The Spiritual Institutional Container

There is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under the heavens: a time
to be born and a time to die, a time to plant and a time to uproot, a time to kill and a time to heal, a time to tear down and a time to build, a time to weep and a time to laugh, a time to mourn and a time to dance, a time to scatter stones and a time to gather them, a time to embrace and a time to refrain from embracing, a time to search and a time to
give up, a time to keep and a time to throw away, a time to tear and a time to mend, a
time to be silent and a time to speak, a time to love and a time to hate, a time for war and a time for peace. Ecclesiastes 3:1-8

The Spiritual Institutional Container – Grieving Shifts in Seasons of Ministry

By Melanie Foshee Geenen and Gray Foshee

What a rare gift it is to have my brother, Gray Foshee, co-write this message with me.
My love and respect for him cannot even be measured. We have both experienced a
similar journey and are honored to share this in hopes that it will encourage others on
their life’s path.

If you have ever been in ministry, you have witnessed the twists and turns of the
unspoken events that are faced day-to-day. It is not for the faint of heart. Being a
worship leader and later a pastor’s wife, I had years of practice at being in leadership
roles within the church.

Year after year, I delved deeper and deeper into a transformation of my calling. It was
an easy leap, seeing I was a people-pleaser. The more I did, the deeper I got into an
amplification of a persona of the calling.

Until one day, my ex-husband and I resigned our positions and stepped out of ministry.
And just like that, it was over. Done. I didn’t know I wasn’t acknowledging it or that I was
locking my grief down inside. That it mattered. Yet, ten years later, I entered a new
relationship and discovered the hidden container. I had compartmentalized my time in
the church and synagogue into a nice, neat box with a bow on top. The spiritual
institutional container. But, when a relational situation metaphorically lifted the lid off, the
contents came spilling out. Shame. Guilt. Unworthiness. Grief. Loss. Anger. It was all
there. I rushed to put the lid back on, but Holy Spirit gently spoke, “It’s okay. We will do
this together.”

What? No. I didn’t want to look at it, much less feel all those feelings. One by one, I
faced those parts of me that knew a season had come to an end long ago. I reflected on
the familiar verses in Ecclesiastes 3. Grief had been waiting its turn. Ministry was a calling I lived. Not a vocation. I missed the shared language and a sacrifice that felt purposeful. I grieve the loss of being known and needed within a spiritual community. It mattered to me. I am allowed to mourn what I loved. However, it does not get to decide my value or worth. I can carry it in my bones without allowing it to dictate my path or next steps.

Unlike divorce, this loss didn’t come with rituals, casseroles, or permission to grieve. It
was quiet. Disorienting. And incomplete. Ministry was intimacy with God lived out loud.
A place where my faith and leadership converged. This wasn’t a change like a blip on
my resume, but loss. Something sacred mattered deeply to me, and I didn’t know how
or if it would be replaced. I had to sit with the loss of imagined restoration.

My greatest fear was that if I released ministry, it would be betraying my calling. I was
conflicted. Then important questions came. Could I let ministry stop being the measuring stick for my worth, my faithfulness, or my future—without denying how much
it mattered? Could I trust God to redeem this time, even if it isn’t in the way I hoped?
Would I stay stuck with grief as my gatekeeper?

I begin to invite Holy Spirit to sit with me in my sadness. Nothing changed at that
moment, but I needed a witness to honor my grief. Holy Spirit was that witness. I gave
myself permission to grieve a sacred life without requiring my future to replicate it. I was
not betraying ministry by letting it change form; I was honoring it by letting it be complete.

Acts 20:37-38 says, “They all wept as they embraced him and kissed him.” The Apostle
Paul was saying goodbye to the Ephesian elders, knowing they would never see one
another again. The end of a season. They didn’t try to bypass the grief they felt. Instead,
they wept, embraced and kissed him. That’s healthy grief that brings closure.

When the spiritual institutional container falls away, the question becomes: Is my calling
over? Emphatically, no! Romans 11:29 states, “For God’s gifts and his call are irrevocable.” My calling isn’t about position. It’s about obedience and God’s presence in my life.

Here is what I have come to know: my gifts were not wasted, and my obedience was
not in vain. That chapter closed, but the story is not over. Some callings are seasonal in
their structure but permanent in their essence. The heart of who I am—intercessor,
worshipper, shepherd, discerner—remains alive, even as I grieve the loss of the form
that once held it.

While my grief surfaced around the loss of structure, form, and spiritual community, my
brother Gray encountered a different—but deeply related—reckoning. His journey
exposed how ministry can quietly entangle love, belonging, and worth with usefulness.
Together, our stories reveal how the same institutional container can hold different fears,
attachments, and losses—and how God meets each of us within them.

Another View from the Container: Gray’s Story

Leaving church ministry exposed my greatest fear; not being loved anymore by the
people that I had given my life to, some for over 30 years. I prejudged their love for me
based upon my performance for them. If I helped, served, ran to their beckoning cry,
attended every one of their family outings, became a superhero of sorts and rescued them in their greatest moments of tragedy and need, then of course they are obligated
to love me. But when that all comes to a screeching halt because of proximity and being
unable to respond other than by a phone call, then their love for me will also cease. Oh,
the heartache in realizing that I’m only a vessel in the hands of a sovereign God who
decides who will be used by Him and to whom. I am not a superhero and the moment I
take on that cloak of self-promotion and self-exaltation, I began to confuse my role with
God’s role, placing expectations on myself that only belonged to Him. No longer am I
reflecting His image, but I reflect the image of a broken, unrighteous, and fearful man. 
I sometimes think that God calling us into full-time marriage ministry had more to do
with transitioning me out of an unhealthy lifestyle and into a more God dependent one. I
hate to admit some of this stuff. It actually makes me mad with myself. Deep down there
is a part of me that genuinely wants to help people. No strings attached. And I actually
love helping those who do not have the ability nor the understanding of returning the
blessing or favor.

Here’s the reality…. Some of those people still reach out today after nearly 2-1/2 years.
Most of them do not. That stings. But God is doing a deeper work in the heart of Gray.
Something that required me to be purified, purged, and pruned. Are there times I feel
lonely? Absolutely! Probably lonelier than I have ever felt. But I am learning to press into
God more and express my deepest feelings. As for those people, I have learned that I
do love them whether they need me or not and whether they reach out to me or not.
That is a relief of sorts.

Like my sister, I am learning that my calling did not end when my usefulness
changed—and that God’s work in me now is deeper, quieter, and no less sacred.
Together, we have come to see that the grief we carry is not evidence of failure, but of
faithfulness. What we lost was not our calling, but the forms and relationships through
which it was once expressed. As the spiritual institutional container fell away, God did
not. We are learning that callings can change shape without losing their substance, and
that obedience sometimes looks like letting go, trusting that what God has done in us
cannot be undone.

About the Authors:
Melanie Foshee Geenen is an author, worship leader and speaker who now writes and
speaks on grief, calling, and spiritual transitions.
Gray Foshee and his wife, Shelly, serve as Marriage Missionaries with Christian Family
Life.