Those words broke something in me.

Not because I had never been criticized before. I have been told I am “too loud”, “too emotional”, “too honest”, “too inexperienced”, “too unconventional”, and sometimes simply “too much”.

I’ve been called all sorts of names and words I won’t repeat by random strangers on the internet.

But this was different.

This was someone who understood what it meant to stand in a pulpit, walk into a hospital room, and carry the sacred responsibility of tending a congregation. Someone who knew how vulnerable this work could be.

And yet, they look at me and saw my age before my calling.

Maybe they’re right.

Maybe I am too young. Maybe enthusiasm is not the same as wisdom. Maybe sincerity cannot make up for everything I have not yet lived. Maybe God had called me, but I just picked up the phone too early.

When I first received an assignment from the Bishop, I was terrified of what the congregation would think of me.

Would they respect me as their pastor, or would they treat me like their grandchild

Would they listen when I preached?

Would they trust me with their grief?

Would they call me when someone was dying?

Would they believe someone my age could baptize their babies, bury their spouses, sit beside them in a hospital room, and speak grace into the holiest moments of their lives?

And when I recently stepped into another congregation, all those fears came rushing back.

I mean, I knew exactly how I could protect myself.

I could act older. I could speak more formally and hide every part of my life that might remind people of my youth.

I could delete my social media, never talk about my friends, my apartment, my dog, or the other ordinary parts of my life that don’t fit into the typical “clergy biography”.

I could never risk going out on a Friday night, just in case someone caught a glimpse of me having fun.

I could avoid saying anything personal from the pulpit and build a careful wall between Pastor and Chloe.

I could wear dark blazers, sensible shoes, and wrinkle-free tweed skirts.

I would certainly never, EVER, wear a sundress.

I could preform the version of pastoral authority people already recognized, hoping that they would respect me more quickly.

But none of that felt faithful, it all felt like fear.

God had not called a carefully constructed version of me who knew how to imitate every pastor who came before. God had called me.

My age shapes the questions I ask, the people I notice, and the possibilities I can still imagine.

My age means I have so much to learn and that I have not yet learned to assume things must remained as they have always been.

If my Creator did not hide my youth when calling me, why should I hide it when answering?

If God was not embarrassed to call a twenty-three year old woman into pastoral ministry, why should I spend my ministry apologizing for being one?

Paul told Timothy, “Don’t look anyone look down on you because you are young. Instead set an example for the believers through your speech, behavior, love, faith, and purity.”1

Paul did not tell Timothy to pretend to be older. He did not tell him to demand respect because of his title or imitate the leaders who came before him.

Paul told Timothy to live faithfully.

Timothy’s authority would not come from disguising his youth, but from the way he spoke, loved, and believed.

It could come from being trustworthy over time.

So, just as Timothy, I decided not to pretend.

I would tell the truth. I would start my first sermon with my age. I would laugh, admit when I did not know something, and allow people to see that I had friends, joy, grief, questions, and an actual life beyond Sunday morning. I would wear the sundress.

I expected suspicion, condescension, and resistance.

I expected the flock to question whether someone my age could possibly be their shepherd. I expected to have to show them. I expected my authority to come from being trustworthy over time.

But I didn’t expect for the harshest, most demeaning, and disrespectful comments I have received in ministry to come not from members of the flock, but from other shepherds.

The comments have come from other clergy. From people who understand what it costs to stand before a congregation offering your faith, voice, and heart.

The people I feared would treat me like a child offered me grace. They listened to me preach and said, “We are glad you are here.”

But the people I expected to guide me instead made me feel as though I should shrink.

I don’t think this was based in cruelty, I think this was based in fear.2

Every generation struggles to understand the one coming after it.

Every generation looks at the next and sees people who are “too loud", “too casual”, “too impatient”, “too idealistic”, or “too willing to change what should be left alone.”

Even I catch myself judging Generation Alpha sometimes, and I am barely old enough to rent a car.

We are so afraid of what comes after us because it reminds us that the world will continue changing without our permission.

A new generation entering ministry will preach differently. We will communicate differently, ask different questions, and challenge traditions others were taught to never touch.

We may even attempt to get rid of the precious paper bulletin.3

We will make mistakes previous generations learned to avoid, but we may also see possibilities they were taught not to imagine.

And believe me, I understand that this seems terrifying. It seems like honoring what is new requires rejecting everything that came before. But the Church has never survived by refusing to change. The Church has only survived because the Spirit has kept moving.

The Church has only survived because God keeps calling people no one else expected.

The Church has only survived because each generation receives the faith, wrestles with it, lives it, and passes it forward.

The danger is not that young leaders will change the Church, the Church has always changed. The danger is that we will become so afraid of letting go that we become afraid to grow. That we confuse sameness with faithfulness and mistake familiarity for holiness. That we will defend old pastures long after the grass has disappeared.

Young people are constantly told to respect their elders. As we should. There is wisdom that comes only through time and experience.

I need older pastors who have walked through hospital rooms, stood beside graves, weathered church conflicts, and continued preaching through their own pain. These are lessons I cannot learn from a book or a classroom.

I need elders who will tell me the truth, who will share what they have learned, and help me recognize the dangers they have already survived.

Young people are constantly told to respect their elders, but older generations are rarely told to admire their youth.

To admire the courage it takes to enter a struggling institution and still believe it can live. To question the things that have become unquestionable. To notice gifts that have been dulled by disappointment. To honor the holy audacity of people who still believe in the Church.

Scripture does not treat youth only as a weakness to overcome. God called Samuel while he was still a boy.4 David was the youngest and easiest to overlook, left with the sheep.5 Jeremiah protested that he was just a child, but God sent him anyways.6 Mary was likely barely a teenager when she received a calling that would change the world.7

Again and again, God entrusts holy and hard work to people others considered “too young”, “too inexperienced", or “too unlikely”.

So perhaps, the youth has something to teach the Church.

Yes we are sometimes reckless and sometimes impatient. But maybe that is because have yet to accept limitation as permanent. Maybe that is because we are hopeful. Because we can still imagine pastures we have never seen. Because we can look at a dying field and ask why the flock is being told to remain there. We can hear, “this is how we’ve always done it,” and wonder whether that is a reason or merely an explanation.

Youth is a different kind of wisdom.

While the wisdom of age remembers, the wisdom of youth imagines.

While the wisdom of age knows which paths have led to danger, the wisdom of youth notices paths no one has tried or which one’s need to be tried again.

While the wisdom of age can tell us how the flock survived, the wisdom of youth asks what the flock might become.

The Church needs both.

Respect cannot travel in only one direction.

Young leaders must honor those who carried the church before us.

Older leaders must also become curious about what God may be doing through those arriving now.

To admire the youth does not mean pretending we cannot be wrong. It does not mean abandoning accountability, discernment, or experience. It simply means refusing to treat youth itself as evidence of incompetence.

To admire the youth means to believe God may have placed something in a new generation that the Church cannot afford to dismiss.

I think that’s why those words broke something in me.

They didn’t just criticize my ministry, they assumed my youth could only be a liability. They left no room for the possibility that God might use it as part of my calling.

Yes, I am young.

Yes I will make mistakes, need correction, patience, and the wisdom of those who have walked longer than I have.

But I refuse to spend my ministry apologizing for arriving.

I refuse to pretend to be older, quieter, or less alive simply so I can resemble the shepherd people expected.

I will wear the sundresses, drink the iced coffee, ask the difficult questions, and trust the Creator who did not overlook my age.

Young people have long been told to respect their elders. Perhaps it is time the elders also learn to admire their youth.

For over an hour, I sat with worship music playing in my headphones (as it almost always is), an iced coffee in one hand, and my journal in the other.

Outside the window, green hills rolled past us, divided by stone walls, narrow roads, and herds of sheep.

Sheep are everywhere in Ireland. They stand in fields beside highways, gather on hillsides, and wander close enough to the road to where you wonder if anyone is actually watching.

They seem woven into the landscape itself, as ordinary and ancient as the stone walls surrounding them.

And as I watched the herds pass by outside, I began thinking about how often scripture uses the language of sheep and shepherds.

“The Lord is my Shepherd.” (Psalm 23)

Jesus looks at a crowd with compassion, as they are “harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd.” (Matthew 9)

Jesus calls Himself the Good Shepherd, the One who knows the sheep and is known by them. (John 10)

Peter is told to “Feed my sheep.” (John 21)

The image is so familiar that it can lose some of its meaning.

We paint shepherds into stained glass windows, lambs beside a swaddled baby Jesus in children’s Bibles, and whisper Psalm 23 in hospital rooms.

But shepherding is not sentimental work, it is daily, patient, and deeply personal work.

Sheep are social animals, finding safety and trust within the flock they recognize.

Trust however, is not automatic. A shepherd cannot simply walk into a field one morning, announce themselves as the new leader, and expect the sheep to follow.

Shepherding is one of the oldest occupations in the world and it has always been distinct from ordinary farming.

While a farmer may care for the land, plant crops, repair fences, and oversee several kinds of animals, the role of a shepherd is much more particular.

They must spend time with the flock everyday. Sitting in the pasture. Speaking calmly. Bringing food and water. Watching closely.

They must learn which sheep are bold and which are cautious. Which ones wander and which stay near to the center.

Day after day, the flock becomes familiar with the shepherd’s appearance, movements, scents, and voice, allowing the herd to slowly learn that they are not a threat.

A good shepherd works with the nature of the flock, rather than against it. They respect the patterns already present, understanding that care cannot be forced and trust cannot be rushed.

Perhaps this is why Scripture uses this image to describe the care of God.

“The Lord is my shepherd.”

It is not simply a promise that God will tell us where to go, rather that He will stay close enough to know us.

God knows the paths we are likely to wander down. He knows what frightens us, when we are exhausted, and where we are wounded. God knows when we need to be led forward and when we need to lie down beside still waters.

The Good Shepherd does not care for the flock from a distance, He enters the field.

It is not authority born from intimidation or a title, but from relationships.

This was the image of ministry I carried with me as I looked out the bus window in Ireland.

The past few months have forced me to ask difficult questions about what it means to be a pastor, who gets to be trusted, and what makes someone worthy of being followed.

The word “pastor” comes from the language of shepherding.

To “pastor” is to tend, guide, feed, nourish, protect, and remain close to the people entrusted to your care.

It is not simply standing in a pulpit, planning programs, running meetings, and possessing a never ending to-do list.

A pastor must learn their flock.

Learn names, histories, griefs, fears, failures, joys, and hopes. Learn which traditions carry sacred meanings and which invisible fences need torn down.

A pastor does not simply declare their role. For a title may place you in the field but it does not make the flock follow them.

Trust does that.

Relationship does that.

Love does that.

This does not mean pastors never lead people somewhere new, shepherds must move flocks. A single pasture cannot sustain forever. But even movement begins with knowing.

The shepherd must know the state of the flock, the shape of the land, and the dangers of the path.

Leadership without learning is simply control.

Change without relationship only leads to fear.

A pastor is called to speak about God while remaining painfully aware that they are not God.

They are entrusted with people who belong not to them, but to Christ alone.

Pastors must remember that while they are shepherds, they are also sheep.

They must try to recognize the voice of the Good Shepherd while helping others hear it too.

They must try to lead without forgetting that they, too, can wander.

There are seasons in ministry where calling feels clear. When the pieces seem to fit together and God’s voice is unmistakable.

But there are also seasons where institutions, expectations, and other people’s opinions, can make that calling feel fragile.

You may enter a room knowing that God has called you, but leave wondering if everyone else received a different message.

Not too long ago, a clergy member I know and deeply respected told me that I was “just too young to be an effective pastor.”

Those words broke something in me.

And tomorrow in The Shepherds, I’ll tell you why.

I wrote this book thinking it was going to be about politics.

That made sense for me to write about. Politics has been my life. I thought my calling was to stand somewhere between the right and the left and try to build a bridge strong enough for both sides to walk across. I thought my work was to fight agains…

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And if you also didn’t know… trips to the UK cost significantly more than a pastor’s salary. 😅

A few people have reached out asking if I was doing any fundraising for the trip, and while I never publicly admitted it before now (because I despise asking for money almost as much as I despise credit card interest rates), I did decide to quietly open paid levels on my Substack, Purple People, to help offset the cost.

Don’t worry, if you already subscribe, absolutely nothing is changing! All regular posts will still be public and free, just like always. Purple People is staying exactly what it has always been: a place for honest conversations about faith, the church, politics, and finding Jesus somewhere in the middle of it all.

But, if you happen to have a little extra room in your already-tight budget and would like to support both the trip and my work, there are now two optional paid tiers with a few fun perks attached.

The standard paid subscription is $10/month or $100/year and includes early access to excerpts from my upcoming book, Meeting Jesus in the Middle. (Hint hint: the brand new rewritten introduction is getting posted later today 👀)

And for those who feel called to support my “Chloe’s First Pint of Guinness Fund,” there is also a Founding Member tier with a suggested contribution of $250/year, though it’s flexible and can be adjusted anywhere from $101 to “someone please take away my credit card.” As a thank you, Founding Members will receive early access to purchase signed copies of the book before its planned release later this summer.

Again, there is truly zero expectation to donate. I mean that sincerely. But since several people have asked if there was a way to support the trip, I wanted to open up an option and hopefully give something meaningful back in return.

Mostly, I’m just incredibly excited for this opportunity and grateful for the community that has formed around Purple People. Thank you all for reading, encouraging, questioning, and wrestling alongside me. It means more than you know. 💜

It’s okay for them to rest, but you can’t.

The last few weeks, I’ve barely been taking my medication. Not because I don’t want to, but because I don’t have time to sleep as long as those medications need me to.

I made the mistake of checking my health stats today. My average sleep has been 3.5 hours a day. My average caloric intake has been 600.

I’m drowning and yet I am still finding a way to give.

Occasionally someone will throw me a life vest. I have a few people who check in over text, ask how I really am, give me a hug when they see me in the hallways.

But every time I get my hands on an ounce of self-preservation, I hand it over to someone else.

I know what it’s like to have no one show up for you. I know what it’s like to suffer alone. I know what it’s like to celebrate alone. So I refuse to let anyone else live in the reality I’ve lived in.

I never turn my phone on silent anymore. Even when I do sleep, I stay just awake enough to answer a 3am text. To make sure I am available in case someone needs me to be the person I need.

I don’t mean to write this to complain or sound like I am asking for attention. I am just writing this to be honest.

Honest about the fact that I love my job, my calling, more than anything. I love the people. I love the moments. I love the fact that I get to show up in the middle of someone’s worst day and make sure they’re not alone. I love those quiet, hard, and holy moments that no one else sees.

But I also want to be honest about the fact that this job, this calling, it’s exhausting. We don’t talk about what it feels like to carry people. To hold space for grief and joy, crisis and celebration, all in the same day. To always be the steady one, the available one, the one who answers.

We don’t talk about what it feels like to carry everyone else when no one is carrying you. But at the same time, I don’t want to seem like I am upset with the people I’ve texted at 3am even though they never answered. I’m proud of them to be honest. Proud of them for doing something I can’t do, put themselves first.

I don’t know where my own well-being goes on the list of priorities when everyone else feels urgent. When I try to lay down for 15 minutes but end up with 5 texts and 4 emails, all of them marked high-priority.

The truth is, I will always choose them. Even if it costs me sleep, or my health, or pieces of myself I’m not sure how to get back.

I don’t think this is what my calling is supposed to feel like, but I don’t know how to make it feel any different.

And the hardest part of all of this, is I feel like I am failing. I know I can’t juggle everything because I’m watching myself drop things. Things I said I would do, people I said I would take care of.

I guess what I want to say is this: I am tired. I am trying. I still love this but I need to figure out how not to disappear inside of it.

I believe that is true. It made my life make sense. It gave me a clean beginning point to explain how I ended up here, how I ended up in the church, how I ended up saying yes to something that still seems crazy.

God met me in what I thought was my darkest moment. He brought me into the church. He gave me this life that I loved.

But even as I said it, there were always moments where I wondered if I had gotten it wrong. My pastor friends assured me that this was normal. That they also questioned at times if they had heard their calling right, if they were actually meant for this, or if they had mistaken something emotional for something holy.

I don’t usually say this out loud but I think I rebuilt my life around something I only half understood.

I shouldn’t say that out loud, it doesn’t fit neatly into my story.

But then last week happened. And that too didn’t fit neatly into my story.

Within the span of three hours, everything I thought God had given me fell apart. My job, the one I thought was exactly where I was supposed to be, was gone. My relationship, the one I thought was steady and safe and something I could see my future inside of, ended.

My relationship didn’t just end, it ended in a way that made me question everything. Infidelity is a word that doesn’t just describe what happened, it describes what it does to you. It gets inside of your body. It rewrites your memories. It makes you question your own instincts, your own judgement, your own ability to trust anything at all.

It didn't make sense. How could my happiness, my trust, my life that I thought I loved, just leave in an instant?

As I felt the tears well up in my eyes and the gaping hole start to form in my core, the world got very quiet.

I remember the first thought in my brain, before the denial and anger hit. I remember it because it was so clear. It felt settled, like something has already been decided.

I didn’t want to be here anymore.

I want to be explicit that I am safe. I am here. I have people who made sure I stayed. But in that moment, as my life came crumbling down around me, I thought it would be better if I ended it.

Looking back, the thing that scares me most about this moment is not just how final it felt, but just how much I was willing to leave behind. My church, my family, my friends, and most painfully, my dog.

I look at her sleeping next to me as I’m writing this and my heart breaks for the fact that for just a moment I could picture her without me.

The good news is that our first reaction is not who we are, the second one is.

My second reaction was that of fear, fear that I could not be safe alone. And so I walked into my neighbors apartment late at night with no warning, just to be with someone else.

I tried to explain things, answer the questions she was asking me, but I felt like my voice didn't belong to me. Everything felt so distant and so heavy at the same time. She asked me what I needed and there was only one thing on my mind, I needed my cross.

I walked home in search for the palm cross my roommate gave me for my birthday. The cross I was still learning how to pray with. I’m not someone who naturally leans into formal prayer, but in that moment I needed it. I needed to bear the weight of the cross in my hands and grip it so tightly my hands would ache. I felt that if I let go of that wooden cross, I would truly let go.

I didn’t even make it to my room where I keep that cross, my neighbor had to go fetch it for me. As soon as my front door closed, I felt myself break. My knees hit the ground first, then my arms, and finally my forehead.

There were no words. No prayer. Nothing I have ever said in a church would have made sense in that moment. I just held onto that cross and wept.

I think something in me died there.

I don’t mean that in a really cool groundbreaking way, I truly mean that I think a part of me was gone.

It took awhile but my body eventually ran out of tears. I came up from the ground knowing I needed something more than just hugs and feel better ice cream. I needed communion.

I’ll be honest, writing this makes me nervous because I know what admitting this means. There are rules, structure, and tradition to the sacrament of communion. I am not licensed nor ordained. I have not earned the privilege or authority to preside over the sacraments.

I know all of these things, and yet I did it anyway.

I do not condone this, and I know I will have to answer for this, but I do not regret it.

In that moment, I was not thinking about rules, or tradition, or whether theologically this counted. I was thinking about staying alive.

I needed the bread. I needed the wine. I needed something that could hold me in a way nothing else could.

And I hope the church can forgive me for that.

I got up, still gripping onto the cross, and went to the kitchen. I grabbed the bottle of red wine and the months old sandwich bread from the back of my fridge. I pulled up the liturgy on my iPad and it took me almost an hour to start reading.

I couldn’t rush it. I needed to stand there and praise for as long as I could. I needed to feel the worship run through my body. I needed to truly understand this gift of bread and wine.

My friends were in the room. I could feel them. I could hear them sometimes, but they felt so far away. Everything narrowed to the words, the bread, the wine, and the cross.

I started reading and it all felt so familiar. Most of these words I’ve read over and over before. I’ve always felt so comfortable reading these words. Telling my congregation that the Lord is with them, that He gave Himself up for them.

But then I got to the line I always step back for. I stood there with it, feeling everything I had been taught pressing in on me. I understood that this part is not yet mine to say, I knew what it meant to say it but also what it might mean if I didn’t.

So, I said the words, I broke the bread, and I drank the wine.

And then something happened. I felt warmth moving through my body. I felt white light coming into me, and leaving as this beautiful array of colors.

It didn't take the pain away or make any of this hurt make sense. But it was there before me.

I was there. I was alive. I was going to be okay.

I don’t really know how to explain this, other than saying that I met God.

Loosing the job I thought He gave me, loosing the relationship I thought He made for me, you’d think that heartbreak would unravel everything.

But it was the opposite. It was in that loss, in that breaking, in that moment where I thought everything was ending that I knew, not believed, but knew that He was there. God was there.

I felt enlightened, renewed, reborn. Like all this pain and doubt had been washed away with the bread, the wine, the cross, and the heartbreak.

Something in me died that night and I don’t know if I’ve fully came to understand what has taken its place. It’s been a week and I have yet to feel whole or put back together. But I feel made new and I don’t think I can go back to the version of faith I had before that.

Years before I ever said the words aloud to my mentor. Before paperwork or interviews. Before anyone called me Pastor and I had to pretend not to look behind me to see who they were actually talking to. The seed was planted by this person.

I don’t remember the conversation clearly. I wish I did. I wish I could replay it and hear exactly what was said. But it wasn’t dramatic, it was ordinary.

So ordinary that I forgot it ever happened until their named showed up on my phone in the middle of my morning routine. I stared at it for a long time and then I locked my phone and kept moving through my day. It feels strange to admit that grief didn’t arrive all at once, that instead it waited for the silence. That it found me the next day.

I was sliding on my Pastor Chloe jacket. The one I was given the day someone first said that title aloud like it belonged to me. I still remember chuckling when I opened it. It felt too big, not in size but in weight, in responsibility, in expectation.

And I stood there with my arm in the sleeve and I remembered. Not the full conversation but the feeling, the steadiness. The way they did not flinch when they said it, they didn’t treat it like it was a phase, they spoke like it was possible.

That day was my first Ash Wednesday. Not just my first Ash Wednesday as a pastor, but my first Ash Wednesday ever.

I didn’t grow up in the church, and sometimes that leaves me feeling like I am behind. Especially in seminary, when everyone else seems to speak scripture like a first language and I am still conjugating verbs. There are days I feel like I am sprinting to catch up, like everyone has muscle memory for this and I am still learning where to place my hands.

But that night, I didn’t feel behind, I felt grateful.

I rehearsed the words over and over.

Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return.

I wondered what it would feel like to look someone in the eye and say it out loud. There is something almost unbearably intimate about telling someone they will die. Not in theory but face to face. Pressing ash into the wrinkles of their skin.

I understand why those words would sound harsh if you were raised with a harsh God. If death was always framed as a punishment. If the cross was explained as divine anger needing to be satisfied.

I’m grateful that is not the story I inherited.

The God who found me did not feel mean. He felt relentless in mercy. The cross did not look like a punishment to me, it looked like pursuit, like rescue, like love willing to come all the way down into dust.

I was telling people that they would return to dust and somehow, it did not feel cruel, it felt honest.

I stood there that night, ash on my thumb, repeating ancient words I had never heard as a child, and I was calm. Something in my body recognized the moment before my mind did. Like I had been walking toward the moment without realizing it.

Ash on my thumb. Faces inches from mine. Ancient words resting in the air between us. And underneath it all, a memory of a conversation I had forgotten for years.

I had forgotten that someone once spoke to a younger person of me and treater her calling like it was not absurd. Like it was not attention-seeking or dramatic, just real.

It took their death for me to remember.

Ash Wednesday tells us that we are dust, and I kept think about dust this week. About how seeds disappear into it. About how most growth happens underground. About how the people who plant something in us rarely get the full bloom.

They will never get to see the jacket. They will never stand in the back of the sanctuary and watch me press ash onto foreheads. They will never know that their ordinary words lodged themselves somewhere deep enough to grow.

I wish I could tell them.

I wish I could say, you were a part of this.

But instead, I put on the jacket. I rehearse the words. I press ash onto skin. I remember that I am dust. And I sit with the uncomfortable truth that sometimes we do not recognize the holy moments until they are already over.

Because suddenly, I was standing in that jacket, with a sprouted seed, watered and planted by someone who is gone.

This week I am grieving someone whose voice I can barely remember, but at the same time I am standing in the calling they once spoke into.

Dear Madam President.

It was written by Jennifer Palmieri, Director of Communications for Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign, as a reflection on that race and all the mistakes they made. The mistakes that brought us to where we are now, nearly a decade later. Each chapter reads like a lesson learned too late, offered to the next woman who will run the world. It’s a book that assumes there will be a next woman. A book written with hope, even while holding regret.

And as soon as I saw the cover again, I remembered the lesson that has haunted me ever since 2016. The one that stuck harder than polling errors or media miscalculations or the arrogance of inevitability.

When Hillary Clinton ran for president, she wore pantsuits.

I am not joking or exaggerating in the slightest.

When Hillary Clinton ran for president, and throughout much of her political career, she cut her hair short, softened her voice, and tried to act “presidential.”

Everyone hates politicians because they are fake. They lie. They don’t feel like real people. And yet, everyone loves politicians when they kiss babies, flip fried chicken, or stand in visible awe at the sight of the Butter Cow. This is why the unspoken litmus test for running for president is whether or not you’re someone a voter would want to grab a beer with.

The truth is, most political campaigns aren’t really about policy or ethics. They’re about vibes. Who feels less creepy. Who didn’t spit out the loose meat sandwich. Whose rhetoric was more memorable.

Hilary Clinton wore pantsuits, cut her hair, acted “presidential” and yet lost the election because the only version of “presidential” America had ever known did not match her authentic self. It was a costume built for someone else’s body. And she wore it anyway, because we told her she had to.

Power, as we understood it, has a uniform.
Seriousness has a look.
Competence, apparently, comes in navy and black and neutral tones.

She learned, as so many women before her had, that you cannot simply be yourself and expect to be trusted. You have to translate yourself. Edit yourself. Sand down the parts that feel too sharp, too feminine, too human. You have to become legible in a language that was never written for you.

We didn’t just ask her to change how she looked. We asked her to change how she took up space. How she spoke. How much of herself she was allowed to bring with her into the room.

Not to win.
But just to be considered.

And yet, that is what might have costed her the election.

This wasn’t just a lesson learned in hindsight. It wasn’t just a campaign strategy gone wrong. It was a message that landed far beyond 2016. A message a lot of women absorbed quietly, without ever realizing we were doing it.

If this is what power looks like, then this is what you wear.
If this is what seriousness sounds like, then this is how you speak.
If this is what leadership requires, then this is who you become.

And I listened.

Throughout my political career, and well, most of my life, I wore pantsuits. Literally.

I cut my hair more than once.

I told myself it was practical. Professional. Easier. But really, it was familiar. It was what I had learned power looked like.

So when I entered pastoral ministry, I surprised myself.

I started wearing dresses. Flowy ones. Soft ones. Dresses that felt like relief. Like exhaling. Like maybe, finally, I didn’t have to costume myself quite so much.

But it didn’t last long.

I started to feel overwhelmed. Too visible. Too noticeable. I worried about whether I looked like what people thought a pastor should look like. And slowly, quietly, I found my way back to pantsuit land.

We promise, as candidates for ordained ministry, to strive toward the highest ideals of the Christian life. But somewhere along the way, that promise gets confused with perfection. With constant self-monitoring. With the pressure of being a role model in ways no one ever fully explains.

I started asking myself questions I couldn’t turn off. I shut down, made sacrifices just to keep up appearances.

I can’t wear a sleeveless dress, would a pastor wear that?

I can’t celebrate with you tonight, what would people think if they saw their pastor at a bar?

And then, one Friday night, I was at a bar.

I let it slip that I was a pastor. The bartender didn’t believe me, so for reasons I still don’t fully understand, I pulled out my Instagram to prove it. (Don’t ask.)

He didn’t look at the sermon clips.
He didn’t look at the photos of me holding my massive collection of Bibles.
He didn’t look at the ones in sanctuaries.

He went straight to a photo of me on a girls’ trip. In a bikini.

“What kind of pastor wears a bikini?”

That comment stayed with me long after that night.

Since then, I haven’t pulled out my favorite flowy dresses to preach in. I got scared of what other people might think. Of what kind of pastor they might decide I was. And somewhere in all of that fear, I forgot who I actually am.

I have had mentor after mentor tell me to take breaks. To be young. To be dumb. To not let the church steal my joy or burn me out. And yet, I was letting all of that happen anyway. Not because anyone explicitly told me I had to, but because I was terrified of being seen as I actually am.

A young female pastor.

This week, standing in my office with that book in my hands, I realized something: By running away from who I am, I was running away from my call.

God did not call a hypothetical version of me. God did not call a perfected version of me. God called me as I am.

God called a woman in her twenties.
Barely out of college.
Someone who still calls her dad for help with every minor inconvenience.
Someone who still has a vertical driver’s license because she is afraid of the DMV.

God called someone who occasionally goes to a bar on the weekend.
Someone who wears a bikini on a girls’ trip.
Someone who loves Jesus deeply and imperfectly and loudly and with her whole self.

And then, the Bishop and her cabinet looked at that same person and said, yes. This is who we are assigning to pastor a church.

Not despite who she is.
But with all of it.

I am a young female pastor. And I am allowed to be silly and have fun. Not in spite of my call, but because of it.

So last week, I brought a gavel into the pulpit and used it as a prop while I preached.

I make the same bad dad joke about germs every single time I pass out communion, and I have absolutely no plans to stop.

I bought a Jesus plushie and treated it like an elf on the shelf, except it was Jesus, and the shenanigans were, at least kind of, biblically accurate. (This included forty helium balloons and a very committed ascension plan.)

And through all of it, I kept waiting to be pulled aside. Waiting for someone to question my seriousness. Waiting to be told I needed to “act like a pastor.”

But it never happened.

Instead, I saw smiles. I heard laughter.

It turns out the thing people are most desperate for right now is not perfection. It’s community. And I’m not sure there’s anything that builds community faster than a pastor who is willing to be fully herself.

If anything, it makes the room safer. It makes the table wider. It reminds people that they belong before they behave, that they are welcome before they understand, and that faith can be something that gives life instead of draining it.

I spent so long afraid that being myself would cost me credibility. What I didn’t expect was that it might actually build trust.

So this is my letter to you, the young female pastors who will rule the church someday.

Do not make the same mistake Hillary Clinton made.
Do not believe the lie that you need to costume yourself into acceptability.
Do not confuse credibility with conformity.
Do not shrink yourself into something easier to swallow.

The church does not need another imitation of a pastor we have already seen. It needs you. Your voice. Your body. Your joy. Your questions. Your life, fully lived and fully visible.

Wear the dress. Or the pantsuit. Or the jeans. Or the collar.
Go to the bar (responsibly). Or don’t.
Live the life God actually called you into, not the one that makes other people more comfortable.

The world does not change because women finally learn how to fit in.
It changes when we stop pretending we were ever supposed to.

And if they ask you what kind of pastor does any of this, tell them the truth: The kind God called.

Not because I don’t have things to say. Those who know me, know I ALWAYS have things to say.

I’ve never felt qualified to write. Call it imposter syndrome. Call it being a young woman in a world that still mistakes confidence for arrogance and conviction for audacity. Call it years of being told, directly or indirectly, that I’m not old enough, not polished enough, not educated enough, or just not good enough.

Writing has always felt like stepping into a space I wasn’t sure was meant for me. I mean who would even want to read what I have to say?

And yet, the same mentor who encouraged me to claim the title of pastor, encouraged me to write a book, well he encouraged me to do this too. So I guess it’s time to start a Substack.

Hi, I’m Pastor Chloe. I’m a seminary student, dog mom, and first year pastor. In May of 2025, I made the craziest decision of my life to leave my dream political career behind and pursue ordination in the United Methodist Church.

Before ministry, I worked in politics in Iowa and Washington, D.C. I loved the work. I was good at it. I believed deeply in coalition building and policy over party. I believed that if we could just explain things better, or talk longer, or compromise a little more, we could fix what felt broken.

Then I started noticing how tired everyone was. Including me.

Somewhere along the way, politics stopped being about people and started being about winning. Faith, too, if I’m being honest, has fallen into that same trap. We’ve turned both into identities to defend instead of communities to belong to.

Now, I spend my days pastoring a church, sitting with people in their grief and their joy, and trying to learn how to preach the gospel in a world that feels permanently online and permanently angry. I’m in seminary, which mostly means I read a lot, ask too many questions, and keep discovering how much I don’t know.

This Substack exists because I don’t believe we were meant to live this divided.

Purple People is for those of us who live in the middle. Not neutral. Not disengaged. Just unwilling to pretend that faith, politics, love, doubt, and hope fit neatly into red or blue boxes. It’s for people who feel politically homeless, spiritually restless, and stubbornly hopeful that loving your neighbor still matters.

Everything here is free, because I don’t believe access to ideas should depend on a credit card. Writing belongs to the commons.

If you choose to support this work, paid subscribers will get early access to excerpts and chapters from my book, Meeting Jesus in the Middle, along with some behind the scenes reflections as it comes together. Founding members will get early access to the full book before it’s released.

Mostly, though, this is a place to think out loud. To tell the truth as best I can. To hold tension without rushing to resolve it. To sit at the table a little longer.

I’ve been putting this off for a long time. But I’m here now.

Welcome to Purple People.

You belong here.