*Disclaimer: Mom and
dad, if you’re reading this, forgive my honesty in the first line!*
I retained almost nothing when I repeated calc 2 in college,
shortly before withdrawing.. except for a Martin Luther quote that I copied off
the back of some girl’s t-shirt:
This life therefore
is not righteousness but growth in righteousness; not health but healing, not
being but becoming, not rest but exercise. We are not what we shall be but we are growing
toward it; the process is not yet finished but it is going on; this is not the
end but it is the road.
To this day, it remains one of my favorites. The part that always stuck out to me, perhaps
as a pessimist, was “We are not what we shall be.”
For years, it was the expression I used to sum up personal
disappointments, failures, shortcomings, situations, even my faith.. not what it
was supposed to be, not what I shall be.
In a way, it was a cop-out.. my way of settling. With this perspective, I completely ignored
the fact that God could work in me if I was open to it.
To tie this in, one of the messages during training was
about the willingness to change. Hearing
the word “change” is usually a bitter pill for me to swallow, cuz I’ve never
been one to embrace it, especially when it pertains to myself. Once you’ve gotten used to being a certain
way, having a certain identity back at home, even if it’s not what God calls
you to be, you get comfortable in that.. so I didn’t really wanna hear what
Mike Hines had to say about it but I also knew I needed to hear it. After all, I did come on the World Race with
at least a tiny desire to be changed.. I wouldn’t volunteer to leave all things
familiar only to return the same. I know
now that this was God nudging me in the direction of discomfort, so that I can
be stretched.. closer to the edge of who I really am.
Mike said we should be listening for doors closing, not
looking for open doors, because only in moving forward do we gain momentum. It was tough to acknowledge that there are
parts of who I am that need to be left behind..
there’s still a lot to process about what that means in my life.. what I
need to give up or change in lifestyle, character, etc. What stuck out to me was the” Big Coat”
theory, about how Sarah would visit Samuel and give him a coat that was too big
for him, knowing that by year’s end, he would grow into it. Right now, at the start of the WR, I’m
supposed to be uncomfortable, to feel completely overwhelmed, disoriented, and
way over my head. But good news – like
the coat that’s too big, I’ll grow into it.. God willing, I will find myself
being molded in big ways and subtle ways.. I’m so grateful for seasons and
transitions.. for the fact that we don’t HAVE to be stuck in a moment, in a
rut, in a way of thinking and in a way of being. God will find and use opportunities to bring
us to the brink.
As the year unfolds, my emphasize and constant reminder will
have to be the second part of the Martin Luther quote, “We are not what we
shall be, but we are growing towards it.”
Perhaps I won’t come back completely
changed – in fact, this is very likely… I probably won’t know what I’ll do
next, what the next season will be.. but my hope is that I’m even slightly
closer to being who I shall be.
