Friday, July 5, 2019

Five Months to Change the World, or Maybe it Looks Different Than I Thought


As a child my expectations were never restrained even by reasonable limitations. Ask me what I was going to be when I grew up, and on any given day I could have told you with certainty that I would be anything from an Olympic figure skater to a veterinarian. Never mind that I lived in middle Georgia where frost on the grass counted as an ice storm or that I would climb my Daddy like a tree if I even thought that any creature with more than two legs was within seeing distance. No limits. I knew I could grow up to be whatever I wanted to be. I knew I would grow up to change the world.

My career expectations grew slightly more judicious as I aged, although Grammy-award winning musician or future wife of Prince William occasionally snuck in. But even as maturity reigned me in, I still had confidence that I could do something great for the kingdom of God. Whether through music, or mission work, or public speaking, the platform I always had in my head was large and visible and important. Whatever it was, I knew it would be a platform to change the world.

The stages of life changed as I wondered and anticipated. After high school? After college? When would my season arrive? The time of life that I would take hold of that grand calling and make my mark in the world? I studied, I served, I took hold of the opportunities in front of me all along the way. But somewhere in the back of my mind, I was still waiting for the “big” moment, the one job or opportunity that would make all the difference, that would define my life, that would pull together all my desires and passions in an eternally significant way. I was still waiting to change the world.

Maybe it would be seminary. New Orleans. 2005. But Katrina came and washed that one away. No, not seminary.

Maybe it would be teaching. Second graders in a Title 1 school. A chance to mold little lives into world changers themselves. But every evening ended with me in tears and eating break-and-bake cookies in my bed, dreading the next morning when I would have to go fail in the classroom again. So no, not teaching.

Maybe it would be marriage, and a second chance at seminary. Maybe after three years I would finally earn my M.Div. and then I would be ready. I would grasp my calling and the Lord would give me my place and I would inspire and create and finally change the world.

Three months before graduation, an unexpected gift – We were going to have a baby. From February to November she grew. I graduated. Spencer got into PT school. We moved to the mountains. He started the program. I became a mother.

Technically, between the time that I finished seminary and the time that Claire was born, I had five months.

Five months to change the world.

That’s a lot of pressure.

And guess what? Nothing extraordinary really happened in those five months, except a lot of milkshakes because THE BABY NEEDS CALCIUM.  Then on November 7, 2009, the world flipped and I suddenly understood love and fear and beauty in a way I never had before.

Fast forward nearly ten years. Three little lives, not even babies anymore. The youngest is now a pretty mature four years old, and today I find myself saying things like, “Why on earth did you eat chicken feed?” And that was not even directed at the youngest.

Suddenly, or maybe not suddenly but over my entire lifetime, I am realizing something.

Changing the world looks different than I thought.

Yes, there are names that conjure up the image “world changer.” Explorers. Kings. Missionaries. We read about them and admire them and are inspired by them. But how many humans in all the generations of the history of the world have actually made it into the history books?

I grew up believing I could do anything, and that by doing something extraordinary I would change the world. And maybe God still has that something extraordinary for me to do. It’s not beyond Him. But more and more, I am beginning to see that changing the world looks more like...

One generation shall commend your works to another, and shall declare your mighty acts…

They will come and proclaim His righteousness to a people yet unborn--all that He has done…

We will not hide them from their children, but will declare to the next generation the praises of the Lord and His might, and the wonders He has performed…

It was never about me and what I was going to do for God.

It was always about being a smaller part of something so much greater.

It has been His plan all along – to proclaim the faithfulness of God to the next generation. It is a commission for us all, though how we go about fulfilling it may look different. It may look like my friend in Texas who is pouring out her whole life in a gospel-centered social ministry to immigrants. It may look like my parents who have spent decades serving faithfully in the local church. It may look like my brother who pastors or my sister who is getting ready to foster.

And for me, at this season, in this place, it may look like teaching my children Scripture, helping them navigate what it looks like to love the Lord and their neighbor in each situation, or yes, even explaining the folly of trying the chicken’s food. And because the plan is so much bigger than me, and because I know the Author of it all, and because we walk by faith and not by sight, I have confidence that even though life so far has turned out differently than I had imagined as an Olympic hopeful, I am in fact changing the world.

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