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Riding my bike from my daughter’s day care, I keep thinking about how to deal with our longing for each other. It’s intertwined with my feeling of guilt. I still can’t fully accept that I feel so much better working full time than part time.
I know that she is very happy at the day care. She loves her friends there; she’s having fun and learning things that I never could teach her. But still. When I leave on Sunday mornings, she asks me, “Why do you work today? Why do you work when I’m off?” The only answer I can give is: “Because I’m a priest, darling. That’s how priests work.” Sometimes she clings to me and asks me not to leave. That’s when I leave my bleeding heart on the floor, loosen her little fingers as gently as possible, and cry all the way to work.
I know I’m privileged. I live in a country where day care is subsidized; we only pay about $110 a month. I got to spend much time with my daughter Sofia when she was really young. I was on maternity leave (with 80% of my salary) for five months full time and three months half time. My husband then stayed at home on paternity leave (with the same benefits) for another seven months. I know this is unique. I know I shouldn’t complain. But I can’t stop my heart from bleeding. I can’t make my four-year-old daughter understand that this is the way it is and will be. I can’t understand why I’m actually happier working than being at home all the time with my beloved child.
So, there it is. My husband would disagree, but sometimes I secretly suspect that I’m a better priest than mother. Guilt is my constant companion. I wonder how all the clergy men of old managed. Didn’t they lament never seeing their children (and they had so many!)? Didn’t their children cling to them when they left? Did they ever feel guilty?
In the Church of Sweden, we have two female bishops (out of thirteen). The one that was elected last, the bishop of Lund (who used to be a professor at the Lutheran School of Theology in Chicago), has a family – a husband and two daughters. I was so relieved when she was elected. The previous female bishops had neither spouse nor children.
I know I should not be such a prejudiced person, but it’s nice to know that now, finally, I have a bishop who knows all about feeling guilty when leaving on a Sunday, who knows how motherhood and priesthood clash and how they enrich each other. Truth be told, I would never, could never, exchange the one for the other. Being a mother, constantly longing for my child, gives me an understanding for God. Feeling constantly guilty reminds me that I’m constantly lacking, as mother, as human, as Christian. Only God can make me whole. Read more
This month we feature the photography of Elizabeth Marie Melchionna.
After graduation, Elizabeth Marie took a slightly different route than most seminary students. She applied–and received–a Luce Fellowship, a prestigious scholarship that allows young American professionals to live and work a year in Asia. During her year in Chiang Mai at Payap University’s McGilvary College of Divinity, Elizabeth Marie taught liturgy and English. She also traveled extensively throughout southeast Asia.
Below are portraits of three women (the first from Indonesia, the latter two from Thailand), while the fourth is a picture of a Thai church, far from any paved roads: Read more
It can be difficult to receive care when you are called to be a care-giver.
It was scary and stressful, and I’m still not over the shock of realizing he and I might not be invincible after all. It was also the first time that I have been on the receiving end of my congregation’s big-hearted approach to pastoral care. I’m still reeling over how strange and wonderful that felt.
See, I’m the minister–right. I’m the giver of pastoral care, not the receiver. I am the font of comfort and the number one resource in my congregation for compassionate nods-of-the-head and hugs-only-when-appropriate. I am the pastor, and since I never remember my local priest comforting my family very much when I was a kid, I’ve seldom (if ever) really known what it was to be pastored to in a time of trauma, which is why I was confused this week, if honored and grateful at the same time.
When hubby was in surgery, I was sitting on the floor of the only place in the hospital with reception grasping a cell phone in each hand while talking to our parents and family members, giving them updates and generally just trying to hold it together. As I sat on the floor juggling these cell phones and wondering if I even had it in me to cry, one of my more wonderful congregants walked up to me.
Here’s where the story gets surprising. When I saw her, my first thought was not “Oh, how lovely that she’s come to see me,” but rather, “oh crap there’s one of my congregants and I haven’t showered in a couple of days and am not really able to talk to her like a minister right now and I’m sitting on the floor in the pajama shirt I was wearing when we fled the house at three am and she’s probably got some relative in surgery and I didn’t even know about it and I hope she’s ok and, deep breath I need to get off of these two phones and talk to my congregant.” Read more
