Church Moms

Welcome to the "On Balance" guest blog. Every Tuesday, "On Balance" features the views of a guest writer. It could be your neighbor, your boss, your most loved or hated poster from the blog, or you! Send me your original, unpublished entry (300 words or fewer) for consideration. Your essay will be published using your full name. Obviously, the topic should be something related to balancing your life.

By Elizabeth Eisenstadt Evans

She caught up with me as I walked away from the church.

That Sunday morning, I had been leading worship at our 1,500-member contemporary evangelical church service. I was the only woman priest on the four-person clergy staff. My husband, also a priest, served in another parish. Our daughter was in first grade at a public school near our home, and our son was in the Pre-K class at the church day school. As a trailblazer -- the parish's first woman priest -- I was careful about sharing my opinions, hard because by nature I'm strongly opinionated. Only with congregational women who worked outside the home could I open up about the benefits of good day care -- how it helped my children become less shy, more willing to share, more friendly.

Clergy did not wear vestments at the contemporary service. Being a creature of willful paradox, I tried to dress stylishly, but modestly. With no scrim of ceremonial garments, I could roam the aisle during my sermon/talk, sharing anecdotes about my own familial idiosyncrasies. I doled out the small change of daily life in a confessional, sometimes humorous, consciously colloquial mode so that people would know I was, in most respects, like them. Just another fool, I tried to signal, saved by divine intervention from being a damned fool.

I exerted a lot of energy trying to be gracious to those who opposed my position as a woman in a traditionally male calling. I was an ordained woman, I was a mother -- it came naturally to me to accept and care for others. I took pride in visiting a garrulous parishioner in the hospital, unselfconsciously got on my knees to teach a Gospel lesson to four and five year olds, and tried to radiate warmth and joy at the altar while celebrating the Eucharist.

I was most conscious of the cultural divide with the church's healthy population of mothers who home-schooled their children. I accepted their choices because I support the right of every family to make those kinds of decisions for their kids. But I observed the home-schoolers with a mixture of curiosity and a bit of wistfulness. They showed me the road not taken, the road even unimagined.

Being a holy woman and a mother was a volatile mixture that triggered a range of unpredictable reactions. Subconsciously, I was always waiting for the next time when someone else's doubts or fury would blow up in my face.

That particular Sunday, a longtime parishioner cornered me in the parish house lobby. She flayed me for being a feminist dupe who had entrusted the care of my children to strangers rather than assume my proper role as keeper of the home hearth fires. Shaken and close to tears, all I could think as she ranted was, My goodness, I had no idea you hated me that much.

Get close to us women clergy, and you will find that there's a lot going on behind our scrubbed and collared Sunday faces. The mommy wars burn even in churches.

Elizabeth Eisenstadt Evans left parish ministry in 2002. She is currently a freelance writer, columnist, and supply priest living in Glenmoore, Penn., with her family. One of her projects is editing a collection of cautionary, inspiring, humorous, and candid "stories from the sanctuary" about the lives of female clergy. Are you an ordained woman-on call 24/7, trying to find time for your spouse, kids and maybe even a monthly manicure? Are you expected to give awesome pastoral care, preach sermons that convert hundreds, have kids who are role models for the entire youth group and a "perfect" marriage? She would love to hear your story at Bellettreliz@hotmail.com.

By Leslie Morgan Steiner |  October 23, 2007; 7:00 AM ET  | Category:  Guest Blogs
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