From the time she was a high school student in Roselle, Carla Grosch knew she wanted to be a lawyer. And when she went east to law school, she was sure she’d never return to the Midwest to live. Yet at the age of 33, she began a spiritual and professional journey that has brought her within miles of her hometown, as Rev. Grosch, a member of the pastoral team of the First Congregational Church of Elgin (United Church of Christ).
In 1980, after her graduation from Harvard Law School, Grosch joined a large Chicago law firm as a commercial litigation lawyer.
“I wanted excellent training, and I got it,” she says. “I quickly assumed the firm’s very aggressive, competitive male culture, but I frequently cried at night because it was not the way I wanted to live. I liked the law, but the work was not socially constructive.”
Grosch had always been drawn to public-interest law, and when a friend sent her a recruitment brochure for Alaska Legal Services, Grosch found herself typing an application letter at 11 p.m. that night. Three months later, after 2 1/2 years as a corporate lawyer, Grosch was hired by Alaska Legal Services to serve as a civil lawyer in the Arctic bush. After 18 months she transferred to Anchorage Legal Services, where she focused on civil rights law, representing Alaskan natives, and then became a mental health advocate for a non-profit agency in Anchorage.
“I was raised in an Evangelical Christian home, but I didn’t go to any church from age 14 to 28,” says Grosch, 39. “And in Alaska none of my liberal-Left friends went to church. But I was a single parent in Alaska, and I felt I needed community support in inculcating values in my young daughter, Katja. I sought out a Unitarian church with a strong sense of fellowship, but no Bible and no talk of Jesus.
“I felt very welcomed there and attended regularly. I would sit in the back with my daughter and watch the pastor and think, `This guy has the best job on Earth. He accompanies people through the most meaningful times in their lives, looks at the big picture of the world and helps us connect to that every Sunday.’ I started thinking that I would go into the seminary when I was 50.”
In 1988 Grosch represented her church at a conference in California.
“I was sitting with a group of pastors discussing rituals, and all of a sudden I had this feeling all through my body that I was supposed to be one of them, be part of that community. I felt an internal shift and was extremely emotionally distressed.
“I spent the next couple of days in Palm Springs in misery. It was a non-verbal struggle in my soul, but I felt it in my body, much like Jacob’s struggle with the angel. Finally, on the plane back, I knew I had to apply to seminary. I couldn’t see beyond that.”
The decision was not a simple one. There were no seminaries in Alaska, and Grosch knew no one in Berkeley, where she hoped to study. She had $1,500 in savings, a 4-year-old daughter to support, no job and no place to live in California. Her friends thought she was making a mistake.
“I had no answers to any of the practical questions,” she recalls. “I spent a month in semiparalysis, wondering what to do next.
“I remember walking along a rocky road, saying, `God, I have no idea how I’m going to do this.’ Then I realized I was being asked to step out in radical trust. And I said to God, `I’m just going to do it. You work out the details.’
“I took it step by step.”
She applied to the Thomas Starr King School for the Ministry in Berkeley and called the local school district to ask about kindergarten requirements for her daughter. She studied for and passed the California bar so she could work to pay her way through school. After being accepted, she found housing within blocks of the seminary.
“All of a sudden it was a done deal, and I was horrified,” she recalls. “Alaska was my spiritual home, and after seven years I was leaving.”
The move, however, proved to be liberating.
“All my experience up to that point had been left brain, but the seminary work was very right brain. I flourished. I took prayer, dance, art, meditation. I had to slough off my argumentative, competitive lawyer veneer. I was scared there wouldn’t be anything underneath, but by the end of that first year, I was overjoyed that I loved the more compassionate, creative person I found.”
During this year at a Unitarian Universalist seminary, Grosch also struggled to determine where she fit into the ministry and finally decided her calling was in the Christian faith.
“I began to see Christianity as a freedom from fear. To know we are so loved by God and to live in that gracefully is to be who we can be-that’s what it’s all about.
“This was a surprise to me because I had bought the public image of Christianity: The public church that gets the headlines is judgmental, cruel and is about control of women and people’s sexuality. Yet my experience of what I call the real church and the community of followers is supportive and life-giving.”
Her mother had a heart attack around this same time, and Grosch decided to transfer to Garrett-Evangelical Theological Seminary in Evanston to finish her training closer to home.
“I had always struggled with a sense of inadequacy which was often exacerbated in my home surroundings. My home was pretty patriarchal, and it did not feel like a safe and empowering place to be. But by the time I came home, I no longer needed it to be, which in turn let it be, and so (my family) could accept me as a full human being.
“I have a good relationship with my family now, but it pains me to see patriarchal families because I know the damage they do to girls. I know it cut me off from that deep sense of wisdom we all have as human beings, and it took me years to reclaim it and let it guide my life.
“It’s a struggle I continue because the traditional church is a profoundly patriarchal institution, and yet the breath of the Holy Spirit keeps it open. The increase of women in the ministry in the last 10 years is God opening the windows and doors of the church so that it’s more representative of all people.”
One of Grosch’s goals is to validate women’s experiences of God.
“The Bible was written for and about men. The Old Testament mentions 1,426 names, and 1,315 of them are men’s: This is about guys. The stories about women are sparse. So I delve into the women’s stories available and make them come alive.
“One older woman at a retreat said she had never heard the story of the woman at the well, the woman who tells the truth about her life and is accepted for who she is by Jesus.
“I don’t know if there is a distinctive male versus female spirituality, but I do know that women’s life experience is different from men’s. God meets us in our lives where we are. Women’s experience of God is through feeling kinds of things, like intimate relationships. I hear the voice of God in my child and other people. The flesh and blood of life makes me more aware of God.”
Grosch originally planned to do her seminary field work in a homeless shelter because that was where she believed her calling was, but her supervisor told her she needed at least one church experience.
“I had a role model that first year, a gifted woman preacher, and through her I saw my own gifts develop. I tried out things I’d never done and found my calling. I knew then that I was supposed to be a pastor, and I had had no sense of that before.
“Preaching is a big deal to me. It’s my strength, and it’s very life-giving for me. But my calling is also to be an active and vital part of this church. We’re struggling to keep our foothold in a decaying downtown area, trying to build bridges in the community so we can manifest the word of God in this place and time.”
In her three years at the First Congregational Church of Elgin, Grosch has organized educational ministries, AIDS education, women’s programs and retreats. Part of Grosch’s ministry is a community crisis center for women.
“One of the areas where the church faces a challenge is domestic violence,” she says. “Up to now, the church has been responding with `Stay, pray, try harder.’ Bad advice in seriously violent situations. One of the results of the influx of women into the ministry is a relooking at the church’s responsibility for providing a safe space for families and people. It’s an exciting time to be in the church.
“The question people ask me the most is, `How do I tell what God’s will is for my life, what I’m meant to do?’ Discernment, or coming to understand the will of God as it applies to my life, is very hard. Lightning bolts are rare. A lot of discernment for me is paying attention to my life, to my experience, my feelings, my relationships.
“Joy is very much a part of coming into who we are. There’s also challenge and discouragement, but discernment is deeply about joy.
“Frederick Buechner wrote that `a person’s vocation is where their deep joy meets the world’s deep need.’ When I first heard that, my heart leapt, like Elizabeth’s experience of having the baby in her womb leap when she greets Mary.
“Discernment is harder for women because they don’t have permission to do whatever they want or to think they are worth it. Although women struggle more to give their own experience authority, they have a tremendous reservoir of love and wisdom.
“Becoming who one really is is hard, and different for all of us. There are so many different gifts. I hope to give other women the strength to choose their way, to follow their deep joy and to hear the voice of God in themselves and do what they need to do. It is a deep choice.”
Grosch looks back at her own choices and says: “So much of my journey has been about saying yes to deep longings and things I didn’t even know were inside of me. It has been a journey of coming into my full self. In law work, I got to use my brain. Now I get to use all parts of myself, my intelligence, my compassion, creativity, my sense of delight in God and the world.
“God has a lot of work to do on me, but He has been very patient and kind. So many times I haven’t seen the step ahead, but now I feel calm because when I’m groping in the dark it means I’m growing and going toward the light.”
Grosch says her major personal challenge is balancing home and family with her work.
“The ministry offers 80 hours a week of work. Older male ministers had wives to do everything at home so they could give that 80 hours, but it’s not a reality for most women in the ministry. My daughter needs my love, and I need to love myself. If those two pieces aren’t in place, I can’t do the work. So taking care of myself, physically, emotionally and spiritually, has become very important to me.
“I was raised to never put myself first, but to do that in a church of 500 people would leave me with no energy to even brush my teeth. I am constantly coming up against my own limits and the need to recharge. I think many women struggle with this question. I hope I can role model limit-setting for women around me.”
Grosch renews herself with regular prayer.
“I think I’ve always had a longing to know God, and in prayer, I spend more time with God. My prayer changes. Sometimes I just blab, and sometimes I pray quietly; sometimes my prayer has to be real physical, through song and dance. It’s great to have a job where I’m supposed to pray all the time. I feel so lucky. I’m also paid to be compassionate, which is something I want to be. It’s a great deal.”
