I woke up this morning in a world fundamentally different from the one I woke up in yesterday.

Yesterday, I was a postulant to the priesthood in the Episcopal Church, five years into a discernment journey that included three years of school, 400 hours of training in clinical pastoral education, six months of internship with a local parish, 15 retreat weekends with my peers, 20 detailed capstone projects, and many hours of prayer and reflection and work and study, all focused on a path toward ordination.

And then, the call from the bishop. I had spent about an hour total last week meeting online with the Commission on Ministry and the Diocesan Standing Committee, a last step before they approve me for candidacy for ordination.

Except, in this case, this group of near strangers, none of whom had been closely involved in my journey, decided they “didn’t hear my call,” the bishop told me. That one hour trumped five years of devotion and prayer and dedication. I was no longer a postulant to the priesthood. I would not be ordained. There was no appeal, no next steps, nothing. I was done.

This on top of the bishop’s decision last month to remove me from my position as the diocese’s communications director, a job I had come to as part of my call to serve God’s church six years ago. A job to which I had been deeply dedicated, often working 90 hours a week helping keep our community together during the lockdowns of the pandemic. I’ll probably write more about that another time. Suffice to say there was no misconduct alleged on my part. A new bishop gets to decide who she wants on her staff, and she didn’t want me. Whether or not I find her reasons valid (I don’t) is irrelevant.

Losing the job didn’t matter so much. The diocese doesn’t pay very well, and I’m not too concerned about making up that revenue. What mattered to me was my “process,” the journey toward priesthood, and the bishop went out of her way to reassure me on that point. “I see you as a priest,” she told me, adding in writing,

I want to be clear that this termination does not in any way impact your ordination process, and you will be given appropriate and fair consideration for Holy Orders as you continue your discernment. I have appreciated your Ember Day Letters—they are both faithful and insightful, and those who worked with you in your recent field placement were consistently impressed with your willingness to engage, your pastoral spirit, and your many gifts for congregational ministry.

And yet, here I am, a month later, stopped dead in my tracks, bereft, cast aside.

Most people have come to a point in their lives where their long-prepared plans didn’t work out. It’s always hard. But I didn’t think these were my plans; I thought they were God’s plans for me; something God wanted me to do for him, his church, and his people.

Those plans are dead. They died in a moment, with a phone call.

So now what?

My faith tells me that if God wants a thing, that thing happens. No person can stop it, no church committee can stop it. If God wants it, it gets done. As I said in a recent sermon, “it doesn’t matter how far you go, how much you hide. You’re gonna wind up in Nineveh.”

My faith also tells me that I didn’t make up this call. God’s Holy Spirit came upon me and moved me to pursue this course.

Which leaves two possibilities: Either it’s not the right time for me to be ordained a priest in the Episcopal Church, or God wants something different from me, and all this preparation has been in service to that something different.

I would be allowed to re-apply for postulancy in a year, but there’s very little guarantee in that direction. The people who told me “no” this time would have to change to “yes,” and for some I’m not sure that’s possible. Perhaps God has hardened their hearts toward my ministry because it could bring greater glory to him outside the confines of ordained ministry in the Episcopal Church, with its shrinking congregations and its pre-occupation with its buildings and holding on to a time of massive attendance that will never come again.

And so, it is Good Friday in my heart. Like the disciples, I was expecting God’s glory to be revealed in straightforward, understandable ways. They expected the Messiah to be like other great earthly leaders, like kings and high priests, full of power and authority, to earn respect and to conquer with an army.

Instead, Christ died a criminal’s death, executed by the government and the religious authorities, a death that people considered shameful. But a death that led to the glory of the resurrection, the true triumph of God over worldly concerns.

But that was on Sunday. Today is still Friday. My dreams died yesterday. Today I mourn. I cry out to God as Jesus did from the cross: “‘Eli, Eli, lema sabachthani?’ that is, ‘My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?’”

The glory of God that I expected is not what God intends. I am praying now for Easter Sunday, to see what form the resurrection will take. His will be done.