On Molds & Not Needing to Ask Permission to Belong (Especially from Ourselves)

For all of my frequent talk about belovedness & how everyone belongs, a manifestation of my anxiety is that I often to struggle to believe this about myself— especially when it comes to my profession as a spiritual leader/pastor.

Plenty of days I feel a sense of clarity and purpose in this calling, but plenty of others I spend lots of needless energy believing the unhelpful and often harmful narratives about what pastoral leadership “should” look like, and convincing myself that I don’t fit the mold (while simultaneously wanting to buck the mold with all I’ve got! It’s a very weird paradox I live with). For example:

I don't work in a local church. I don't preach in a pulpit often. I’m a young woman. I have purple hair. I learn as much from people very disinterested in church as I do from scripture and tradition. I often ask big & hard questions that I don’t know the answers to: about what the heck it means to be part of a faith community, how to offer and participate in spiritual care in a very complex world, etc. (Now there are other parts of my story, like "playing church" as a kid, and mulling over theology books before I knew what theology is... that also shape me. But that's another tangent.)

I intuitively know that these things don’t have anything to do with my own or anyone else’s ability to lead, and will defend that conviction all day long. But extending the fullness of that compassion to *my* self & story is much harder. I hear a lot of that anxiety in many of the teens I support, as well.
But the deeper truth, I was reminded today, is that my and your unique existence— as pastors or teachers, parents, and the hundreds of other ways we show up in the world—shapes what leadership & community looks like, not the other way around.

We obviously have much work to do for this to be fully lived out.

Even so, I hope when you & I have moments of measuring our worth and abilities against an unhelpful and often oppressive standard, we remember that our existences, unique bodies & stories, gifts & passions, quirks and commitments— form what it means to be [fill in the blank with your profession/role], friend, community member.

You already belong, and nothing can change that; not even your own anxious thoughts, nor committee or governing body or whomever or whatever entity we’ve all decided gets to deem us worthy. The world needs our uniqueness, and those parts of us that can’t be expressed by anyone other than us.