Chapter 24: Mean Girls

“WHY ARE YOU NAKED?!”

I am bewildered.

Let’s back up. Beep, beep, beep. Remember Pastor Jock, the good-looking and very charismatic youth pastor hired by Pastor Real?

Everyone loves the tall, muscled out dude, complete with a spectacular pedigree, a T-shirt announcing “This Is What Cool Looks Like” and a wife who evaporated out of a swimsuit issue of Sports Illustrated. They are both all-Americans, I’m enough of a nerd to still not know what the hell that means, but it sure was a big deal to everyone. He really is a great youth leader, though, getting wholeheartedly involved with the tumultuous lives of the teens. We are quick friends, me having been a youth leader as well. Pastor Jock is great at motivating others and galvanizing a team, and the youth group explodes into a movement, making inroads to at-risk kids in the community. We get along fabulously, he is quick-witted, creative, and compassionate, and I also have him join the creative team, an ever expanding think tank of leaders and laypeople tasked with finding new, unusual, even wacky methods to reach the community.

He is a firm believer, having had a difficult upbringing in the rural mountains of the western US. He had a checkered past before becoming a Christian, and has pretty strict convictions. Uh-oh. This was a bit red-flaggy to me, but the hiring team didn’t identify this as an issue, in fact, I’m sure the more conservative ones loved it. His wife takes over leading the younger kids, and constructs a formidable children’s program. These two are an amazing hire, Pastor Real has completed his team of five pastors and a pile of lay leaders, patterned loosely after a California megachurch. We all actually work pretty well together, the place is growing like crazy.

At this point, I am slated to be the next person on staff. I am the main worship leader, the programming director and creative director. I am constantly there, building sets, scheduling, planning, leading teams, building floats, decorating the massive auditorium, teaching Bible studies and devotionals. Right now, DH is the full-time Pastor of Worship, and I’m there almost as much as he is, sometimes more. I love what I do, but both of us working there full time for one salary with two children is a bit of a stretch, and I am looking forward to a bit of financial relief.

All of us in leadership become pretty close, and the wives all start spending time together. Pastor Jock’s wife invites me to join her weekly coffee with the girls, a group wich includes several women but kind of dwindles down to her, her best friend, and me. Let’s call her Sporty Spice and her best friend Sidekick Spice. Sporty Spice and Sidekick Spice are the kind of close that you can’t slide a sheet of paper between, and some start feeling like outsiders, unable to penetrate their two-person clique.

One cold December morning, I fight the elements and trudge through knee-deep snow at the curb, stomping my boots as I enter a coffee shop. I can already see her at the table, emphatically gesturing about something, and as I approach, she is yelling to her one-woman fan club while she motions at the kitchen in the back “WHY ARE YOU NAKED?!”

I sit down wondering what the heck is this all about? I look where she is gesturing. One of the kitchen workers has a string tank and shorts on. Oh, nowww I get it. Sporty Spice is picking on the fact that this woman is too scantily clad for her tastes. Whore in the kitchen! I have a sour feeling in my stomach, she’s acting like the mean girls who used to bully me in high school, constantly picking me apart for anything they could find that didn’t fit their cookie-cutter idea of what people should be like.

She carries on about the unaware kitchen worker, and after months of sitting at this table I finally get it. Sporty Spice and Sidekick Spice are mean girls, and this little coffee-klatsch is where they go to gossip. Sometimes they allow another person or two in their velvet-roped area, and it uneasily dawns on me that my time in their little club is not going to last long, it never does. It’s likely the only reason I got invited in the first place is because I’m a pastor’s wife.

They talk, and laugh, and laugh, and talk, and tear down this poor girl to shreds. I say it’s probably hot in the kitchen, but my words go ignored. I will never fit into this girl gang.

I also know if people will gossip to you, they will gossip about you.

This is going to be a problem.

But it’s just the youth pastor’s wife, what difference could this make?

I am looking at a sprouting seed, the birth of a monster Venus flytrap that is going to devour my entire family.

Because something is about to happen that is going to throw a Molotov cocktail on this party.