Nina (The miracle continues)
Nina Reeves was the first person to see a preacher in me. Or, at least, she was the first person to ask me to testify to what God had done in my life. I was in high school, it was maybe the summer of 1990. For reasons that are still not clear to me, Nina suggested to the program coordinator that I would be a good person to talk about how God had seen me through troubled times. It was my very first week of camp at Sumatanga, and Nina had just met me that week. It is still a miracle to me that I was asked. And it is just as much a miracle that I said yes.
The power was out that night, so I spoke to 100+ high school students and their college/adult counsellors in the twilight darkness of the Assembly Hall. There was no microphone to amplify my shaky voice, but also no womp-womp-womp of ceiling fans to drown me out. I spoke by candlelight of heartache, rejection and despair, and the faithfulness of God through my church and youth group. I talked about showing up to church even when I was too sad to sing, and finding that being a part of a community that loved me sustained me through that dark time.
Teenage me was so earnest. Probably a little too earnest. The next morning I had my very first vulnerability hangover - that now-predictable state of a stress headache combined with the certain fear that I had shared too much to be liked or respected by any sane person with healthy boundaries. I still had two more days of camp to face the people who had heard my story of loss and redemption that now seemed silly and over-dramatic in the light of day.
But the miracle continued. My earnest too-muchness was met with love and affirmation. The community that Nina created and cultivated over generations of campers and counselors was one where authentic testimony was not just welcomed, but expected. It was not too much to speak of deep pain and the loving God who sees us through it. It was normal.
In 2007 I made what felt like a catastrophic decision not to continue on the path toward ordination. The list of people I was worried about disappointing was crazy long, and Nina was near the top. She’d been telling us at countless Church Related Vocations weekends (that’s CRV, baby) that any vocation could be a Christian one. If she was trying to make me believe in the priesthood of all believers, it worked. If she was disappointed in me, she didn’t show it.
It’s not an exaggeration to say that I am who I am today because of Nina and the community she nurtured – a community that continues to shape me and support me even now. The most consistent feedback I get when I preach, teach, or pray is that I’m “real” and that people can find themselves in my words. You can thank Nina for that. All these years later, I keep trying to tell that story that I was asked to tell so many years ago, and it hasn’t changed much. I have known the darkness and it is real. Heartache, rejection, and despair - all real. The goodness of God is not something that darkness can overcome, but it’s almost impossible to know that on our own. So God gave us each other. We can touch and see and hear that goodness in real, messy, complicated people who show up for us, and allow us to show up for them. The miracle continues. Thank you, Nina.
