I was born in Clovis, New Mexico at Cannon Air Force Base. My dad was deployed to Vietnam as an airplane mechanic, so my mother and I moved to Archer City, Texas to live with his parents when I was only a few months old. After dad returned home, I gained a younger brother and sister.
I attended the one school in the Archer City school district, a single campus for all grades, from kindergarten through third grade. We moved to Odessa, Texas during a busy time in the oil field. I attended Odessa schools from 4-10 grade, where I participated in Orchestra and Band. I marched in the Odessa High School Marching Band and attended band camps at Angelo State University. When jobs dried up in the oil rig mechanic sector, we moved back to Archer City where I graduated. For college, I attended Angelo State University for my freshman year, but family circumstances led me back closer to home. I graduated with my bachelor’s degree in nursing from Midwestern State University in Wichita Falls.
Just before I graduated from Midwestern, I went on a blind date with my husband, David. After graduation, we moved to Lewisville, Texas where he and a friend started a private cardiology practice while I went to work as a registered nurse in the operating rooms at Parkland Hospital. Building on my OR experience, I later went to work for a high-profile ophthalmic surgery practice.
Eighteen months after our wedding, David suffered a scuba diving accident while we were vacationing in Hawaii and the pattern of our lives changed. We decided it was time to settle in and start the family we had dreamed of having. Sam and Ben joined us, and I was mostly a stay-at-home mom through those years.
My mom tells me that when I was young, I talked about serving God with my life. I do not remember those early proclamations, but I do remember feeling God’s call when I was in high school. We had always attended Southern Baptist churches, mostly with my grandmother. I was baptized as a teenager at First Baptist Church in Archer City but knew that I could not serve in the way I felt called in that system. I had been to SBC conventions with my grandmother and heard the debates about women in leadership. Later, I felt as though my nursing career allowed me to live out God’s call on my life by caring for others and providing healing care in ways not allowed in that church system.
David was baptized into the Episcopal church at a very young age and had always attended the Episcopal Church. He had been an acolyte, youth member, etc his entire life. When he and I were dating, he introduced me to the Episcopal Church and I knew I had found my spiritual home. As I got more involved volunteering at ministries at Annunciation Episcopal Church in Lewisville, TX, I felt that strong call from God again. I kept volunteering more hours in different ministries, hoping to avoid ordination. However, over time it was very apparent to me and the beloved priests around me that I was being called into ordained ministry.
I entered the ordination process in the Diocese of Dallas and attended Southern Methodist University’s Perkins School of Theology and graduated cum laude. During my time in seminary, the changing policies of the Episcopal Church had shifted the norms of ordinations for women in the Diocese of Dallas. I was the seventh woman in those years to be denied ordination in that diocese without material cause. After seminary, I went back to work as an RN at an ophthalmic surgery center as I prayed and discerned what God was calling me to do.
In the diocese next door, the Diocese formerly known as Fort Worth, things were also changing significantly. I was welcomed into that diocese under Bishop Ted Gulick to further explore my call to ordained ministry. Bishop Wallis Ohl followed Bishop Gulick and continued to encourage me to explore my call, as he appointed a Commission on Ministry in the continuing diocese. Once the COM was formed, I became the first woman to enter the ordination process and be ordained to the diaconate and priesthood in that diocese by Bishop Ohl.
In the first years of being ordained, I served half-time on diocesan staff as the person charged with figuring out the steps forward for the churches in the continuing diocese. With a team of volunteers, we made plans for what we would do if the lawsuits were settled in our favor, and plans for what we would do if the lawsuits were not settled in our favor. We made clergy deployment plans, tried to predict attendance norms, and pondered building uses no matter which way the courts decided. It was challenging work and helped me develop significant collegial relationships throughout the Episcopal Church. I am continually thankful to Bishop Ohl for his trust and guidance in those years.
During that same time, I also served as associate rector at St Martin in the Fields in Keller, Texas. I oversaw the children’s and youth ministry, as well as preached and presided at the weekend services. I took youth to the Episcopal Youth Event twice in my time there. I also began attending General Conventions as a Deputy during that time.
My next church appointment was to the Episcopal Church in Wichita Falls where I served as the priest-in-charge of gathering three churches into one congregation. It was challenging work with a two hour commute each way, and I loved serving God there. When I began there, I had three Senior Wardens and two Bishop’s committees to integrate into one worshipping community. They continue to worship as one congregation and I thank God for their perseverance.
I joined the staff of Trinity Episcopal Church when the Reverend Carlye Hughes was the rector, with the Reverend Andrew Wright as the associate rector. With their direction, I oversaw children’s and family ministry, as well as preaching and presiding at the weekend services. That was my first experience serving on a large church staff and I loved the collegiality and camaraderie I found there. When Mother Carlye was elected Bishop of Newark, she called Father Andrew as the Canon to the Ordinary. I assured the vestry I would not enter their rector search process but would at least see them through the interim period and through to the time of a new rector. The Reverend Robert Pace answered the call to be the rector of Trinity and I continued as associate.
I was serving on the Standing Committee in Fort Worth when we began exploring the possibility of calling Bishop Scott Mayer as the next Provisional Bishop of the continuing diocese. I was part of the group that met for the Abilene Summit and discerned our way forward with the Standing Committee of Northwest Texas and Bishop Mayer. I will be forever grateful to the Diocese of Northwest Texas and Bishop Mayer for partnering and supporting the Diocese formerly known as Fort Worth during those long years. Bishop Mayer’s steadfast support, pastoral care, and deep wisdom provided the leadership needed after the weary years of litigation.
Bishop Mayer knew that I had spent many of my childhood years in Odessa. When he knew St Nicholas’ Episcopal Church in Midland was beginning their profile work, he asked me to prayerfully consider entering their search for their next rector. I agreed to pray and discern. As soon as I began discussions with the search committee of St Nick’s, I felt God’s call to serve here. David and I love living in west Texas, after thirty-one years of living in the DFW area.
Building on the work that St Nicholas’ had already begun, we have begun an endowment and stabilized stewardship and investments so that we are right sized for the budget and ministries at St Nick’s. With the encouragement and energy of the leadership and volunteers here, I tweaked the schedules and ministries so that children are involved in every aspect of worship, re-started the Acolyte ministry after the covid hiatus, and stream-lined some of the other ministry processes. We partner regularly with other progressive churches in the Permian Basin for special services, social events, and community offerings. God has blessed us with an abundance of new families and new ministries.
I am now working on attaining a Doctor in Ministry degree from Texas Christian University’s Brite School of Theology. My focus is how grandparents can positively help build the spirituality of their grandchildren, with the parents’ consent. My grandmother is a model for me and helped form my faith understanding. This is very relevant to me, as David and I became grandparents last December to Henry, who lives in Austin with Sam, and his wife, Maddie.
Why I Feel Called to Discern with the Diocese of Northwest Texas
I was born at Cannon Air Force Base in Clovis, New Mexico and grew up in Archer City and Odessa, Texas. I am very familiar with the people and cultures of North, West, and Northwest Texas. Bishop Mayer knew that about me when he asked me to pray about the possibility of being called to serve in the Diocese of Northwest Texas, specifically at Saint Nicholas' Episcopal Church in Midland. I love the wide, open spaces and friendly, practical people that choose to live in this part of our world. I see God hard at work in the stark, fierce landscapes and multi-cultural gatherings across our diocese.
Initially, I did not consider whether or not God might be calling me to this discernment work in the bishop transition of Northwest Texas. After several colleagues, lay and ordained, asked me to consider the possibility, I agreed to pray and discern. I have been doing that discernment work with my therapist, my spiritual director, and a very few trusted mature spiritual friends.
Only after I started this discernment work, I considered how formational the past bishops of this diocese have been for me. Bishop Sam Hulsey offered me a blessing the day he confirmed our older son and the day before I began my Clinical Pastoral Education module. He was a trusted confidant and beloved friend for many years as I served in the Episcopal Diocese of Fort Worth. After his death, when I announced my call to be the next rector of Saint Nicholas' Episcopal Church in Midland, his family sent me to Midland with the diocesan shield from his tippet and I treasure their thoughtfulness.
Bishop Wallis Ohl ordained me to the diaconate and priesthood in the Episcopal Church. I worked on his diocesan staff for almost three years. He and I attended two General Conventions and two Episcopal Youth Events in his years as the provisional bishop of Fort Worth, so I got to see his style of leadership in several situations.
I was a member of the standing committee of the diocese of Fort Worth for the Abilene Summitt, when the standing committees of Fort Worth and Northwest Texas met with Bishop Mayer to discuss the possibility and logistics of Bishop Mayer becoming the provisional bishop of Northwest Texas, while still being the elected bishop of Northwest Texas. After that union, I thoroughly enjoyed every interaction with the deputies of Northwest Texas at General Conventions. I prayed every day for Bishop Scott and Kathy as he took on those added responsibilities (I continue to pray for them). Personally, I will be forever grateful to the Diocese of Northwest Texas for sharing Bishop Mayer's time and talents with the Diocese of Fort Worth. I loved this diocese before I was called to it.
The God I believe in and worship has a great sense of humor. As the standing committee president, I talked with other excellent priests and tried to recruit them to submit their information and discern with the bishop search committee. God continually showed me all the ways I could also successfully discern. These are trusted colleagues and friends, and all of them asked me if I was going to be discerning also which I interpreted as God continually calling to me through other people. My goal throughout all of this has been that the Diocese of Northwest Texas will have an excellent, strong slate on which to vote next January.
At our diocesan presbyter's conference in April, Bishop Mayer invited all of the clergy gathered to re-examine our ordination vows and then to also examine the ordination vows of a bishop. In that exercise and ensuing discussion, God clearly showed me that I am capable of fully living into those vows, should I be asked to make them. It was during that exercise that I became fully convinced that I am called to discern with the bishop search committee about the possibility of becoming the next bishop of Northwest Texas.
When Bishop Mayer approached me in April of 2022 about beginning to pray and discern whether I might be called to be the next rector of Saint Nicholas' in Midland, he remembered that I had spent seven years of my youth in Odessa and that I had fond memories of living there. I love being back in the Midland-Odessa area again. I would gladly spend the rest of my professional life at Saint Nicholas' and, God willing, maybe even retire from there. Saint Nicholas has some exciting strategic goals to work toward that the vestry and I have formulated together. I love the life that David and I live in Midland; however, I have come to accept that God may be calling me in another way now and I look forward to whatever the next steps may be.
