I’ve got an interview with a church. I love this church. There’s always been something about this church that calls to me–even when I was in junior high school, and the idea of being a pastor wasn’t even on my radar’s radar. I have a mole in the congregation, and she called and said that the head of the call committee came to visit her and said the only concern the call committee had about me was my lack of experience (3 years) when I’m up against people who have been in the ministry for 20.

It sort of pissed me off. I wanted to point out that, actually, since I served 3 VERY different congregations, I actually have NINE years of experience. I wanted to point out that someone who has been in the ministry for 20 years is probably eyeing retirement in the very near future, thereby leaving this congregation right back in the needing a pastor place they are now. I wanted to point out that in some ways it’s foolish to compare experience in the form of years when it comes to ministry–that it’s perfectly possible for someone who’s been in minstry three years to have done more than someone who’s been in the ministry for 20 years. For example, I stopped counting the number of funerals I’ve done when I got to 30–in my first year in Kansas. I’ve had extensive experience with crisis ministry. I can preach FAR better than almost any one (I know that sounds arrogant, but it’s not. It’s simply an acknowledgement of a gift I’ve been given. I’m blonde. I’m opinionated. I’m a woman. And I’m a preacher.) I know.

So I’m a little nervous. Mole says I shouldn’t be, because as soon as I open my mouth in the interview I’ll knock the call committee’s socks off, and she knows with everything in her that I’m the pastor her congregation needs.

My mom’s suggestion? To be a little reserved, and not as enthusiastic. What?!? I’m sorry, but if I were on a call committee, and I interviewed a candidate who was reserved and not enthusiastic, I’d think: hmmm, they don’t seem particuarly excited about this call. I think we’ll pass. I really don’t get why my mother’s first avenue of advice is always to not act like myself. To be something other than what I am. To tone myself down. It always has been–it took me years of living very far away from her to let me be comfortable being who I am. Loud. Gregarious. Engaging. Enthusiastic. Direct. All those things that she thinks I should somehow subvert in order to get what I want. She said the same thing when I was dating–my thought has always been how unfair it must be to fall in love with someone who presents themselves as one thing, and then reveals themselves to be something else. Either as a lover, or a pastor.

*sigh* And M and I are misfiring. We can’t seem to spend any time together, and when we do, we just bicker. I’m frusterated because he’s not prepping for his comps like I wish he would, and I’m frustrated because he blames having to watch the girls for that, and I’m frustrated because I’ve watched him watch the girls, and it apparently involves his playing his Nintendo DS for hours in his massage chair while the girls crawl around on the floor and watch videos. Then he tells me he needs “me time”–to the one who works 40 hours a week, who never gets to see her kids, who tries to help out with the kids as much as she can when she IS home, and the only “me time” she gets is if she sneaks off to work a half hour early so she can pick up tampons at Target and grab a cinnamon dulce latte at Starbucks.

I feel like we need to have a fight. A nice, big, loud fight to clear the air. But I refuse to fight in front of my parents, because then my mother is right there, whispering in my ear, wondering if M is unmotivated, and how he doesn’t seem to take care of the girls as well as I take care of the girls, and she just feeds and feeds and feeds the whole situation.

Rar.