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Jill Jorgensen along the sanctuary walkway

God at work in Jill

Meet a woman who found a path to walk in the light of scripture. She’s one of 20 St. Paul people leading small study groups during Lent. It’s all part of a 40-day journey that carries us more deeply into the language of faith.

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Every night, her father would tuck in the five kids and say the Lord’s Prayer before he left the bedroom. “I still remember him standing by my bunk bed,” recalls Jill Jorgensen. “He said the Lord’s Prayer because that was the prayer he knew. It was my dad’s way of sharing his faith with us.”

From a childhood in Cedar Falls to a congregation in Davenport, Jill has carried this prayer and deepened her roots in faith. These Lenten days, along with over 300 of her St. Paul sisters and brothers, she’s engaged in daily readings on the Lord’s Prayer.

Jill and her four siblings were “campus rats,” wheeling their banana-seat bikes on the byways and along the green spaces of the University of Northern Iowa. Her parents were professors, consumed by the rigors of academia. From the vantage point of her own vocation as a stay-at-home mom of three, Jill says, “We could take off and do whatever we wanted, but I missed having Mom close.”

In a school bus converted into a green-and-white camper dubbed “Road Runner,” the family of seven traveled on summer adventures. Free of classrooms, they learned to “touch and feel” their way through the museums, national parks, and monuments of the Southwest. Jill sensed in her dad’s experiential nature the gift of spiritual searching — even as he dipped into New Age ideology and mysticism.

Back home in Cedar Falls, without the camper-bus to contain them, “getting all five of us kids ready for anything was just chaos. My response to being uncomfortable was to cry.” Jill would cry every Sunday, so “it was easier not to go” to church.

It was in junior high, when Jill was learning about friendship — and the pain of “how fickle kids can be” — that she began to discover what writer Anne Lamott calls “a path and a little light to see by.” Jill would lie in bed, yearning for reconciliation with friends, “crying out in prayer — not even knowing who I was crying out to.”

But somehow, breaking through Jill’s adolescent loneliness, Love conquered all. In a playful water fight she met volleyball teammate Tammy, whose friendship endures to this day. In Tammy’s mother, Jill found an active faith and tender care. In Young Life and Bible studies, she came to understand “separation from God and the need for Christ to bridge that gap.” It was an answer to her junior high prayers for reconciliation.

“I was such a scared little kid,” Jill remembers. “Scared of being wrong, of disappointing, of not measuring up. I dug into God’s Word, and I found peace and confidence. It was like peeling layers away — of guilt, of bad attitude. I still work on all those things, but I know where to go. Worship, prayer time, and reading scripture — they help to shed light.”

Jill’s vocation is to be a great mom to Kristin, Peter, and Joe. With the guys pushing 6’9” and 6’7”, Al, Jill, and their three make a family that’s hard to miss.

When Kristin was born, Jill’s mother-in-law tenderly rubbed the baby’s head and said to young Jill: “I just want to share this one thing with you. She’s not yours. Kristin is a child of God, and you’re here to raise her for a short time.” The words stunned Jill.

She has carried with her this call to be a steward of her children’s faith lives. Loving God and loving others have been central values in Jorgensen parenting.

“I want our children to know my faith, and then choose for themselves,” Jill says. She constantly initiates everyday conversations that are intended to be faith-forming and foundational. When it comes to her kids’ struggles and hurts, Jill asks tough questions like, “Where do you see God in this situation?” She laughs, “That quiets up the room!”

“I don’t want to think for them but to encourage them to experience faith and spiritual truths as a result of their own journey.”

Perhaps it was the “touch and feel” adventures of her childhood vacations that have made Jill inquisitive. She encounters the world and relationships with eager questions. Without God to embolden her, Jill is certain that she’d still be “the little girl who’s afraid to ask the questions.”

So when she’s “out and about” — at grocery store or park — chance encounters become “God working through me” in person-to-person caring ways. Jill is likely to ask fairly personal questions. And then she steps back to actively listen. She strives to be available and present for others. The light of God’s grace draws the shy little girl from lonely isolation into new relationships.

These Lenten weeks, Jill delights in “asking all the fun questions” in a Book of Faith small group. As a facilitator, she hopes to “show grace and acceptance around a circle of diverse people who have their own spiritual journeys.” And here Jill’s teenage prayer for friendship lives into her adult life. “It’s all about being vulnerable and open to relationships,” she says.

That’s surely God at work in Jill Jorgensen.

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"To pray does not mean to listen to oneself speaking. Prayer involves becoming silent, and being silent, and waiting until God is heard." ~Søren Kierkegaard