How It All Started

When I first met Jesse, I was twenty-three years old and fully convinced I had life figured out. I knew what I wanted, how I planned to get it, and what I was absolutely not willing to sign up for.

Jesse had finished Bible college the year before, but he wasn’t in full-time ministry. He had a steady job. He was making good money. And to me, that felt like a green light.

This was it.This was safe.This was normal.

And normal was exactly what I wanted.

I grew up a PK (Pastor’s Kid) and I had seen enough of ministry to know how heavy it could be. The long hours. The criticism. The emotional toll. The way church hurt can linger long after the doors close on Sunday. I told myself that if I chose carefully, I could sidestep all of that. I could love Jesus, serve quietly, and keep ministry at arm’s length.

So when I fell in love with Jesse (and I fell hard and fast!), I quietly hoped ministry would never really be part of our story. Maybe volunteering. Maybe part-time. Maybe someday. But always on our terms.

I wanted what I wanted and I wasn’t particularly interested in asking God what He wanted.

You know the saying, “If you want God to laugh, tell Him your plans”? Whoever said that had a solid understanding of life.

Not long into our marriage, Jesse stepped into ministry...because that's what God had called him to do. And I had already committed to walking with him through whatever came. I meant that vow. I lived it. But I would be lying if I said there weren’t days I whispered, “God, I hope this doesn’t last forever.”

Early on, we experienced church hurt. Real hurt. The kind that settles into your chest and makes you question everything. It happened a short time into our first ministry assignment, and during that season God exposed something uncomfortable in me.

My resistance to church wasn’t really about church.

It was about sin.

Hurt isn’t exclusive to ministry. It isn’t confined to pews or pulpits. Hurt follows people wherever sin is present...which is everywhere. I’ve talked with countless people inside and outside the church who have been wounded by others. Betrayed. Mocked. Dismissed. Broken by words and actions they never saw coming.

Scripture tells us that when Adam sinned, sin entered the world and with it, death, brokenness, and pain (Romans 5:12). The reason there is hurt in the church is the same reason there is hurt at work, at home, at school, and in families.

People are broken and hurting.

And hurt people hurt people.

That truth didn’t excuse the pain we experienced, but it reframed it. God slowly softened my heart and showed me that my calling wasn’t to protect myself from hurt, but to love people and love His mission. If I would stay faithful to that, He would take care of the rest.

And He has.

That doesn’t mean the hurt disappeared. Some of it still lingers. Some wounds don’t vanish just because time passes. But God has proven Himself faithful, merciful, and endlessly gracious. Over and over again, He reminds me that He is the One who called us into this life and He is the One who sustains us in it.

On the days when the road feels long, the nights when weariness settles in, when ministry feels heavier than I ever imagined...

He lifts our heads.

And somehow, the life I once tried so hard to avoid has become the place where God has done His deepest work in me.