You. The Brave Pioneer.

Do you ever feel like you can’t quite find the category that you fit into?

I’m currently doing a Facebook live video series with my dad on women in the church to facilitate a healthy discussion on God’s heart, our response, and why any of this matters.

In the process, I’ve spent hours on the phone with my dad talking verses and vocation, stories and speculation, the black and white and the nauseatingly gray. In the past months and years I’ve read books, listened to podcasts or messages on women in the church, and recently even sat through a lengthy documentary of women in the Southern Baptist Convention.

And today my research took me inward, to an old journal (18 years old to be precise) where I had written my 14 year old commentary on the very same issues I’m still passionately pondering today.

That girl has evolved so much, and I wonder if she’d be surprised to know she’s an author and speaker, who doesn’t fit quite as neatly into the church or ministry molds she once imagined.

I wish in many ways I could go back and speak confidence and purpose into her where she lived in guilt and inhibition. But what I’d tell myself all those yesterdays ago is the same thing I’d tell me (and you) in this moment today:

Keep thinking deeply and critically and never stop asking the questions. Change belongs to those who refuse to become complacent or satisfied with the easy answers.

Seek God, whether in rest or in wrestle. You are made to return to the presence of Jesus over and over, until you’ve tasted His glorious goodness and crave Him like air. And don’t resist all your broken expectations and fears and longings; they are an unlikely catalyst to launch you surrendered straight into His heart.

When you begin to understand who He is, you’ll need to dwell long and hard in the uncomfortable space between God’s heart and reality.

Because in that discrepancy you’ll find part of the injustice that God has designed you to work with Him to redeem. (And remember, always, that He is the Redeemer…you merely speak and uphold the freedom He has already created and bought with His blood.)

Sometimes you’ll feel lonely. Sometimes you’ll feel misunderstood, unappreciated, or overlooked by the systems that be. But take courage, because if you find yourself walking alone on the road, it may very well be that you are actually leading the pack. Look around and you may see that God has made you to blaze a trail, and yes, others are following behind.

Pay special attention when God brings you into spheres of influence that don’t have labels. When you don’t fit into a box, I believe God just might be using you to expand the box that currently exists, pushing it farther into the freedom He designed.

You are a pioneer. Yes, you. Maybe you’re the first from your family to graduate college; the brave one who quit her job to stay home with her kids or abandoned her guilt to pursue a career or calling in the midst of mothering.

You’re the one who stands for the vulnerable when the system stands against them. You’re the woman who bravely speaks or leads at her church, knowing that young girls are watching and you are shaping their view of God’s inclusive heart.

You do what your mother, your father, your brother never did. You forge through the pain you never knew you could find strength to step into.

You’re the one who STAYS in the battle when no one else seems to see it your way because you love and because you are committed to a vision no one else can quite grasp yet. You are the one who shows up again and again as the minority, the visionary, the prophet whose voice paves the way.

You’re underfunded, you seem to lack all appropriate qualifications, you have no map or guide, and yet you’re living brave in the tension.

You are a pioneer whenever you begin something you’ve never done before in an act of faith before God. And you’re a pioneer when you pursue the Kingdom path that has been overlooked and barricaded, clearing debris for the ones trudging behind.

You’re a pioneer when you have the courage to walk away from the way things have always been done, not out of rebellion but from deep conviction.

You may feel lonely at times, out there on your own. But you are a trendsetter, a change creator, a bridge builder…and you are in better company than you know. For we are surrounded by a great cloud of witnesses who have walked in the steps of freedom for us all, and enlarged our collective understanding of God’s Kingdom and redemptive work.

Don’t quit. Keep walking. For the Lord your God is with you, wherever you go. And He will be faithful to complete the work He begins in you. Let Him light your less traveled path, one step, two steps. But keep walking, and not just for you…but for the brothers and sisters who will one day walk down the path of your inspiration…and farther still, because you cleared the way.