Unemotional Woman?

A moment of clarity: for those of you in doubt, I am in fact a woman.

Hope there were not too many of you who were questioning that.

Moreover, I am a woman in ministry. I work for an interdenominational Christian campus ministry called InterVarsity. And I thoroughly love and believe in what I do.

And, in the past few weeks and months, I have a number of conversations about women in ministry. Theologically, Epistemologically, Analytically, Logically, Methodologically, Isomorphically, Anthropomorphically... well, you get the point. But if you notice, one word is missing from that list of "-ally's." In fact, it should be an obvious one because it a word that is used to describe women's reactions fairly frequently.

The word that is missing from the list is emotionally.

I realized the other day, amidst another conversation with a few friends, that I am able to have the conversation about women in ministry quite regularly without emotional kickback.

Part of that is just personality. I am not by nature particularly emotional. But part of it is, I have realized in my *long* life that I find it hard to emotionally engage on the topic without taking it as a personal affront.. And I think there is a lot of wisdom and grace given through that reaction: I think it is beneficial and helpful to others for me to be able to engage with a difficult subject which affects me personally, without taking it personally.

But at the same time, my fear is that by emotionally distancing myself from the subject of women in ministry, I do something which is equally detrimental: I allow participants in the conversation the liberty of having a hypothetical or theoretical discussion, without realizing that the topic of the conversation affects real people, with real emotions, and with real and individual gifts.

Somehow I think there must be a balance...