This faith story is part of a series where we are speaking to people who are due to be ordained this month (June).

 

Lydia Remick is discovering when God tells you to get ordained, nothing can hold you back – and she is looking forward to becoming a vicar in June.

In her early twenties, Lydia was working as a career woman in the world of business finance but after walking away from a ‘horrendous’ car crash, her life took a sharp turn.

Despite miraculously escaping without physical injury, the horror of being cut out of a car scarred her mentally.

She says: “I went back to work too soon after that which had a systematic impact on me and my mental health.”

Unable to continue working in Basingstoke, her ‘amazing’ parents welcomed her back home in Cornwall where she started rebuilding her life.

“It was not how I expected life to turn out really,” she says.

“It was not how I expected life to turn out really,”

Growing up in Truro, Lydia attended All Saints Church Highertown (ASH).

“We started going to church when I was about five,” she says. “I remember I really wanted to be confirmed, but I was too young and had to wait. When I was old enough, I was confirmed at the same time as my dad. It was the day after my 12th birthday.”

She attended ASH until leaving for university, in Stoke on Trent, to train in Accounting and Legal Studies.

Finding a new church was important.

She says: “I lived about three miles from the campus, on the first day I walked past a church called All Saints Church and thought ‘that’s where I’m going to church’.

“The congregation was lovely and became a second church family to me, looking after me.”

In her early 20s, Lydia moved to Basingstoke after securing a new job. Again, she found a church – this time with lots of people her own age. But this period of her life was not easy. She was asking herself questions, working out who she was and where her life was going.

It was during this time she was involved in the car accident.  Her mental health took a hit, and she returned to Truro, where family and ASH members supported her.

She found a new job in admin and met her husband, David. They married when she was 26.

“All my big moments have been at All Saints Church,” Lydia says. “I was baptised, confirmed, married there.”

David’s work regularly took him overseas. Lydia used her time alone to start a craft business. She also began helping at ASH’s Sunday school.

Soon she was invited to give talks at a teatime service, which she now sees as her ‘training ground’ for ordination.  Alongside this she was taking a theology course run by St James College, Nottingham.

Near the end of the course, she travelled to Cyprus to complete her studies distraction free. As she was leaving, Revd Gordon Smyth told her, ‘you need to start thinking about ordination’.

After finishing her assignments, she went for a walk in the warm Cypriot sunshine, the question of ordination racing in her mind.

She recalls: “I had found a monastery up in the hills. I went back there to a little chapel. Inside was a sand box for candles. It was really beautiful and ornate. I lit a candle asking, ‘Lord what do you want me to do?’

“Then I heard, as if someone was stood next to me, ‘You know what I want you to do, so stop asking’.

“I felt physically overwhelmed and fell to my knees.”

“I felt physically overwhelmed and fell to my knees.”

Returning home, she spoke to the diocese and started the process.

“I went through the process and was given a big fat no,” she says. “I was like, ‘what do I do now?’. I’d put everything into the idea of being ordained.”

Lydia reveals it was thought her mental health wasn’t ‘stable enough’ for her to take on the role.

“I was really hurt,” she says. “It was a full stop, doors closed. But God is amazing.”

This was because people continued to ask, ‘have you thought about ordination?’.

She became a Local Worship Leader and in 2016 a Reader. But the pain of the ‘no’ still haunted her.

“Things were going great at church until they weren’t,” Lydia says. “I had a mental health crash. I was offered four months sabbatical which was an amazing gift. I went on an eight-day silent retreat in North Wales. It was really transformative.”

She also signed up for mental health support and started to heal. As the same time, despite living with fibromyalgia, she secured a job at the Diocese of Truro as Local Worship Leader Coordinator. She started attending Lann Pydar Benefice. People still asked, ‘have you thought about ordination?’.

Bravely, and with the support of Revd Helen Baber, she began the process to ordination again – with a view to be a self-supporting minster.

Today, she is preparing for ordination which will take place in June.

“Even through the really rough times, I see God has been there.”

Lydia says: “Even through the really rough times, I see God has been there. I can see where God has stepped in during the really hard situations.
“Being ordained is exciting but also scary, so I am just saying, ‘ok God, what do you want me to do?’.”

Isaac McNish, Head of Ministry, said: “I’ve seen first-hand Lydia’s faithfulness, resilience, and attentiveness to God’s call. She brings a grounded, hope-filled faith, alongside a genuine joy and warmth.

“She is and will continue to be a gift to the Church in her ministry.”