“I am the senior pastor at Springhill Avenue Methodist Church. I dropped the kids off at their daycare and went for a run and trying to decompress from the week. My husband is the youth pastor at Spanish Fort Methodist Church. I prepare sermons far in advance. My outlines are done through Christmas Sunday. It is connected and they all flow. On Monday mornings I read the scripture for the sermon that week and sit with it all week until illustrations come up. I have an idea of where I think it will head, but God surprises me all of the time. I have to be open and follow it. Most illustrations come from my sassy 4-year-old. I recognized my call to the ministry at age 7. I thought I would go into children’s ministry, but when we had our daughter, I was a stay at home mom and after six months , I discovered that I wasn’t good at staying home. I started applying for children’s ministry positions but I was offered the pastor of the church where we had been worshipping for a year. I told him he was crazy, I wasn’t supposed to be a pastor. He gave me 12 hours to think about it. I went to bed thinking no, but woke up and with a sense of peace and went with it. Now I am fully ordained and an elder in the Methodist church. It is not the life I pictured for myself, but I love it now. The hardest part of being a pastor is seeing all of the brokenness in the world and getting other people to care about that, even people who go to church. It is hard and discouraging, but I see God’s hand in it all.  Pastors are human just like everyone else, we have gifts and things we are good at and things we aren’t. We are a clergy couple and that could take all of our time, but we have learned how to say no, especially having young kids. We want to have our time with them. I have also learned you have to care for yourself to and do what gives you life.”