Dear Momma,
Every March the church pauses to name Baptist Women in Ministry Month. Churches host panels, women write articles, women fill pulpits and deliver sermons about the long road women have walked just to stand behind a pulpit as both preacher and pastor.
Every year when March rolls around, I think about you. Not first as a pastor, not first as a preacher, but as my mother. Before I knew anything about homiletics, Greek, Hebrew, ordination or denominational politics, I knew you.
Braxton Wade
I knew the sound of your voice praying late at night after you thought we had all gone to sleep. I knew the weight you carried raising four children mostly on your own. I knew the quiet determination that lived in you — the kind that doesn’t ask permission to be faithful.
My earliest memory of ministry isn’t from seminary or from my own call. It’s from when I was 6 or 7 years old, sitting in a church pew watching them ordain you. I don’t remember every word that was said or every Scripture that was read that day. But I remember in my bones the feeling.
I remember looking at you and sensing that something sacred was happening. I remember hearing Pastor Carter use language about bearing fruit when he talked about you. I remember watching people lay hands on you. I remember the holiness of it all — the way the room felt like it was holding its breath.
I didn’t have the theology for it then. I was just a young boy watching his momma. And even then, something in me knew God was doing something holy. I knew that you, Momma, belonged to God and that God belonged to you.
What I also remember, Momma, is everything that came after that moment. I remember the lonely days and the long nights. I remember the tears that streamed down your face that no one saw. I remember you working, teaching, preaching and raising four children all at the same time. I remember the sacrifices nobody ever wrote articles about.
Because sometimes the most faithful ministry doesn’t happen in a pulpit. Sometimes it happens in the kitchen after working all day. Sometimes it happens in a car ride from one sports practice to the other. Sometimes it happens when a tired mother still finds the strength to whisper hope into the heart of her child.
Momma, you did that for me more times than I can count.
Every church I ever worked at — every call I thought I heard — you affirmed it. You never laughed at my dreams, and you never told me to shrink them. Even when the road got hard, even when ministry didn’t turn out the way I hoped it would, you stayed steady.
And when things fell apart — and sometimes they did — you would remind me of something I desperately needed to hear. You would tell me I was enough. You would tell me God wasn’t finished with me yet. Those words have been imprinted on my heart.
“You would tell me I was enough. You would tell me God wasn’t finished with me yet.”
Momma, one of the stories you used to tell me about Scripture was the story of Hagar. Hearing you share how much that story meant to you. This dark-skinned woman pushed to the margins. A woman overlooked. A woman forced to survive in a wilderness she did not choose. And yet somehow in that wilderness, God sees her. Not only does God see her, but this dark-skinned woman has the courage and boldness to name God, El Roi.
I remember this story not like a Sunday school lesson but as a testimony akin to your testimony. You told it like someone who had lived close enough to the wilderness to recognize it. And maybe that’s why it stayed with me, because the God who saw Hagar is the same God who saw you.
The same God who saw a woman raising four children while carrying a call to be a pastor. The same God who saw the tears you hid and the prayers you whispered. The same God who kept making a way when there didn’t seem to be one.
You taught me that God sees the people the world overlooks. You taught me that the wilderness is not the end of the story. You also taught me something important about faith: Faith isn’t about pretending the wilderness doesn’t exist, but faith is having the courage to name God while you’re standing in the wilderness.
Now I stand here as a grown dark-skinned Black man reflecting on those memories during Baptist Women in Ministry Month, and I realize something I didn’t understand when I was a boy watching you.
My faith and theology were formed long before I ever stepped into a pulpit or accepted a call. It was formed watching a woman who refused to let the church define the limits of God’s call. It was formed by a mother who preached and was a pastor not only with her words but with her life. It was formed by a woman who courageously looked at God in the middle of her wilderness and called God El Roi.
And if I have any courage to follow the voice of God now, it is because I saw what that courage looked like in you first.
Momma, the truth is the church still has work to do. Even now, women called by God, like you, Hagar, Deborah, Eunice and Junia still have to explain themselves in ways men never do. Even now, women with undeniable gifts are asked to prove their callings are legitimate. Even now, the church sometimes struggles to affirm what the Spirit already has made clear.
“Thank you, Momma. Thank you for answering the call when it would have been easier to stay silent.”
Which is why we cannot simply celebrate women in ministry one month a year. We must continue to affirm women. We must continue to listen to women. We must continue to make space for the women God already has called.
Because if the church had not affirmed you — if someone had not recognized the fruit already growing in your life — I wonder how many of us would have missed the gift God placed in you.
And I know this much is true: A young Black boy like me might never have learned how to recognize the voice of God. I may not have had the courage and audacity to continue to name God in the middle of my wilderness. The many lives you’ve influenced may not have gotten to experience the relentless love of God.
So this month, while the church celebrates women in ministry, I want to say something simple.
Thank you, Momma. Thank you for answering the call when it would have been easier to stay silent. Thank you for raising four children while still carrying the weight of God’s voice in your life. Thank you for teaching me not only to hear the voice of God but to say yes. Thank you for reminding me, over and again, that failure never is the end of the story God is telling.
And thank you for teaching me that the God who saw Hagar still sees us. The same God who saw you. The same God who saw a little Black boy sitting in a church pew watching his mother become a pastor. The same God who is still calling women today.
My prayer today is that the church will keep listening and keep courageously knowing that the wilderness is not the end of the story.
With love,
Your son
Braxton Wade is a Clemons Fellow with BNG. He is a graduate of the University of Richmond and Chicago Theological Seminary and lives in Richmond, Va.