Abby Cole Keller - God Gives Strength To Make Our Journey
Exploring faith journeys and inspiring ministries that embody the good news of God. This is the Cumberland Road. I am your host, TJ Milunoski. Today's podcast, I'm in conversation with Reverend Abby Cole Keller. On this episode, she shares her struggle in overcoming cancer at an early age and how that impacts her ministry and being able to communicate with others in a different way. Abby is ministering through an online worshiping community called Scattered Seeds, and she brings to the table and to her ministry undergraduate degree from Barry College and master's of divinity from Columbia Theological Seminary. Let's listen to the conversation that I have with Abby Keller on Cumberland Road.
T.J.:How are you?
Abby:I'm good. How are you?
T.J.:Alright. So life in East Tennessee. Now you've spent the majority or all of your life in East Tennessee in the Greenville area.
Abby:I did. I took a short sabbatical down to Georgia for college and seminary, but returned back after graduation, as my husband got a job up here and to be close to family at that time. Now
T.J.:you were raised in the Greenville Cumberland Presbyterian Church, but can you recall a very early experience or a very early encounter with God?
Abby:I think, you know, since I was raised in the church, my parents, once they had children, decided they wanted to go to a church and landed at the Greenville Cumberland Church. It's always been a part of my life. Probably something I actually took for granted for a long time. But probably the first real time that I felt God's calling and presence was probably when I felt called to the ministry. And that would have been probably a freshman at a high school, I was on a retreat.
Abby:And it was just very clear to me that that was the direction God was calling me to go. And that was probably the first real tangible, perhaps, calling I felt.
T.J.:So you were you were in high school and on a retreat, and this is when you felt a relationship with God maybe a little bit separate from your mom and dad, sort of a relationship that God was speaking to you specifically?
Abby:Yeah, my parents while they attended church, they I think attended church for us more than anything else. And really, as I transitioned probably to middle school and high school, it was more me dragging my parents to church than my parents dragging us until I got a car and then I couldn't drag them anymore. But, so I think that relationship has always been there. And I think looking back on it, I knew I was going into the ministry fairly early on, like from a freshman in high school, but my parents didn't even realize that or no one really realized that that was what I knew I was doing until I was a senior. And people were like, what are you gonna do?
Abby:And I'm like, well, clearly I'm going to seminary and gonna become a pastor. And they're all like, what? Where did that come from? But I knew, and I think that relationship was just always there and something that was just a part of who I was in a way that I don't know that I really thought it through. It was just an understanding within me.
T.J.:So you felt the initial call around, what, freshman year, but you didn't really say anything to anyone until three, four years later as a senior? You hung on to that news?
Abby:Listen. I just knew, And therefore, I didn't it wasn't something we talked about. I mean, I knew that's what was gonna happen. So no need to talk about me. I don't know.
Abby:You just Don't make fun of me, TJ.
T.J.:No. No.
Abby:The same is true of Josh, my husband. Like, I knew I was gonna marry Josh long before he knew, before three weeks before we were dating, I knew I was going to marry him. And it took him eight years to figure it out. But
T.J.:Now, I only know pieces of this part of your your faith journey. So in early adulthood, you experienced a health issue. And I did. Would you be willing, as much as you're comfortable with, share what that's like, what that was, and how your faith impacted your understanding of the health care?
Abby:So between college and seminary, I had a very busy summer as is normal when you graduate college and I had to move into seminary early because you know, helping at church camps, you know, and Greek school, which is very intense as how a CT at Columbia starts. So you have an intensive, I don't know, eight weeks of Greek school and then you automatically roll over into regular seminary. Well, in that time I started not to feel so great. I was really tired, but I didn't really think about it because everybody was kind of tired and been intense that that change is pretty big and group schools pretty intense and starting seminaries intense. And then I got a swollen lymph node in my neck and I remember I can tell you the moment I found it, I was standing in line in the refractory, which is a fancy word for cafeteria when you're at Columbia.
Abby:And there was a man who had been a nurse in his pre seminary days was behind me and I put my hand on my neck. And I was like, Oh, that feels weird. And I turned around to Mike and I was like, Hey, feel this. And he's like, You might wanna have that looked at. But it's probably nothing.
Abby:Ironically, the person behind him said, Oh, that's fine. You know, my father had cancer and that doesn't look anything like that in retrospect. That was a bad comment. But my father who was a doctor, I called him, I said, I've got the swollen lymph node, it's been there a little bit. It feels a little funky.
Abby:He sent me a Z Pak and so I took my antibiotic and it went down a little bit, but it was still there. And when life is busy and new and you're young, one, you explain things away. And two, time in that when you don't feel well and time just floats by. So a couple of weeks of a lymph node being there ends up being a couple of months of a lymph node being there. And I was having night sweats, but like my bed and my dorm room was right next to like the room heater.
Abby:And I was like, oh, it just got hot in the room. That's why I'm covered in sweat and have to change my sheets. But my dad came down to visit and very traumatically I was at Cheesecake Factory. This is very detailed, I'm sorry. The Cheesecake Factory in Atlanta with my god baby who had allergies, but we didn't know yet.
Abby:So he was screaming, here we are. My dad feels it. He's like, me see the limp note. I said, Leo, feel right here. He makes me stand up at The Cheesecake Factory.
Abby:At the end of the table, I've got Paul Williams screaming and Sarah Catherine being just bussy. Mark and Michelle Rackley are with me, my mom and my dad. And dad does like a full lymph node like doctor's appointment at The Cheesecake Factory. Like Paul is screaming his head off. Like it's awful.
Abby:I remember that very vividly. And in that moment, dad knew it was cancer, but didn't want to say anything. He said, this was October. So he said, you're gonna come home and you're gonna have a biopsy. I said, I'm not having a biopsy.
Abby:He said, yes, you are. I said, I'm not having surgery. So we compromised there at The Cheesecake Factory in Atlanta and said that I would do a needle biopsy when I came home for Thanksgiving. And I agreed. And so the Wednesday before Thanksgiving, my mother and I go and it was snowing.
Abby:Thought, snow in East Tennessee the day before Thanksgiving is not a good sign. 09:00 in the morning. And I went in, they asked me if I had skinned a raccoon lately, and I said no. I thought that was a weird question. But they did the needle biopsy, and I had to go to restroom in between, and I could hear her on the phone to my dad's office.
Abby:I was like, this is not gonna be good news when she comes back into the room. So I went ahead and got my mom and said, Mom, I think you're gonna need to come back with me. And so mom came back and she said, the needle box says, well, this is Hodgkin's lymphoma. And we're like, it's what? And I remember my mom very clearly saying, like, so cancer, like, no, mom didn't even know, like she's saying Hodgkin's.
Abby:And somehow I knew that was cancerous. And I made her say, specifically, so this was cancer. And she said, yes. And so that was 09:00 in the morning. By eleven I was in with the oncologist, and the needle biopsies called right there.
Abby:And they said, Oh, we'll see her in December. And the needle biopsies was like, No, no, no. He'll see her today. Like, let me talk to the doctor. And they got me in that day and by five I was having a real biopsy, like a whole removal of the And that was the day before Thanksgiving.
Abby:At eleven when we met with the oncologist, I said, I've got two weeks of seminary left. Can I come back and start treatment after that? He was like, No, you will start treatment. He said, Tomorrow's Thanksgiving, you will have a CAT scan on Monday and your port put in No, I'd have a CAT scan on Friday, my port put in on Monday, and we would start chemotherapy on Wednesday. Like there was no ifs, ands, or buts about it.
Abby:He's like, We're going. So that's what we did. We went, I had 12 rounds of chemotherapy, my sister and boyfriend at the time seemed to be husband, went down and got my stuff from so many, like I had no clothes, like I'd only come home for Thanksgiving. So Josh and my sister, Sarah, ran down and got my stuff from Columbia and I spent the next nine months at home getting treatments. But then at the end, was, besides having to go back to seminary with some chemo brain, at the end that, at the end I was like, mom, can I wait?
Abby:Because I finished radiation, I had 20 rounds of radiation following my 12 rounds of chemo. And that I finished it mid July. And seminary started back in August. And I was like, think I need a little more time. Like, you know, a month is not really enough time to recover.
Abby:And my mom was like, no, you're going because you won't go back if you don't go, which was probably a good thing in the end. But at the time I was like, I'm taught like that's a lot. So that first semester of seminary back, I'm not sure I remember a whole lot. And I had Hebrew, which is all you have to remember a lot for Hebrew. And remembering is not necessarily easy after experiencing a lot of chemotherapy.
Abby:But yeah, so I went back and I remember sitting in the needle biopsies office, she said, one, Hodgkin's lymphoma is a very good cancer to have. That's really hard to hear when you're being diagnosed with it. But she also said, this will just be a bump in your road. Like when you look back on this, it will just be a bump in the road. And I thought that is the worst thing you could ever say.
Abby:You don't know. But it really was just a bump in the road and one that I learned a lot from. And I think it really did help me in ministry as I moved forward. It definitely, I like to say that one thing they don't teach you in seminary that they should is everybody needs like a crash course in medicine. Like as a pastor, you often get thrown into the medical realm.
Abby:That's when you get called in often is when people have received bad news or you're in a deathbed. And if you're 23 straight out of seminary, you don't know a lot about that. You know, you don't know a lot about being in a hospital room or what it is to hear those words or just the doctor talk. Like so often you may have experienced this, you kind of have to help communicate between the patientparishioner and the doctor because especially if it's an older patient without family there, like they're not necessarily hearing what the doctor is saying. And to be able to help translate through that time is helpful and to understand it too, I think is from an emotional point.
T.J.:Well, says a lot because you're a child of a physician and a cancer survivor. So, that crash course in medical terminology may be very, very helpful.
Abby:Yes, it was.
T.J.:Going through that experience, through the chemotherapy and the healing process, how how did your faith help you along the way?
Abby:It's always interesting to me, know, a question I often got during that time, although I stayed pretty isolated, And shortly after was, don't you ask, don't you question God, why? And I never had, and I think having to, or having the opportunity to process through why don't I ask that question was a good one. I didn't ask that question because I think the better, and I would respond to people with the question though, the better question is, why not me? Like, there's nothing about me that would exclude me from this pain. Like, it was really an opportunity to work through the whole works righteousness thing.
Abby:Was, and I would say, look, I have every opportunity to beat this. I have insurance. Luckily because I was under care, the denomination could carry me. So I had insurance on my own, I had a home I could come home to, I had the resources to get it. Why not me?
Abby:And I really did look at it even at that time as this is an opportunity for me to learn and to grow in my faith. And I knew it would help me in ministry even at that point to be able to relate to people in a way that you couldn't. It definitely aged me a lot. You have to grow up pretty fast at that And I've had complications since. My heart rate one treatment went from 80 beats a minute to 180 beats a minute.
Abby:And we got to look into that real quick. And having to deal with the heart issues continually, you know, it just gives you a different viewpoint of life that I think has been beneficial. To me, there's no other way to look at it all as the beneficial, but I guess that's not how most most people, like most people that I talk to are like, don't know how you look at it that way. But that was really the only way I knew to look at it. And I knew God was with me.
Abby:Definitely gave me a different viewpoint about end of life issues. The white blood cell booster that they would give me that I needed towards the end was of the devil. There's no other way to say it, life saving but awful. And there was one time we ended up having to modify how I took it because of this experience. But I got out of bed I mean, because I didn't feel well.
Abby:And I mean, I collapsed beside the bed. Like I could not move. My whole body ate. The chemotherapy I could tolerate, but the white blood cell booster, I could not. And at that point, it was before cell phones really, but because my dad was a doctor, my sister and I had had our own phone line since high school.
Abby:And I don't know why they kept it while we were in college. I mean, we're talking, you know, six years later. But I remember like all I could do to tell my parents, I mean, I couldn't even yell. Like I had to like reach behind me and pull the phone back in the day when they were still attached to the wall down and like call them on their phone line and be like, I cannot move. Like, and I remember in that moment thinking even if heaven is nothing, if it is just released from pain, that is enough to be heaven.
Abby:Because this is pain. I mean, is pain. Which I do think gives me a different understanding for end of life issues and understanding that pain that people are in and understanding that God does have something better after this for us than this world we are in.
T.J.:Yeah, taking your faith and taking your life experiences and kind of pushing those together. What is it through your pastoral care that you share with somebody who or a loved one who is facing sickness, facing, you know, life altering decisions. What encouragement, what words do you share with that individual to kind of give perspective?
Abby:I do think everybody's journey is different and I do try to keep that first and foremost. Like I think oftentimes we jump in with our own stories too often. So I do try to hold my story back beyond the point of saying I understand those emotions. I understand those emotions in real and tangible ways and try to meet them where they are. But I'll also say, I do like to tell the story where when I know someone's diagnosis is actually fairly good.
Abby:Do share the it's a bump in the road story often because, and I preface it with, I know you're gonna think that lying to you or being smug, but this really will be ten years down the road, a bump in the road and just a party, another part of your story. And I say, when I was in your shoot, when I was where you were, I didn't believe it. And I was really mad that she had said that to me. But I'm telling it to you now because it was really true. But I think also when people are in that spot, they just wanna be heard for where they are.
Abby:But I do think it has brought people comfort that I've been there and I can say, God did not put this on you. This is just a part of your journey and God stands with you through it. I think so often people feel, we still carry that mentality and faith that God punishes people with things like cancer or severe illness or whatever. But God doesn't. I mean, that's humanity.
Abby:That's just humanity. That's the world that we live in. And what brings me comfort is that God walks through us with that. And God does not abandon us in any part of that journey but gives us the strength to go through it. And God feels our pain with us and is sorrowful for that pain and loves us through it.
Abby:And really, think one of the most wonderful things about being a pastor is being able to walk beside people and to be that presence of God with them as they get through that and that sense of comfort. And if I can bring any comfort to somebody in that situation, then I've lived into my calling a little more.
T.J.:Thank you for sharing that, Abby. We've spent a little bit of time, actually quite a bit of time of in the past and how that shaped you, how that shaped your ministry, and how you see your ministry. Let's move into the present. Where do you see God working in your life today?
Abby:I think that right now is both a very scary and exciting time in the church. My online worshiping community just spent a little time with Rachel Held Evans talking about resurrection. And she really focused on the death and resurrection of the church and how it can rebuild itself. And yeah, Rachel died in '17 or '18. I can't remember when she passed away.
Abby:So this was taped a long time ago, but I think the relevance of it today, in as we have faced this time of worldwide pandemic, and churches have had to really rethink who they are and how they want to function. I think that puts a new light in this death and resurrection story of the church for me. At the beginning of it, said, Rachel said, the church has died and been resurrected over and over and over again. And I hope that that's what we're seeing now is that I think the church was starting to become, the church was struggling before and I think these new pandemic issues have made the church worldwide and myself in particular look at what is important to the church and is it a building or is it the people and what does it mean for community and where is God calling us in this? And in that study, you said TJ still sticks out with me.
Abby:You had said that in new church developments, it starts getting a lot more hectic as soon as there's property attached or more importantly, money owed, debt. And I'm wondering why church has to have that debt because that's so true. When you look at the struggles with inside a church, it does suddenly become not about the people but about the building as soon as debt is incurred. And gosh, God didn't call us to worry about debt. God call us to worry about the building.
Abby:Jesus said, leave everything behind and follow me. And how can church simplify to that? And I think this time of pandemic has made us come to look at that. And that somehow gives me hope and a spirit moving forward that maybe Christians can start saying, Oh, church isn't about this building that I go to on Sunday morning. But church is about this person who's worshiped in the pews beside me for years and years who I don't even know.
Abby:Like, maybe I need to check on them, you know, and maybe church is that person standing on the street corner that I really need to reach out to and share with. And maybe church is not a building, but a church is us embodying Christ in the world around us and loving our neighbor.
T.J.:That's a great transformation shift that probably will take some time for all of us to to move move into.
Abby:And I hope we get there. I think I think it's a big shift. But if you're in church studies, you know that we've been stuck in this country club mode for a long time, which is a big critique of the church. And when the country club got shut down, like we've really had to look at what's important. And I hope we can and I hope I get very frustrated with everybody wanting to get back to normal post quarantine.
Abby:Instead of everybody looking at what can we learn? What is God presenting before us that we could learn? What can we learn from this time? And maybe that's just my, you know, you asked about the cancer, which I had not even anticipated talking about, but I kind of think I took that approach to that too. Like, this is a hard thing, but what can I learn from it?
Abby:And we're facing this new hard thing. What can we learn from it? And it has been fun as I've ventured into this new exploration on scattered seeds worship to see how church can look very different and how we can connect in very different ways and how you don't have to have a 150 year old building to be church. We can be church together and in community and care and love for one another on Zoom or on a phone call or on a website. There are all kinds of ways we can be church.
T.J.:So share for others who may not know about scattered seeds. Kind of briefly describe what that online worshiping community well, what it is and and what it means to be in leadership in in a different type, in a different shape of ministry.
Abby:I like to say it's a thing I made up. TJ's help, I made this up. As we moved into pandemic, and I was still working within a traditional church structure, I got to see how the church had to reach out in a more digital way to stay connected, which got me to thinking, how could we do that? Not temporarily, but in a more permanent way, because I worry that these people that we were being able to reach via these new technologies, so Zoom and websites and Facebook and Instagram and all these different ways would disappear when the church rushed to get back inside, and then they let those other ways go. And these people that are on the margins of church who found those ways of relating to be easier, to be kind of a stepping stone into the church, we would take it away from them.
Abby:And that didn't seem right to me. Like I feel like it's a way to reach a younger generation that might be on the fringes that hasn't trusted the church, the traditional institutional church. And so how can we reach out to those people? So with a little prodding from both you, TJ, and my husband who is a great support, it occurred to me that maybe we could just start this online worshiping thing where it was a little less confrontational, a little less in your face, but people could still get nourished and participate at their own level. We would have the way it's turned out is we have the website, which is scatteredseedsworship.org, where you can go get participate in a written worship that hopefully you could use.
Abby:If you're a college student, you can get a couple of your college friends together and read through it. It has, you know, a simple prayer. Sometimes I throw in the words to a hymn, scripture, normally a Psalm in there somewhere, and then a reflection, and then some discussion questions that you could either do by yourself or guided, some activity suggestions of ways to integrate it and a closing prayer. So you could do it as a family or as a dorm room or as a frat house, I don't know. And it also has some weekly thoughts and prayers and ponderings, my random thoughts on living life as a Christian in today's world as a mother of two and helter skelter.
Abby:But also we randomly offer opportunities to worship and study together, normally on a Sunday night. Hopefully that fits into a modern schedule. Just a time of discussion and reflection together. I think that faith grows best in conversation and in love. And so I struggled even in seminary, but the fact that I'm not the foremost expert and never will be on all things biblical.
Abby:But I do like to walk with people and I like to question with people and I like to be there with people. So this has been a good opportunity to find my own voice. And it has been very encouraging to me that in my prayers and ponderings, like the ones that get the best reception on Facebook and the website are the ones where I'm just honest. And I say, my life is a hot mess right now. Like my life is a hot mess.
Abby:We are all stuck in this house together, hot mess. But God is with me and I see God in these ways. And those are the ones that people, and I think that's the voice that's missing in the church is that so often pastors feel like they have to have it all together. I am like the first to say it is not all together. And it's okay, God loves me anyway.
Abby:And I love you and we can do this together. Life is a team sport and I wanna walk with you. I wanna be on your team. It's been an opportunity to see where my strengths are, which is I think one of my strengths is my ability to love along with people and to walk their life with them.
T.J.:Yeah, I was gonna ask you how leading a worshiping community has impacted your faith journey.
Abby:It has definitely helped me find my voice. I was an associate previously and and being bound to a session body, you kind of have, you know, it's a harder line to walk. Being online where you have a wider audience, don't have to quite tiptoe as much. TJ may think I need to tiptoe a little more, it is fun to get to be a lot more transparent. One of my strengths is ability to build community and relationships, which I wasn't sure I would really need going into this, but it turns out you actually need it more doing this because it's not as easy to build relationships through a screen.
Abby:So that really has played in more than I thought it would. To or being able to create a community through a screen with people who don't know each other previously is more challenging and easier all at the same time than I thought it would be.
T.J.:Would a younger Abby recognize the Abby of today in terms of what your ministry looks like and your faith journey? Have you grown and changed?
Abby:I think we all grow and change. I think faith is that a journey. Started out this last study saying, look, we're all in different places in our faith journey. But God has called us to this point to walk together and to help each other along because you can't make it through faith without those people pushing and pulling me. You just you can't.
Abby:And my mother would tell you I have floated through life by the grace of the Holy Spirit. Meaning I don't put a whole lot of thought into things. Just go because that's where God has pushed me to go. And I didn't really think that was true when I was younger, but it's so true. Like, I just go where the Holy Spirit tells me to, which looks helter skelter.
Abby:I mean, goes back to my call. Like I didn't tell anybody because I just knew, I mean, that's just where the spirit was taking me. There was no need to discuss it, it just was. The same was true of seminary. Like I thought I was going to a different seminary.
Abby:And then we went to go find the seminary and literally my mother and I could not find the seminary, like could not find it. So Columbia it was, we could find it. That's really how I chose my seminary. You think I'm joking, I'm not. And it drove my mother nuts, but it got me to where I am today.
Abby:When I was in seminary, I worked in the admissions office. So part of my job was to like recruit people to come to Columbia. And part of that was we would host a meal at the president's house. And so we're hosting a meal at the President's house with all the prospective students and the President comes up to me and it says, you you really should look into a hospitality ministry like this would suit you. And I laughed, was like, I'm a Cumberland Presbyterian, I'm gonna end up in a small church.
Abby:That's what the options are. Well, two years later, TJ's wife Melissa is like, the great old church is looking for somebody and I end up in a hospitality ministry. Like, it's, you know, something I didn't even know really existed in our denomination. But there I was and that's who I was. And I'm so excited to be in this new stage where I get to see that grow into something different and hopefully that can reach a younger population than the traditional church and help the church resurrect again in a new a new being.
Abby:And to be able to play any role in that, I think, is a gift and a grace.
T.J.:Abby, with all these interesting twists and turns in your faith journey, I hope you've intrigued folks and listeners to continue to follow you. How can we follow you on your faith journey from here on?
Abby:From here on. Well, most weeks except for apparently spring break weeks, I have worship up on scatteredseedsworship.org. We talked about that.org, scatteredseedsworship Org. Also on Facebook under scatteredseedsworship, you can get stuff. If you want to join us for a zoom time of worship and study, be sure to go to the website and sign up to receive our newsletter.
Abby:I think it's called newsletter for upcoming events, and you will get an email every time we're getting ready to do a new study and you just have to click on the link that will be in that email and sign up so that you can get the zoom information. I promise it won't be spam. It won't be a lot of emails. It really will just be information about what's coming up and how you can join me. And I would encourage you to just check out the website, reach out through email at pastorscatteredseeds
T.J.:dot org.
Abby:Dot org. That is my email address on that. And it's pastorscatteredseeds dot org. I love to be in conversation and I love to meet new people and I would love to walk with you beside you to support you in your faith journey in any way that I can.
T.J.:Abby, thank you for sharing your time with me today.
Abby:Thank you. It's been a joy.
T.J.:And thank you for listening to today's podcast. Grab a friend and join me next time on Cumberland Road.
