Thank God for the Journey: Deaconesses

Thank God for the Journey

by Stephanie Suggs

Why am I pursuing commissioning as a deaconess?

The short answer is, "I was led by God."

The long answer is my life journey. When I was eight -- about the time news reports carried pictures of the Ethiopian famine of the early 1980s -- I announced to my family that when I grew up I was going to be a missionary pediatrician. This aspiration lasted only until I nearly flunked out of high-school chemistry. I revised my plans, deciding to become a writer. Carson McCullers and Flannery O’Connor were among my role models.

In college, I completed a bachelor’s degree in English literature, believing I would land a job as an editor with a publishing company and write novels in my spare time. At the time of my graduation, I had already been rejected by the University of North Carolina-Greensboro’s creative-writing master’s program, and three months later I received the 63^rd and final rejection from publishing companies around the country.

You know the cliché, "When God shuts the door, God opens a window?" In my case, God slammed the door and locked the windows. I was at the wrong house.

The pull toward mission was there. It always had been as I sought to find practical applications for the concepts I learned in religion, ethics and philosophy classes. I also believe Micah 6:8 is meant to be my reality:

God has told you, O mortal, what is good; and what does the Lord require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?

I ended up writing grants for a social-justice advocacy organization in south Atlanta called Project South: Institute for the Elimination of Poverty and Genocide. Working in a social-justice movement I learned:

The world must change; too many people are hurting.
Racism, sexism and heterosexism are built into the social fabric of this nation. To dismantle these oppressions requires –- on the personal level –- a deep consciousness, the willingness to see through a flimsy fabric that appears as thick as canvas, and the ability to recognize and defeat our own contributions to oppression.
The conscious and purposeful dismantling of oppression on personal, social and institutional levels is vital to successfully changing the world for the better.
Solutions to the problems must come from those who have suffered. Change must be organized from the bottom up.
Oppression does not happen in a vacuum. A successful movement for social justice will organize and mobilize the full gamut of issues and constituencies.
We must never neglect to protect the rights already won and to record the history of those who came before us. We must let that history guide us.
Deep consciousness, clear vision and sound strategy will make the boldest goals a reality.

Somewhere along the way, a friend handed me a brochure about the United Methodist deaconess movement. When I read the purpose of a deaconess, I had no doubt I had found where I belong. Deaconesses have a long history of being agents of change.

Thank God for my journey. I now am part of a movement of women with a deep collective consciousness, a clear vision set forth in Scripture, and the potential to create a sound strategy that will truly make us a force to be reckoned with.

Stephanie Suggs is associate director of Wesley Community Centers in Atlanta, Ga. She plans to be commissioned as a deaconess in October 2002.