Clay. You mold it,
shape it, tear it apart, shape it some more, and do it all over–again and
again. Sometimes, I feel like my life is
this way–my beliefs are shaped by events, my actions inspired by others; then
sometimes they fall apart and must be shaped all over again in a different
manner. I’d like to share one of these
moments with you…where the ‘shaping’ in my life became who I was because of
what I did, not because of who I was created to be.
College was something I always thought I’d go through; ‘Go
to a four year college, major in music, graduate, travel and be employed, etc.’
The plan was simple. So I did my best; practiced like crazy on piano, studied
for hours, read while eating dinner, and managed to squeek in a few weekends
with friends. I kept telling myself I
had to succeed because it was how I would get recognized–it would make
professors like me. Plus, I was at
college to learn, right? Everything was
fine, until life finally caught up with me.
Until I became so overwhelmed, so frustrated with God, with school, with
who I was, that I wasn’t sure I even knew myself.
Then I met Kelsy.
Her story was similar to mine; she was driven by how she performed
because she performed well. She was
talented and the people around her recognized her for that. But as we talked, I saw her heart and her
ability to listen to me–someone who couldn’t understand what had brought her to
this point. The passion behind the
words she spoke reverberated in my mind.
It was inspiring, encouraging, probing, and sometimes it even hurt. She encouraged me to think about what I was
doing and what motivated me to do it.
She asked probing questions to make me dig deeper, to the things I had
pushed away in my mind. She cried with
me when I finally let myself acknowledge those things and the impact of
them. She listened when I questioned and
didn’t understand what God was doing.
As I reflect on that time now, Kelsy was like Jesus to me
in that moment. She listened, she
smiled, she cried, she shared, and she did not give up on me. In the wake of finding who I thought I was, I
had neglected the essence of what it mean to be created by God–the part that
was aching to be noticed, to be cherished, to know that God did love me in a
deeper way that I had never experienced before. Overall, I suppose this time was both an event and an inspiration; it
was that ‘shaking’ that I needed to interrupt the mediocrity of my life and the beginning of my new understanding of shalom.
