by Jenn Faulk
~David~
Well, everything about that had been thrilling.
The party had gone off well, like it always did. But it seemed like there were even more students this time. David had reconnected with every last one of his students from the last term and had met at least one hundred others, invited them all to the next event, and had already started the task of trying to memorize names, which of the three schools they attended, and how he could get in touch with them.
And then, there was Camille.
She probably didn’t remember the days he’d played in the youth praise band back in high school, always pushed back into a corner because he was just learning and just getting good, but he’d been only a few feet away from her every week when they’d open up for the Sunday school hour. He’d always watched her, listening to how she sang so perfectly on pitch, and being so thankful that he knew her and knew how her words were authentic.
Cammie didn’t just sing about God. She knew Him. He knew it from the life she lived beside his sisters, from the way she served Christ, and from the joy in her life.
All these years later, he still knew it, as she joined him, as she finally saw him as they worshipped alongside all of those students.
What a thrill.
Just as the crowds were beginning to disperse, he turned to tell her just a fraction of this, but his attention was re-directed to the elderly man who approached them.
“Brother David,” he said loudly in a thick accent, reaching out his hand for David’s hand.
“Brother Tobias,” David grinned. “How are you, friend?”
“Doing well,” he said. “These students! Where have they all come from?”
“Your neck of the woods,” David grinned. “That’s where.”
Tobias looked over at Camille and raised his eyebrows. “And who is this?”
“This,” David said, grinning, “is Camille Evans. A new missionary from the States.”
Tobias regarded Camille with a raised eyebrow. “Sho,” he breathed. “A woman?”
David could see a flash of irritation on Camille’s face about this. How many times had she already heard it from everyone?
Probably too many times.
“Yeah,” he laughed. “And we sure did need her out here. Camille, this is Pastor Tobias Nujoma. He comes down from Oshakati and his church there a few times a year to do some work in the refugee camp just north of town.”
“Oh,” Camille smiled. “I’ve heard a few things about it. David drove me by earlier.”
“Which he should not be doing,” Tobias said. “Not safe there for a woman.” He shook his head at David. “Would have been much better if they had sent a man, Brother David.”
“I don’t know about that,” David said, glancing over at Camille, worried about the look on her face.
“Women are better suited for other things,” Tobias said with some authority. “Church work is men’s work.”
“The work of Christ is all of our work, though, isn’t it?” David asked. “And that’s church work at its very essence, friend. Jesus Himself had women disciples.”
“But the twelve were men,” Tobias noted. “As was fitting. And the epistles say plenty about women and their place.”
And before David could continue on with this conversation, knowing that there were no easy answers in two different cultures on a subject that David’s own culture was grappling to understand itself, Camille spoke up.
“I have more experience than David does,” she said, in a voice that was surprisingly sour, given how sweet the words were that she’d offered to Christ only moments earlier in song.
“Do you?” Tobias asked, surprised by this outburst.
“Yes, and perhaps David would have gotten another male worker in here if men weren’t, on the whole, abysmal failures at answering the call of Christ.”
Oh, wow. That was harsh.
Tobias apparently thought so as well as he narrowed his eyes at her, then glanced over at David.
“Well,” he said.
David could see Camille opening her mouth again. And while praying for forgiveness for this, even as he did it, he interrupted her. “Hey, Camille, can you check and make sure that Kait doesn’t need any help?” he asked.
She cut her eyes at him, sensing that he was brushing her off.
But she did as he asked, turning on her heel and leaving them both behind.
Camille
That man. That man had not been right to say what he did.
She’d heard more of the same before. Church work was hard work for a woman, to be expected to fade to the background, to follow a man...
“What was that?” David asked, reaching out and grabbing her arm not even a minute later.
“That?” she asked, gesturing to the awful man who was now joking around with the teenagers. “That was the same old song and story I’ve heard my whole career.”
“Probably,” David said, looking annoyed with her.
Annoyed. With her. And not that loudmouthed, awful man!
“But what you said,” David continued. “What was that?”
She resisted the urge to roll her eyes at him. “That was me. Standing up for myself. Standing up for every woman who’s ever had to listen to that.”
“By pitching a fit?” he asked.
And at this? She did roll her eyes.
“Was I just supposed to stand there and listen to that?” she asked.
“You were supposed to be Christlike and kind, even in the face of that, Camille,” he said. “Did it do anything to further your witness to the grace of Christ or to correct his assumptions about women and their place in Christ’s work when you bit off his head like that?”
“I hardly think I bit off his head,” she huffed, feeling just a tiny bit of remorse for having – yes – bitten off the man’s head.
Because it didn’t help anything, honestly. It felt great, but it didn’t do anyone any good. Only made the man’s point for him, likely.
David sighed. “I’m not saying he was entirely right, but –”
“Well, good,” she said. “I’m glad I’m working with someone who thinks I’m worth something. Even if he can’t stop talking about how I was supposed to be a man.”
“Camille,” David said softly. “I told you that it was a good thing that God sent you.”
“I know,” she said, still thinking of the words she’d heard, in so many places, about how disappointed people seemed sometimes to hear that their missionary was a woman, to hear that the missionary speaker back home in the churches was a woman.
Guess she can speak at a women’s banquet. That’s what they’d say, with such disappointment in their voices. Camille always wanted to shout, “You can have a man speak anywhere if any of you men will actually get up and go do the work!”
She could get so angry about it all.
“Then what was that?” David asked again, looking quite shocked by all that had happened.
“This is hard work,” she said to him. “Always expecting to fade into the background and follow someone else –”
“That’s the work of ministry,” he said. “We’re all called to fade into the background and follow Christ.”
True enough. But wow, she didn’t want to hear it because it convicted her, very nearly began to correct the wrong ways she was thinking about her work.
So, she tried another approach.
“You can’t tell me that you’re not here because you’re a man. That they didn’t work hard to get you here because you’re a man. And Paul Connor’s son at that.”
That caught his attention.
“That has nothing to do with why I’m here,” he said. “And I get that you’re irritated with the gender dynamics that go on. I’m sure you’ve had plenty of time to stew over it all. I remember you mentioning it back at the conference.”
She had mentioned it. And she had years of time to stew over all of it before then, of course.
“But you’re not going to let y
our irritation over things that you can’t change right now ruin what you’re here to do,” he said. “I’m not going to let you sabotage what Christ wants to do through you.”
“You’re not going to let me,” she said, hearing the snide side of her voice.
“I’m not the enemy,” he said. “And I don’t know what’s going on in your head and how you’ve been hurt, or what expectations you already have that you’re projecting onto me, but it’s clear that you unintentionally despise men who are trying to do the good work of the Gospel out here. And what you said likely hurt the relationship I’ve built with that pastor. We’re all on the same team, and you just did your best to work against it.”
And this? Hurt. Because it was true. There was pride on her part, most definitely, for doing the job that most men wouldn’t. So much so that she’d failed to see that it wasn’t a gender issue at all, that David was here, doing exactly what she was doing, with the added responsibility of being in charge of it all, with all the demands and stresses that involved.
She was one of those stresses, doing what she’d just done.
“I’m not the enemy, Camille,” he said softly. “And I’m certainly not some goofy kid you knew years ago who can’t get it right. As I’m sure you were ready to tell Tobias. Drag down the men around you so that you look better.”
“That wasn’t my intention,” she said, just as softly.
“I don’t know what your intention was,” he said. “But can we agree to something?”
“Yes,” she offered, already beginning to wish that she’d never said anything at all.
“You,” he said, bending down to look her in the eye, “are just as valuable to the purposes of God here as I am. Maybe more. Because you’re right. You’re bringing more experience to the table.”
That’s not what she’d meant. She hadn’t meant to insult him. She’d only meant to prove herself.
To someone who didn’t really matter anyway...
“David, I –”
“But,” he said, cutting her off, “that doesn’t mean that I don’t have an appointed role here.”
“Board-appointed?” she asked, thinking of how they would classify this relationship. Camille could just imagine. David in charge, the big man leading the clueless little woman, because men were always in charge, even if they were in short supply all over the world, and –
“No, God-appointed,” he said. “Tobias said a lot of things that weren’t entirely right, but he hit some of them head-on. Like how it isn’t safe for you to do the same things I do here sometimes. How there are some definite Scriptural guidelines for church leadership. How men actually aren’t worthless.”
“I didn’t say that,” she gasped.
“Can you trust me?” he asked. “Can you see past the geeky little kid from New Life-Dallas and trust that I’m following Christ, that I’m taking my cues from the Lord, and that I want to lead this team here? I swear, Camille, I’m not going to discount your opinions and your wisdom along the way, but I have a responsibility to you. And it’s not just board-given. But I’m responsible for you because Scripture calls me to lead in what’s going on here and to do my job as a man of God and shepherd of the church He’s established here, actually caring for those under my watch. Which includes you.”
She said nothing for a long moment, thinking of the responsibility he already had, already felt called to here, was already fulfilling.
She thought about how there was some freedom and goodness in that, in being someone under his watch care.
She’d never, in all of her years, thought about it like that.
“David, I –”
“Just pray about it,” he said. “Not the enemy, Camille. I’m so not your enemy here.”
And he left her alone to think about it.