Ten years ago, I was about to graduate from seminary when I was asked to give one of three sermons for our Homiletics class celebration, alongside two distinguished classmates. It was a great honor and a special culmination for me.

My sermon was centered in John 14, when Jesus promises his disciples that he’s going to prepare a place for them. This promise sounds like good news, but their responses indicate just how unsettling Jesus’ words were for the disciples. They wanted to go with him. They did not like that he was going ahead. They were troubled and did not know the way to get there! They wanted to see the Father. But Jesus asked for their trust in him, or at least belief based on the things they had seen already. They did not need a physical map to get where they were going. They needed Jesus.

I opened the sermon with a real life illustration of attending a banquet at the end of my first year in ministry where the theme was “God never forgets you.” Each person had a place setting that was marked by a rock with their name on it to symbolize the theme. And, guess what? They forgot to prepare a place setting for me!

It was a sermon highlighting my own journey of starting in ministry and feeling totally overlooked and forgotten, of no worth or value compared to my husband who was made the center of the attention by our employer because he was uniquely needed for emerging ministry on campus. I encouraged my classmates that while there would be times of despair and discouragement, we do not need a map of where to go. Jesus has already given us his presence through all the intersections he has walked us through. When we cannot see where we are going, we look back at where we have been and know that is enough. We know the Way.

I do not have a transcript, but according to Facebook I said, “He is who he says he is. Don’t let your hearts be troubled. He has been leading his people without a map for a long, long time. He is preparing a place for you.” Even before this memory popped up today, I have often thought of this sermon. As we were instructed in this class, I preached the sermon to myself before I preached it to others, and it is one that I continue to preach to myself. On this day, I was looking behind and standing grounded on the truth. I have to do the same now.

In the ten years that have followed, I have been asked very infrequently to preach a text in a church, definitely much less than my fellow male classmates. In part, it is because of where I worship. In order to finish the assignments for the class, I had to preach at the retirement home behind my church during their Sunday service. It was the option offered for those who did not have an option to preach at their own church for practice. My church has a large staff and I can count two Sunday morning guest preachers that have been women in our fifteen years there.

I have lived with this reality for a long time because I was given other assignments that made up my calling. After this class concluded I was offered an opportunity to become a Homiletics TA, but I declined because my kids were 5 and 8 years old and my life was full enough with my part-time role as Co-Area Director for Southern California. As a pastor’s wife at the time, the thought of needing to be different places on Sunday morning to encourage the development of my preaching was untenable. Three years later, I accepted a full-time role as Regional Director for the Western US. None of these were going to be preaching roles. I took assignments here and there to be faithful to preach the scripture–speaking at student retreats, to my staff, and teaching Bible Study to 100s of students at Urbana. I took the many teaching opportunities available at my church–MOPS, adult Sunday Schools, and other one-off invitations. These were all highlights in between the day to day of the job. And, let’s be honest, writing sermons is a huge amount of prep that is hard to fit into an administrative job’s weekly schedule. I was content with this ratio of preaching and teaching to other types of work, even if it was a gift that was sitting on a shelf.

But here I am. It is a different season. God is making something new out of me for a new season. On the one hand, it is the least comfortable I have ever been. On the other hand, with my open schedule this spring, I had an uptick of opportunities to preach in churches and at retreats. God is preparing a place for me, but I do not know where I am going or how to get there. I am filled with just as much fear as the disciples in John 14. I would like a map. But, instead, I will remember where I have been and who has been with me there. If I keep walking with Jesus, I will never fail to know the Way.