"I carried a watermelon."

Remember that moment in Dirty Dancing where Baby is at the staff dance for the first time and meets Johnny? She had been wandering around her sheltered world of scheduled activities and family vacation completely restless and well...bored. She jumped at the opportunity to follow someone into a world described as, "If your parents knew, they'd kill you." The room is smokey and packed. It's loud and chaotic. This is exhilarating and passionate and ohmygosh Johnny is so hot! She's totally out of her element, put on the spot, and all she can think to say is, "I carried a watermelon." Yeah, I had that moment yesterday, times 10.

In my quest to learn more about start-up organizations and meet like-minded people I attended the Arizona Entrepreneurship Conference. I find that I learn A LOT from business books and people with a little imagination about how it applies to the church. I was particularly excited to hear from so many female entrepreneurs, in particular, Gloria Feldt, Co-founder and President of Take the Lead. She's a pioneer and advocate of equality for women in leadership roles across all professions. I briefly met her at lunch where she was incredibly supportive of me as a female, new community building pastor. Then she asked if I'd be willing to answer an on the spot question during her talk that afternoon. Even as I answered "Sure!", I had a bad feeling.

Ms. Feldt's talk was inspirational and thought provoking, but I shook through the whole thing. She invited me and 2 other women forward and posed this question:
"When did you first feel like you knew you could do anything?"
With, I dunno, 80 people staring at me my mind went blank. Empty. Incapable of recalling any memory. Did I have a life before this incredibly uncomfortable moment? Nope, nothing. I'd been born yesterday. Every bit of networking I'd done that morning came crashing back down on me. No one had been negative or dismissive, but in each interaction I'd felt I needed to legitimize what I do and who I am. Come on Sarai, this is ridiculous! You're a pastor! You speak for a living, you're on the spot all the time. Just say something good enough and move on. Still nothing.

What I ended up saying was so incredibly stupid and small and not at all true that I can't even bring myself to repeat it. I told my husband through tears and I just can't bring it up again. Trust me, it was just...so. not. even. close. In fact, "I carried a watermelon" would have been SOOOO much better.
And of course I've been obsessing about it since.

I could have talked about standing in the kitchen with my mom when I was 5 explaining why I needed to be baptized.

I could have said something about watching my mom, who had polio as a kid and has lived her entire life compensating for a mostly dead left leg.

I could have shared that I have a voice mail saved on my phone from my dad that he left in July of 2010, 3 years ago, in which he gushed about how proud he is of me and my husband. I listen to it at least once a month and re-save it.

I could have talked about the first time I saddled a horse by myself.

I could have bragged about finishing my first and last full marathon and how I was so proud of my finish time at 7 hours, 46 minutes that I started to cry.

I could have gushed about how incredibly powerful the Holy Spirit flowed through me at my ordination last summer that I actually fear I may never feel that level of beauty again.

Or that I feel empowered by serving others, by baptizing their children and burying their loved ones, that I HAVE to preach because the Holy Spirit is so strong sometimes in my soul that it just bursts out of me, that even though it's exhausting I'm incredibly proud of the close relationship I have with my children....

But I didn't say any of those things. This moment of humility felt much like the first time someone asked me if I were saved. Ahem. I'm a United Methodist, in the west. We don't say "saved." What did that even mean? Ms. Feldt's question, although well posed and looking for a candid answer to prove her point, came to me with the same baggage: a presupposition that I believed the same as her. I don't think there's a singular moment of salvation in the same way I don't think I've ever felt that I could do anything. She assumed that there was a singular moment in my life when I'd had that feeling.
I've never felt like "I can do anything." The key word being "anything." I've enjoyed plenty of times when I feel like I can do plenty, or a certain thing. But anything? No. My husband is a chemical engineer. While I'm on top of the preaching and leading meetings or listening to someone share their life, I'd fall on my face if I had to rattle off equations or design the flow rates for a sulfur unit. Why should I think myself capable of doing anything?

There's always something else to work on. There are always an infinite amount of little itty-bitty steps that in the end add up to one incredible thing. And once I've reached that thing, I don't tend to dilly dally, even in the joy of the moment. Is five minutes enough? Or maybe a day or two? But then there's always something shiny and sparkly and tantalizing just over the next hill to go after. And it begins again. The quest to conquer a new horizon. The path to perfection with Christ who loves and forgives me.