As soon as I feel like I have my faith all figured out Jesus goes ahead and wrecks me once again. I've been thinking about Jesus a lot lately. I mean of course as a Christ-follower I'm always thinking of him and how to imitate him better. But recently I've been wrestling with how Jesus was able to leave the people that he loved and move on to the next place he had to go. I guess because he knew that soon he would, as promised, live in each and every one of them for the rest of their lives. It's not the same for us though. If you're in a role that concerns building meaningful relationships with others, you know that moving on from them is not easy. In order to fill your role well you must support people, shape them, encourage them - essentially, you must love them well. To the very best of your ability. If you're striving to love them as Jesus does then that investment you've made is not an easy one to detach yourself from. Am I teaching them well? Am I saying or writing the right words to encourage them exactly as they need to be encouraged today? Am I doing enough for them? Am I pushing them to their full capabilities and potential? Do they know how much I believe in them? Am I actually loving them well?
I spend a lot of time investing in my students and knowing that one day they won't be mine anymore is hard to accept. Everyday I wonder whether or not I am loving them well. They stress me out but I also want more time with them. It's so hard to let go of something you've invested so much time in. I'm realizing that when you are responsible for the well-being of people of any age, your work will never actually feel finished. Everyone will go their separate ways and keep growing and changing. I'm learning that all we can do is hope that we've loved them well during the time that God ordained our lives to intersect. As someone who relishes in the finality of a project that I've slaved over to get just perfectly right, it sucks that God has me in a job where I don't exactly see the end result of my work. I feel like because of that, my faith gets wrecked time and time again. Yet time and time again I re-learn that sometimes we need to be wrecked to remind us of who are and just how much we are capable of. And by sometimes I mean all of the time, in every major and minor situation - at least for me. My stubbornness and conceited belief that I've got it all together means that most of the time whenever there's a lesson to be learned, God needs to knock me down before I can continue to grow. He needs to get me out of my own head, remind me that I don't know everything, and show me just how much I need him. He needs to rip me away from people who I've loved well to show me just how well I actually did love them. He needs to remind me how loving people well is supposed to hurt and that's how we know we're are stepping in stride with God as he loves his creation. I'm not sure how I want to conclude this and honestly I'm don't even think I was totally ready to write it because I still feel like I don't have my head wrapped around this concept. But I mean, I guess that was the whole point of this post; to try to make sense of two indefinite, ever-growing things that I'll never actually figure out - my faith and the nature of my calling. What beautiful freedom there is in that though. At least for me. It is freeing to understand and surrender to the truth that my faith is not my responsibility to fully define or bring to completion. It sounds futile, to attempt to make sense of the indefinite. But that's exactly why I love writing.
1 Comment
Rachel Colwell
3/15/2015 10:38:39 am
Aw Kelly I loved this. Made my day! You are such a good writer. Miss you love!
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Author4th grade teacher. Writer. Justice-seeker. Encourager. CrossFitter. John 11:40. Archives
July 2017
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