Training Camp was perhaps the most intense 10 days of learning I’ve ever encountered in my life – about God, about missions, about the world around me, and especially about myself.
During one of the evening sessions we had a teaching on healing from Ron Walborn, our guest speaker for first few days. Dr. Walborn is the dean of Alliance Theological Seminary in Nyack, NY, and I highly recommend looking up his podcasts. I’ve never had the desire to go to seminary, but the insights and lessons from Dr. Walborn made me want to.
But I’m not just going to re-hash the talk. (He had been discussing biblical healing and how to pray for healing). Then just before we started worship, he prayed for us and told us that anyone feeling heat in their hands should place a hand on the person next to them.
While I’m trying to figure out exactly what he meant by heat, my two squadmates on either side of me – Chantai on my left and Lexi on my right – immediately reach out and touch my shoulders.
All right then, I guess I’m about to find out.
Nothing spectacular happened there, but they had reached out in near-perfect synchronization made me curious. I had to wonder if this was really about Chantai and Lexi, or if maybe it had more to do with me. Hmm….
Worship continued as normal, until we got to the chorus of one of the songs:
“You’re a good, good Father,
It’s who You are, it’s who You are, it’s who You are.
And I’m loved by You,
It’s who I am, it’s who I am, it’s who I am”
These two simple lines absolutely floored me. It was basic truth, but it hit me like a ton of bricks. For as long as I can remember, I’ve struggled with where I’ve found my identity. As a musician and writer, I tend to look for it in my accomplishments. As someone who spent most of her childhood being bullied and picked on in school, I put too much stock in what other people think of me.
But at the end of the day there’s only one piece of my identity that truly matters: that I am a child of God. That the only approval I’ll ever need is his, and I’ll never have to earn that.
While this song was still going on, I sat down in my chair, trying to wrap my mind around everything. I close my eyes and let the music and lyrics wash over me, ignoring everyone else in the room.
Well, except for one person.
At some point while I’m lost in thought, Chantai sits down next to me. She gets my attention and begins to tell me about a vision she had about me. Now this wasn’t the first time I’d heard someone talk about a vision, but I’d never heard about one that involved me.
She tells me that what she saw was God creating me, before I was born. I can’t quote everything she said verbatim and I’m not going to try, but what she described absolutely blew my mind. The way it ended was with God looking at me and saying “she is beautiful.”
Now if the song had hit me like a ton of bricks, these words were a freight train filled with at least a few tons. Tears come to my eyes and I try to hide them by looking down at the floor, but Chantai isn’t about to let me get away with that. She grabs me by the arm and makes me look her in the eye – it’s uncomfortable, but I can understand why. I imagine she wants to make sure I really listen, and not just hear the words and let them fade away minutes later. As this awkward (at least for me) scene plays out, she repeats over and over to me “You are beautiful.”
At this point I’m completely wrecked. I know words have power, but my goodness those three really took me out. Now at this point I didn’t know a darn thing about Chantai at that point other than her name and the fact that she was sitting next to me, but it didn’t matter. The next thing I know I’m sobbing on her shoulder, thoroughly embarassed but at the same time grateful.
So why did that one sentence get to me the way it did? Back to identity, I never really saw myself as beautiful. Sure, I’d been told that I looked beautiful before (usually when I really had to get dressed up for something, which wasn’t often), or that I’d sang or written something beautiful, but beauty as a state of being? Not so much.
There are plenty of good things I know I am. Funny? Yeah. Creative? Of course. Confident? At times. Intelligent? Depends on the subject, but sure. But beautiful? No, that was for other people – it wasn’t in the hand I’ve been dealt, but what Chantai had told me gave me a lot to think about.
God created me to be funny, and intellectual, and confident, and bold, and all of these things that I thought I had instead of beauty. But here’s the thing: these characteristics I have are not a substitute for anything.
They are what makes me beautiful. And I vow to embrace that.
