When I think of going anywhere or doing anything, I almost always come up with a list. Firstly, because this is the one organizational tool that keeps me from becoming a disorganized mess and an OCD's worst nightmare. (No joke, my organizational skills are so notoriously awful that my sister, the day before my first day of high school, packed my entire backpack for me, meticulously placed headings in file folders for all of my subjects and cleared out notebook space for all of my classes, only to see days later that my backpack had turned into a trash can and that I never once placed a single piece of paper inside the notebook. Sorry Kylie. Love you. :) )
More importantly, I make lists so that I know my priorities, knowing what I have to do and what I have to take with me and what I can't afford to do, and what I have to leave behind. Nowhere has that been more crucial in my life, than when I began my spiritual journey 7 years ago...the year that I became a Christian (in true belief, at least. I was actually baptized 2 years earlier...a story for another time). I haven't really shared the story on my blog (I don't think...), so I'll give you a condensed version.
I had gone on a mission trip to Minnesota with my best friend in high school's church youth group. I had just finished my sophomore year and I was your typical high school teenager riddled with insecurities. I remember at that point in my life I was so disappointed, because I wanted to get straight A's to go to an elite college, I wanted to make varsity tennis, I wanted to be president of every organization I was involved in and I didn't get any of those things, and the message that each one of those things sent to my 15-year old brain was that I wasn't good enough for anything academically, socially, physically, and it hurt that all of my efforts to gain attention, praise, and adoration faltered. So at that point, I was bored and bitter over the summer and was willing to do anything to get out of Missouri. We went to serve with the organization Youthworks! at a site in Cass Lake, Minnesota on a Native American reservation. The mission aspect of the trip was...a little less than memorable. We helped out by painting a house and babysitting some children, but my teenage mind, still reeling with the year's disappointment, wondered silently why we had driven all the way to Minnesota to do something I could have done anywhere. Of course, my mindset was all about me and not about anyone else. My motives were all pointing to what I could get out of the experience and not really about helping others.
Anyway, afterward, we went to a lake to have fun and cool down from the summer heat. We sat around a campfire and as the sun was beginning to set, we were told we were going to do an activity called Stations of the Cross. Basically, the idea was to remember Christ's journey to the cross by having different prayer stations along a forest path, praying about different situations that came up for Jesus and that could apply in our own lives. So one by one, we were sent into the forest to pray. I remember going in and being immediately irritated by the different stations. First of all, I hadn't prayed by myself in months. I didn't see the need for a God who didn't seem to care about my wants and needs. I sat down to try praying again about my own wants/needs and God was silent. It had been like that the other times I tried praying. So my thought was that if God didn't want to listen, then why should I try following Him? I felt like God had abandoned me and it made me hurt and angry that I trusted something that seemed so distant and cold. As I walked further on the path, I became more angry that God wanted me to obey when He didn't even listen to me in the first place.
And then the trees gave way to sunlight. I had left the forest. Standing before me was the hill's edge, and beyond the hill lay the lake and the setting sun in the west. And I will tell you that the beauty of the Rockies, the Lake District, Berlin at Christmas time, Sevilla and all of its grand architecture, Edinburgh and Arthur's Seat, and many more beautiful places I've been privileged to see COMBINED could not even fractionally compare to the magnitude of beauty I saw in that sunset. Reds, oranges, yellows, even a hint of green bled through the evening sky and I stood in the orange glow of the sun. And it was in that moment, that single millisecond of standing on that hill that I first felt the power of God's grace. It was overwhelming. It felt as if someone had took the strongest swing they could muster and socked me in the gut. It was the strongest feeling of love that I have ever felt and to this day I find that it would be next to impossible for me to forget it.
My head, so full of anger and frustration just went blank. I stood with my mouth open at the sight of such beauty and I literally couldn't think. And at that moment, I heard an inaudible voice, one of those strong feelings that you get from time to time that can't be explained or expressed in words (although I'll try), telling me "I made this for you." And of course after believing something so powerful, I lost it. I walked down the hill, sat at one of the log benches surrounding a large wooden cross, and sobbed, occasionally looking up at the cross and "getting it" or in other words seeing what Paul states in Ephesians 3:18 of "how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ." I was absolutely wretched to God in the seconds leading up that moment. I did everything in my power to walk away from my faith. I had no trust, no belief, no hope, and in spite of my awful, rude, terrible, and disgustingly selfish behavior, he changed everything. That is the power of my God, that he would love without us earning it. That he would love us in spite of our behaviors. That he would see through our angry defenses and see children who feel unloved. Everything I thought I wanted was secondary when i realized what I wanted all along was to feel that I belonged, that I deserved to be loved and that I earned it. But God corrected me. His love is infinite and free.
And that, that moment is the thing that is always at the top of every list that I make when I am in a right state of mind, whether I write it out or not. It is the knowledge that I am a child of God who is very much loved. I think no matter what spiritual journey that you begin, you must live each day as a child who is dearly loved.
Now, I am obsessed with sunsets, because of what they remind me of. Seeing them reassures me of His love whenever I am in doubt. I have a picture of a Monet painting in my living room entitled, "Dusk", because it reminds me of that moment. I thought (and still do think) that if I ever wrote a story or an article, or a book, I would call it, "Chasing Sunsets", because every day I want to chase after what is beautiful and what is true. And that is what I hold on to whenever everything else seems so bleak. Its what I'm holding on to now, as I go through a difficult, uncertain period in my life. And this love is what I'm holding onto as I go on my spiritual journey. I have to take it with me. I have to hold onto it or I will lose it, going back to nagging self doubt, insecurity, depression.
On this journey, the first and only absolutely necessary thing you need to bring is the belief that you are a beloved child. To me, this is what it means to hold on to what matters.
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