The twist in the gift
Major Heather Rodwell reflects on how the darkest places in her life have become the greatest gifts. After experiencing divorce as an officer, Heather thought that life as she knew it was over. And it was. Because God had new, brighter beginnings …
Last year I came into my 60th year, and I find every new decade is accompanied by a time of reflection. I was single for 20 years, married for 20 years, and have now been single again for 20 years. Along the way, I have learned that every unexpected twist in the journey of life can become a gift from God.
When I was four, my family of six moved to Tawa, Wellington. My mum was down at the local shops one day when someone tapped her on the shoulder and said, ‘Excuse me, do your children go to Sunday school?’ The person was a children’s leader at the Tawa Salvation Army Corps (church), so that is where my faith journey really started.
For whatever reason (I suspect it’s God!), I have remained within The Salvation Army throughout the seasons of my life.
The call
It was as a teenager I first felt a sense of God’s call on me to become a Salvation Army officer (minister). But, as you do when you’re a teenager, I put the call aside to pursue romantic relationships.
I was married a month short of my 20th birthday. I loved my husband and had the full expectation of a happy and healthy marriage. After all, we were both professing Christians and active in corps leadership. However, with the benefit of hindsight, I can also see perhaps I chose to marry to find stability because my own family was in disarray and this was a way to craft my own future with some semblance of control. But control is only ever an illusion.
Soon after we got married, I was reminded again of my call to officership by God. I prayed to God, ‘I say “yes” to you, but you will have to call my husband because that is his journey.’
Meanwhile, we established a successful photography business together, and also had two children.
So when, 10 years later, my husband received his own call to officership, we quickly applied to enter The Salvation Army Training College and were accepted. We worked really well as a team, having established a good working relationship when we ran our business.
Typical of many Salvationists, we expressed our faith in activism rather than stillness, and in doing rather than being. We worked well together in church activities, but the shared spiritual journey was dormant in our marriage. I had hoped that becoming officers would deepen our spiritual connection.
Wider spaces
Our first appointment was as corps officers at Belfast Corps (now Christchurch North Corps). It was only a year old at the time and the appointment was great fun. There were no traditions that couldn’t be touched, and we saw people who were seeking and new believers growing the corps during our four years there.
It was at this time that God started to widen my spiritual horizons. I began exploring the contemplative side of faith. I had grown up in a busy, chaotic household, and silence was not part of my nurturing. So when I discovered contemplation, I thought, ‘Wow, this is what I need!’
I thought I had a really strong sense of who I was, but looking back, I realise that I had a very flimsy sense of self. God began to reveal who he really made me to be. I guess you could say I was a latecomer to my own faith journey. I would now call myself a silence and solitude freak.
The nature of spiritual formation is that it happens out of what God is doing in you, rather than what you are intentionally doing for him. As a ‘doer’, this was a whole new way of being.
I’m naturally a very private person and only deeply share with a select few. It didn’t even occur to me to share with my husband the journey God was taking me on.
Jars of clay
On the exterior we were seen as successful officers with a stable marriage. On the strength of our time at Belfast, we were to be promoted to a larger corps. By this time I sensed that something was deeply absent in our marriage. There was no animosity, there was simply a lack. There was a sense of keeping up appearances in public, but a growing distance in private.
Ahead of our promotion from being lieutenants to becoming captains, we had to meet with the Divisional Commander (the person in charge of the Army division where we served). As we were on our way to the interview, I felt a voice—that I have now come to recognise as the voice of God—telling me I needed to be honest about what was happening in our marriage or there would be consequences.
One of my biggest weaknesses is pride. I have a tendency to want to keep up appearances, rather than allow my failings to be seen. I grew up in a family where the expectation was that you always did your best, and there was no room for failure. So there was no room in my thinking for failure within my marriage.
I couldn’t bring myself to be honest with the Divisional Commander. I kept up the disguise. Within two months our marriage had ended. On the surface, it broke down because my husband found someone else who was also in an unsatisfactory marriage, and together they found a way out. He had an affair. It would be easy for me to say it was something that ‘happened to me’, but I have come to recognise my part in the relationship breakdown.
At this time, I thought my officership was over as well as my marriage. Salvation Army policy was that if your marriage ended, you could not stay on as an officer.
I would not wish divorce on my worst enemy. As a Christian, it was crushing and the shame I felt was huge. The Army was very gracious and no one pointed the finger—they didn’t need to, I was more than capable of doing that myself. I felt crushed for my children as well—seven and nine at the time—because I knew the pain of divorce from my own parents’ marriage.
But looking back from a distance of 20 years, I can see that this became a gift from God. I was completely stripped down, emptied of all my self-sufficiency, self-intactness and pride. I simply had to face my brokenness. My daily walk was 2 Corinthians 4:7-10, which says:
But we have this treasure in jars of clay to show that this all-surpassing power is from God and not from us. We are hard pressed on every side, but not crushed; perplexed, but not in despair; persecuted, but not abandoned; struck down, but not destroyed. We always carry around in our body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be revealed in our body.
Resurrections
The journey I expected my life to take came to an abrupt and devastating end in my 40th year. But that allowed God to open unexpected doors in my life, which he has continued to do ever since. I was astounded The Salvation Army broke with tradition by asking me to retain my officership. I did not accept their generous offer lightly, as I did not want to stay simply for the sake of security. But after seeking God, I felt this was his path for me.
I experienced the compassion of the movement in placing me at Canterbury North-West Divisional Headquarters, where I could have a less public role for some time. As it turned out, this was of God’s doing (as always). I was appointed to a Community Ministries role and found myself identifying closely with the life circumstances of those who came there for assistance. Because I was being faced with my own pain, I was able to experience empathy and compassion for others. This was another gift from God.
To my surprise, I stayed in Canterbury for 17 years. It meant that my children had a very atypical upbringing as officer’s kids. They were able to do all their schooling in Christchurch and follow their dreams. My son represented Canterbury in basketball and my daughter pursued her passion for horse riding.
It also meant they were able to retain a relationship with their dad. I was determined that my children would never feel ‘less than’. I still wanted them to feel that they belonged to a whole family.
As I turned 50, I could look back and thank God for a supportive family, good friends, wonderful children and a deeply fulfilling ministry. Most of all, God had stripped away my false self, and gifted me with a sense of who I really was.
For Christians, church participation can be a safe place to hide behind our false selves. We are simply cleaned up versions of ourselves, not radically changed or made holy in God. But this is a weak version of true salvation. The most awe-inspiring gift is to know that when the masks are stripped away, you are loved and accepted for who you really are.
Hope for no-hopers
That’s the beauty of Jesus—look at the no-hopers he surrounded himself with to become his disciples. That’s the model. Even when we have nothing to offer, we have value.
We try to define our own identity when, in fact, our identity is something God gives us. ‘As a father has compassion on his children, so the Lord has compassion on those who fear him; for he knows how we are formed, he remembers that we are dust,’ says Psalm 103:13–14.
One thing I was very comfortable with was that as a divorced officer I would never be in senior leadership. So when I was appointed a divisional commander, it was a completely unexpected door. At times I openly said, ‘This doesn’t make any sense!’ But I was blessed to spend fulfilling years in that role.
The one change I have ever sought was for greater space to be made for spiritual formation. We’re an activist Army and good at celebrating our ‘doing-ness’. But this can sometimes come at the expense of a deeper life, where we know Christ and how he is shaping us. I think a well-rounded spirituality means I am evangelical, I am activist, I am charismatic, I am contemplative. We need to build into all those spiritual traditions, rather than place ourselves in one box.
Last year I turned 60, and with this has come a new season and new gift. I will be finishing my officership back where it all began for me, as corps officer at Tawa Corps. This is a chance to give back to the corps that nurtured my young faith. It is also returning to my first love, the local corps, with all the potential of a faith community.
My role now is to make way for the next generation. We need to provide opportunities, rather than limit younger people. They live in a different world to us and will bring with them a different Army—a great Army!
Who would not want to finish ‘the race’ doing their first passion? What a gift! What an unexpected gift from God.
as told to Ingrid Barratt(c) ‘War Cry’ magazine, 5 March 2016, pp 5-7.
You can read ‘War Cry’ at your nearest Salvation Army church or centre, or subscribe through Salvationist Resources.