Katya and Ana with parents Kathleen and Beth
Our children love our family. They tell their class at school, they tell teachers and doctors, friends at play, neighbors and strangers, and their church family. Our children love our family.
Our children know that we love them. Every night when we tuck them in and every morning when we make them breakfast, we remind them. On their birthdays, when their birth is celebrated by their extended friends and family, we remind them. Our children know that we love them.
Our children know that God loves them because their family loves them—daily, tangibly, simply. Their experience of ordinary love is what lets them see signs of God's extraordinary love in our world. Our family life is embodied communion—chosen, blessed, broken and given—the ordinary made holy by God's love.
Our children don't understand why many in the church and our country don't like our family. We love the church and work daily to bring the good news of Christ's love to all of God's children. We believe we are called and claimed as God's children—people of all colors, straight and queer, old and young, differently abled, rich and poor, wise and educated—and God loves each of us. Our children are a gift from God. Our family is a gift from God. Our calling is a gift from God.
As clergy women, we seek to serve Christ in the fallible community of the church. Called by God, trained to serve, and chosen by our congregations, we pray and preach, lead and visit, laugh and cry in this broken world. Like all human communities, we struggle with all the "-isms" anyone can think of, and create a few unique to religious communities. Yet through that struggle, there is a power in the gathered body; a Spirit that offers us tantalizing glimpses of the beloved community. Those glimpses sustain our family in times of struggle and times of joy—baby showers, weeks worth of food when cancer was found, birthday parties, endless childcare and tolerance for shorter meetings, flexible office hours, interruptions during worship—glimpses in the ordinary caring for one another, made extraordinary by God's presence.
Our children love our family. Our congregations love our families. Our God loves our family. And so do we.