Black Sheep Diary

…confessions from the back of the pen

I have always seen things a bit differently.

I was raised to think that seeing things through a different lens was good. God made us unique. God loves variety.

Ironically, when I felt called into ministry, I felt pressure to let go of the things that made me different in favor of conformity. I had to cut my hair. I had to stop smoking cigarettes and doing drugs. I had to clean up my language and read my Bible. Of course, many of these were necessary changes and part of an all-important spiritual transformation. But I over-corrected. Some of the best things that made me, well, me, were lost in that process: my creativity, my curiosity, and my humor, to name a few.

For too many years I felt like something was wrong with me because I didn’t naturally fit the mold of what I thought a good pastor ought to be. I carried a double dose of shame: I felt bad that I didn’t “fit in” as a pastor type and I also felt bad about having to hide my fullest, truest self to live up to that role. I felt like a black sheep in the back of the pen.