As a woman studying for and participating in ministry – a largely male dominated field – feeling like I am too-much and not-enough is especially magnified. I feel too loud, too direct, too passionate, and too outspoken in comparison to many of the versions of femininity the church has often elevated as desirable. I have more often been made to feel small and ashamed of these qualities than I have felt encouraged to hone and channel them into good use. Here, the inadequacies emerge: I don’t feel feminine enough, soft enough, or quiet enough to be valuable as a woman, and I don’t feel brilliant enough, level-headed enough, or professionally qualified enough to make it among the men. Existing between these two extremes is not only exhausting, but is a weighty reality for many women, particularly those in ministry.
The more I walk this life with God, the more I sense the tensions that accompany each step. The tensions of being both spirit and body, of belonging to this Earth and the coming Kingdom. The tensions of feeling like too much and not enough, of investing in life now and the life to come. The tensions of honouring and caring for this body while simultaneously acknowledging its impermanence. I won’t pretend I have the answers to navigating these tensions gracefully – I am still very much in process, as we all are. But in this process, when I am overwhelmed and my navigation is decidedly ungraceful, I make myself look to Jesus.
Jesus, who was fully God and fully Man. Jesus, who heard and knew God’s voice so intimately. Jesus, who took part in the creation at the beginning of time and who stepped into that creation to show us the love of God. Jesus, who looked people in the eyes and really, truly saw them. Jesus, who walked alongside people in their pains and joys and losses and gains – the Saviour who embodied presentness and God’s Presence within the tensions. Maybe the path toward embodying the way Jesus lived with these tensions lies in embracing mystery over certainty, seeking God’s presence over independence, and choosing grace over exactness.
I think of my 5-year-old daughter – she is a little bit wild and untamed, confident, energetic, bold, welcoming and caring. I wonder how old I was when I began to believe the qualities that God placed in me somehow did not belong? When did I begin to believe that to be welcomed among God’s people, I needed to diminish myself - not in a Christ-like, God-focussed way, but by a self-hating and self-doubting shrinking?
And in the end, when did I begin to believe the voices of flawed human beings and the voice of God - my Abba, my Creator - were one and the same?
Beginnings aside, this self-immolation can only burn for so long, and it leaves you sifting through lifeless ash every time. How like God, though, to meet us while we are clothed in our sackcloth and ashen hopelessness, and to surprise us with the gifts of new questions and new possibilities.
With time, I learned to eagerly await these questions, these gifts, like love letters from the God who sees me: What if the very aspects of myself I learned to mute were actually God-given and God-breathed gifts? What if God delights in the best parts of this lion-hearted too-muchness and this selfless not-enoughness? What if God is bigger than the ideas that I had passed down to me, and bigger than small beliefs born in well-meaning but unimaginative minds? What if God invites us to dwell in more tension, not less? That by choosing to live in the tension between Christ’s declaration of ‘It is finished’ and my ongoing lifetime of spiritual refinement, I might begin to mirror Jesus’ in ways I hadn’t anticipated?
Tension then, if we allow it, may be the place that God’s Presence fosters dependence. The place where Grace cradles us and reminds us we are neither too much nor not enough, but intricately woven, fully known, and deeply loved by God. Imagine if we treated the tensions we experience not as a spiritual puzzle or a perceived impossibility, but as a thin, sacred, holy place - the place where God calls us closer because we cannot navigate it alone. We weren’t meant to.
I hope in my own earnest attempts to live well in the tensions, to listen closer to God’s truth about how I am made, to invite the Spirit into my own feelings of too-much and not-enough, that I can be part of building a church that won’t tear down or shame my wild little girl, but will honour her God-given gifts and call her to use them to keep building the church. I hope she will know all of her belongs, all of her is welcome, and all of her is needed. I pray she comes to see that living in tensions is a humbling, stretching, and, at times, uncomfortable place to live, but that God sits there, patiently inviting us in, and because God is there, she can be confident it will be passionately, intensely, profoundly and beautifully good.
God, when opinions and expectations press in and push You out, help us turn our faces towards You. Tune our hearts to Your voice and give us the courage to live out Your truth well, glorifying and honouring You in all we do. Amen.
Marina McLeod is a worship leader, student, mother and wife. Currently a Graduate student at Acadia Divinity College, she loves studying theology, history, gender dynamics and the mystery of God. She is passionate about women in the church and can most often be found curled up with a book, or sitting at her piano. She lives on the north shore of Prince Edward Island with her three kids and her husband, Kevin.
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