to approach me, but my education did nothing to my ability to relate to them. Yes, I may have written longer essay, but I've also experienced marriage, miscarriage, minimum wage, childbirth, layoffs, leaky water tanks, PMS, fender benders, and wrinkles - just like "everyday women". When I looked over the edge of my grandma's casket, I didn't think theological thoughts, I wept. And when I weedwacked my ankle, it bled.
Critical thinking textbooks, David Bergen novels, and Dr. Seuss' Foot Book are equally at home on my coffee table. I might read Habakkuk and Revelation more than most people, but despite my wall of commentaries and Hebrew lexicons, I often pick up my Bible and have no idea what I'm supposed to get out of it. I have never worn my grad cap to bed and dreamed of heavenly horsemen. I don't eat scrolls, or locusts.
I'm surrounded by way too much poop and toothpaste to ever loose touch with "the real world." So please, tell me about your rotten, smelly, grace-filled day. I can relate.
3 comments:
I can TOTALLY relate! I found there are a number of things about me, that I have to let out at a slow leak, or people just get overwhelmed. I found that I wait months before I'd let people know I have a MA, I'm married to a pastor, I lived in Greece for 2.5 years, and I have 2 children with autism. If I want to watch someone shut down fast, I mention one of those things early on in the relationship! I get tired of that look of fear, or the glazed over look.
Your list just makes me want to take you out for coffee and listen to all the stories you must have! I'm sure I've been guilty of glazing over on people who've had very different experiences from my own. I guess that's why we all - whether police wives or starving academics or mothers of autism or homeschoolers - gravitate towards our own kind; it feels so much better to see nodding heads than glazing eyes! But we're all women; more same than different.
I'd love to go for coffee! I have never met an ASD mummy that I couldn't jabber with for hours!!! We all "get" each other without explaining everything, and I have yet to have one glaze over on me!!
I agree that we all have a lot more in common then we realize!
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