‘Far more precious than jewels’: A trans woman’s ordinary dream
Photograph by Sarah Brown via Unsplash
Madison McClendon
At the recent retreat of my Baptist Women in Ministry mentoring cohort, I was blessed to hear from a panel of Baptist women. All ministers, these women shared about their journeys from their communities of birth to their communities of faith, and into their leadership positions within those congregations.
As they told their stories, a refrain emerged, familiar to anyone who has listened to women tell their stories of calling and courage in Baptist life: they had not been called to be pastors’ wives. They were called to be pastors.
And as I listened to these stories, an uncomfortable feeling rose up within me.
I felt like a traitor.
Because as these wonderful, courageous women told their stories, tears rose within me, tears at the thought of a more profound, more tender truth lurking at the heart of my existence as a trans woman.
That truth is simple: it is easier for me to be a pastor than to become a pastor’s wife.
I had a different story from these women. Instead of being steered away from my hope, I was told that the gifts of ministry laid upon me were visible. I was steered into roles of responsibility in my youth group, leadership within the congregation, and preaching on Youth Sunday. I was encouraged to read what I wanted on religion, ask questions about God and our faith, and explore educational opportunities in theology, religious leadership, and the arts of ministry.
I never had to fight against the perception that I wouldn’t be qualified for the role of minister. No one looked at me and immediately thought that the shape of my body or the sound of my voice made me incompatible with church leadership. Even after I came out as gay, I still did not struggle with the idea that my gender alone made me incapable of being called by God.
But now that the truth of myself is clear, a truth known always to my God but only recently to me and others, the truth is this: I might still be able to thread the needle required to find a church to lead. There are churches in Baptist life that would see, honor, love, and respect a trans woman as their leader. They may be few, but they exist.
But it is harder to imagine a world where a good Baptist man, one raised in the same system of love, care, community, and advantage that I was raised in, would look at me and say that I would be worthy of being his wife. It is hard to imagine him even thinking of me as a woman, let alone someone he might date, love, cherish, and marry.
As we enter Pride month, it’s easy for mainstream culture to imagine queer people as wildly different from them. We queers encourage it a little bit. We wear our rainbows and dye our hair. We get a little crazy.
My ordinary dream is a radical dream for a trans woman. And since Pride is a celebration that makes space for radical dreams, it also creates space for the ordinary ones.
We fight for visibility a little more this month, because we are stronger, safer, and less able to be swept under the rug. We must make you see us. We are here. We love, cry, dance, laugh, weep, and we will survive everything this world throws at us until Christ returns to draw us all to his bosom and prove at last that we, too, are his holy people.
But we also have very ordinary, normal, even boring dreams.
As I write this, I’ve been sitting on the couch in the aftermath of Mother’s Day. A woman at my church brought me the same rose that she gave to all the other women, the same gift, and the same encouragement to join the activities. The men of our Spanish-language church served me along with every other mother in the room, whether she had given birth or not.
And those simple, normal, enveloping, welcoming acts, were not moments where I stood out. They simply acknowledged who I am: myself, seen by others, honored by them, and incorporated fully into the same community of honor and respect that all other women present were treated to on that day.
Many queer people genuinely do want society-altering changes. I do not want to pretend that there aren’t those of us who want radically different ways of orienting our societies, our lives, our loves, and our ways of relating with our gender, familiar relationships, and friendships. They often have a point. Sometimes Pride is loud, sometimes it is a dance, a party, or a disruptive riot.
But sometimes it’s a woman on her couch, alone, watching “Jeopardy” and folding her laundry.
Her dreams in that moment aren’t of being a crusader for justice or a sexually liberated civil rights protester or a go-go girl at the Pride march, as much as these dreams might matter to others.
Her dream is to fold more than just her own laundry.
She wishes that she were folding it for her husband, too. She wishes she could be putting up dinner, then laying the children to bed, and finally falling asleep in a home surrounded by a family she built with her great labors of gentleness, tenderness, love, and beauty.
That ordinary dream is a radical dream for a trans woman.
And since Pride is a celebration that makes space for radical dreams, it also creates space for the ordinary ones.
The redeemed world for queer people – for me – is undoubtedly the world where I could assume leadership in a church. Those dreams, for women and queer people alike, are critical, essential goals for a more perfect, beloved community.
But the redeemed world is also one where a trans woman can be seen as a worthy wife, far more precious than jewels, whose husband’s heart trusts in her. She does him good, and not harm, all the days of her life.
It is a world where she has a share in the fruit of her hands, and her works praise her in the city gates.
And it is the world God wants. For you. For me.
Madison McClendon obtained her M.Div. from the University of Chicago Divinity School in 2012, where she now serves as the Assistant Director of Alumni Relations and Development. She is the Moderator of North Shore Baptist Church in Chicago, Illinois, and serves on the board of the Baptist Peace Fellowship of North America/Bautistas por la Paz, in addition to previous service on the board of the Association of Welcoming and Affirming Baptists and BJC.
The views expressed are those of the author and not necessarily those of American Baptist Home Mission Societies.
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