Purity Pirates and a Jesus Feminist: Reflections on freedom, ministry and high school

When I was seven or eight, I remember my dad telling me I could be anything I wanted when I grew up to which I promptly responded: "anything except a preacher."

Because even my seven year old self knew that only boys got to grow up and be preachers.

When I was in middle school at a conservative Christian school, I listened to my female teachers (who loved us dearly) lecture us on the dangers of dressing immodestly. We were lined up against the wall and our skirts were measured one by one to prove the point. I remember our principal's wife telling us about her unbuttoned shirt and a boy who made unwanted advances.

"When I got home, my mothers slapped me and said I should have known better. And you know what, girls. I know now she was right."

My friends and I laughed it off. From then on, she was known as the Purity Pirate, but I remember thinking that I was glad my little sister wasn't there that day for girl's chapel.

Soon after, I began to joke with my best friend that we were closeted feminists. We had no idea what that meant really, but we were pretty sure it meant that we thought girls were just as good as every boy in our class.

I began to feel a call to ministry in the deep places of my heart. I was looking into Bible colleges, but getting a degree in being a pastor's wife seemed terrible. The colleges I visited felt heavy and suffocating. So I began to feel led into missions, because when you're in the mission field, you don't have to be a missionary's wife, but just a missionary.

But then I met my first "real' feminist. She came and taught us AP English my junior and senior year. She was a Democrat with a PhD who called herself a feminist. She was everything I wanted to be. She had seen the world, spoke multiple languages, had a beautiful family and loved Jesus more than anyone I ever met.

I remember telling her my fears over disobeying God by not going to a Christian college, begging her to tell me how you know something is God's will for your life.

And she must have taken pity on my frazzled awkward seventeen year old self because she asked me a question. She asked me what was God's will for my life was for that day. I remember stuttering something about being a good student and a good friend and daughter. About loving the people God placed in my life.

"Exactly. So go do that. And what's God's will for your life tomorrow?"

"The same thing?"

"Right, so just take it one day at a time. God will lead you when you get there."

And those words were freedom.

And those words were the beginning.

The story, of course, continued. I would pack up my bags the next year and move a few states away for (a decidedly not Christian) college. Soon I would have my first female pastor and the summer I would spend as her intern in a struggling church would change me. I would fall more in love with the Bible and decide this was it. This was what I wanted to do forever.

I would fall in love with a boy with kind eyes and crazy hair who loved God but not in the skinny jean, worship leader kind of way like all the other boys I knew.  I would read and study and preach and meet more Jesus-loving women (and men) who continued to teach me more and more what becoming more like Christ can look like.

But this piece of advice from my first Jesus feminist set me free to go and follow after God wherever that led me, to set aside the life script of a good Christian woman and just love Jesus.

This post is a part of Sarah Bessey's synchroblog celebrating the release of her book, Jesus Feminist. Be sure to check it out!