Consideration

At the start of the season of Epiphany in January, our congregation distributed words on small wooden stars. (Epiphany begins with the story of Magi who followed a star that revealed the Messiah.) The “star words” spiritual practice invites individuals to engage with a word. Prayerfully holding onto this word month after month, something new might be revealed to you about life with the Messiah.

My word was “consideration”. And I did not like it one bit.

Many months before Epiphany, a handful of colleagues began encouraging me to consider the call to serve as bishop of our synod. Such a call had not entered my mind before their nudging, so I went to work considering, also known as discerning. My inner sense of call arrived at the same place each time I considered. This is not a season of my life to live such a call. With the travel and on-call demands, I would miss my boys’ high school years and my daughter’s formative preteen and early teenage years. And I would miss my husband. I would miss the work of writing a book and serving as a pastor at a congregation I love with a colleague for whom I am grateful.

But consideration is not a one and done deal. Not long after I finished considering, someone else would nudge and I would go back to considering, again arriving at the same place. Yesterday when the assembly cast its first ballot and I was second on the list, all hell broke loose in my heart. I looked to God with utter confusion. Hadn’t we looked at the map of my life enough by now? After a whole year wasn’t that enough consideration? “What the heck, God,” I gawked, feeling perhaps betrayed after all the time God and I had spent in consideration. And then I cried. And then my husband and my dear, dear friends texted and called and my colleague prayed with me and in the 30 minutes I had to withdraw my name from that list, I arrived at the same place, once again. And God and I are friends again.

Consideration. It is hefty word that requires setting aside all preconceived notions, all prior decisions, all assumptions, in order to consider that God may indeed have something to say. The Magi had to consider following a star in the sky to reveal to them the new Messiah, and the Messiah was not who they thought it would be. Any preconceived notions they may have had did not apply to the tiny king.

Like the number of stars that occupy the night sky, life is overwhelmed with an abundance of decisions. A few of them are gut-wrenching hard and demand you to define who and what is most important in your life in that moment. I suspect the kind of consideration that involves career choices tends to be more intense for women, as we weigh the expectations and needs of our marriage, kids, parents, and who will buy the groceries and take kids to school whenever we are considering our future work.

If we distribute “star words” again in Epiphany, I am going to be very careful in considering my selection. And like the Magi, I will be surprised by whatever God reveals.