Send me

My parents' marriage began with a betrayal. My maternal grandfather was in the army, so my mom's family moved around a lot. She was shy and introverted, and she struggled to make friends and establish roots. As an adult, all she wanted was a single place to call home.

While my father went off to seminary and thought he might be ordained, he fully intended to work as a chaplain with the mentally ill. But eventually--after they were married, as my mother routinely points out--his calling shifted, and he began to work in local congregations. They'd both been raised Methodist, and so the recovering army brat found herself a preacher's wife, bound to her husband--who was bound to the itinerancy.

We tell these stories now with mock horror and melodramatic flourishes. Despite the vocational bait and switch, my parents have been happily married for 34 years. But the United Methodist Church's itinerant system has been shaping my life--for better and worse--since long before my own call to ministry asserted itself.