Cause I'm too young
To call it a day
And I'm too old to make anymore mistakes
Can I make something beautiful
just once before I die?
Give me one chance to try
// Tim Be Told, One Chance
Overheard at the cafe, one of the girls had just turned twenty-one. Amongst the giggling and celebration, her companion remarked to her, "As soon as twenty-one hits ya, hold on tight. It just comes so quickly after that."
The girl nodded, "I know. I feel like the only milestone after this is like getting my own car and house or something."
I'd laugh if I hadn't actually been solemnly pondering about this recently and how it's quickly become a reoccurring theme in my life. But before I get into that, I want you to consider the life of an average person. You go to school for the first, say, twenty years of life, and then work for the rest. If you're lucky, I suppose, you stray a bit. Maybe you don't spend twenty years in school. Instead, you cut back a few years and then you work for the rest. Or perhaps you strike out and spend the rest of life having people do the work for you. (That sounds worse than working in my opinion, but we'll save that for another day).
Now I consider my life and how I compare to the average Joe. On the surface, my life hasn't strayed too far from this ordinary picture. I've been in school for the majority of my life and Lord willing, I'll work until I'm too old to move. Then one day, when I'm surrounded by a handful of my obnoxious grandchildren and my kids and whoever else would want to be by the side of a cranky dying granny, I'll whisper something profound (or maybe I'll just gasp for air) and then slip into the oblivion and go on to see my Maker. Aaand the curtains draw close for this one.
Life is short. It really is. And the reality is that this is how I often view my life.
But then along comes an individual and this person is bursting with stories to tell. You know the type. So much LIFE. Truly. They come sweeping into your mundaneness and you're left wondering, whoohh, my. Who are you? Can you teach me to live like that too? Their love for life is, well, contagious and I believe it stems from their genuine and passionate love for each person and ultimately, God.
I've watched people filter in and out of my life through the past five years--people who I've exchanged bits of myself with and they with me. I haven't talked or seen a good handful in a long time, but I've never forgotten the impact they've had on me--the good, the bad, the ugly, the pretty. Most of these individuals stayed only for a brief period of time but the things they've said and their perception on life and the people around them has stuck with me.
On one occasion, I met an individual similar to aforementioned like this three years ago in an unexpected time and place. We'll call her N. To set up this story, I have to state and reiterate that three years ago, I was a child. And as the word child suggests, I was quite the immature one. That's not to say I'm mature now, but I think my immaturity at this stage of life is quite different than what it was three years ago (but I guess you can be the judge of that.)
The missions trip spanned across three different countries within the course of a month. The team demographic consisted of about twentyish teenagers ranging from 15 to 19 (our leaders, of course, were in their early twenties). You can imagine what it's like when you spend your every waking moment (and perhaps sleeping if you have to share a room with one or two) talking and working with the same twenty people for a month straight. You start retreating to your room later and later each night so you can linger in the hotel hallway, whispering and having deep heart to hearts with one another. You start dreading the goodbyes even though it's only a week or two into the trip. You actually like eating food with your hands. You also start grating on each other's nerves after the first week because the excitement of being in a new place wears off. You wish you had a different partner to work with. You start noticing trends and cliques forming.
Orrr, in my case, you start noticing that a particular boy likes to hang out around you. Like. A lot. What did I say about sticking twenty something teenagers together again?
Right.
So here I was, my seventeen year-old self in completely foreign territory (both figuratively and literally), completely unsure about what to do with this boy and my feelings. We think we're friends but we act like everything but. I adopt a state of denial that we are more involved in a "thing" than just friendship, even though at some point it is becoming obvious that there has to be something going on between the two of us. By the third week, there's too much gossip among the group because you'd be a dumb goose to not figure out what was going on between us two. Everyone knew. We were the talk amongst the girls and the guys. And... the leaders. The more the group talked, the more awkward and tense we became around one another. A dreaded DTR was in order, but let's just say that went horribly, horribly wrong. As you can imagine, naturally, things got messy. Messy almost to the point of no return until even my stubborn seventeen year-old self knew I was headed down the road for no good.
At this time, I was conflicted about how I felt about this particular boy, mainly because there were things that he'd said and done and the fact that he lived halfway across the world that made me hesitant. I, too, had made many mistakes and said things that I wish I could take back. I wanted to talk to N and ask her for advice badly. But the moment never seemed to come.
On the last night of the trip, I came down with a fever. I excused myself from the group and N happened to be the one who took me to the hostess to get medication. Instead of rejoining the group afterwards, however, we both meandered into the courtyard and ended up sitting outside under the stars. Other than the occasional burst of laughter drifting from the upstairs window, it was a quiet and peaceful scene.
N asked me on my thoughts of the trip as it was drawing quickly to a bittersweet ending. Nearly everyone had dreaded the inevitable goodbyes for a week now. Still caught up in my childish affairs and suddenly afraid I screwed things up to the point of no return between me and said boy, I blurted out to her everything that had been going on. She listened quietly, nodding every now and then in her own silent way and when I had finished "verbaging" (verbal garbage) all on my mind, she said she had seen it coming all along.
Puzzled, I asked her why if she had knew what was going on, she had never tried putting a stop to our behavior. Most of the leaders had at some point already confronted us, but N had stayed strangely silent.
She thought for a moment, letting the silence fill in between us, "I guess I knew what you guys were doing was wrong but I couldn't really place a finger on it. You know. I look at you and I see so so much potential. There's so much to be unearthed, but it's there, hiding beneath the surface. And I feel like you can flourish and grow given the right resources. I've already seen what you can do. You may not be quite there yet" she paused and smiled, "but you have so much potential to be a great leader."
I was absolutely floored. In a pivotal moment where rebuke and chastisement would've been perfectly appropriate, N had handed me mercy WITH a side of grace on a silver platter. I had no words. We hardly even knew each other. My impression of her was based on her leadership and the way she'd run the program from the beginning. She was quick on her feet, compassionate, and genuine in her care for others. If you ever needed someone to listen to you, and I mean really listen and CARE (because we all know we can listen, but we just don't care enough), she was the one to go to. She was one step ahead of everyone else and handed out encouragement freely. Her impression of me, however, was up in the air. For all I knew, she probably thought I was a big flirt who hung out around the guys way too much.
But if she had had any reservations about my character, she did not voice them. Instead, she saw past the surface. And not only that, she had gone on to point out something no one had ever informed me. Me? The crazy introverted painfully shy one? The immature one? A leader?
I've mostly lost touch with her but I still remember that night so well. Life is short but it is not hopelessly meaningless when you spend it investing in people's lives. This made me wonder, what about the people's lives I've been in? Is there anything I've said or done that people still remember me for? Perhaps it was something encouraging I said or did that boosted their character. Or perhaps it was a slip of the tongue that cut them deep.
Coming home from an exhausting but rich weekend retreat with my dearest collegiate fellowship, I feel like I'm carrying so much home in the heart. It feels heavy but in a good way because there's so much to chew over and snatches and bits of our discussions keep coming back to mind. I can't stop thinking about this because, I want to desperately know how, in this short life, do we go about investing in those around us? And what kind of impact are we making now?
I want to know. Can we take a moment to immerse ourselves in the lives of those around us and invest more deeply? Love more genuinely? Listen more carefully? Encourage more deeply? Ask our Father to open our eyes to truly see the need in others? Isn't it so paradoxical that to invest in my own life, I need to invest in others just like Christ did for me?
In this short life, I want to be heard. And my cry is not a desperate plea from loneliness. No, far from it. Loneliness is destructive and self-centered. Loneliness asks, "What can you do FOR me? How can you serve ME?" It demands, "Listen to ME cry! Listen to MY troubles! Feel for ME!"
No, my dearest friend, I want to be heard by doing something worthwhile in this life for another person before the lights dim and the curtains draw close. I want to serve people by loving with abandon, desperately pleading with them when they've wandered away, shouting at the top of my lungs how much they are worth to our Father and feeling every smooth surface, sharp edge, high and low that a person can possibly experience in his or her lifetime. Because selflessness takes loneliness and hopelessness and turns the questions around, "What can I do for YOU? How can I serve YOU? How can I encourage YOU?" It shouts, "I will listen to YOU cry when I have no words and the only comfort I can offer is silence. I will intercede for YOU and love YOU like Christ loves me. And when your burden become too heavy to carry, let us crawl to the foot of the cross together." I want to know until I can say "My dear friend, I understand" and truly mean it, to be
saturated,
stained,
steeped,
in the Father's love til I have given all I have and then some.
Because when the curtains finally draw close for this one lying in her deathbed surrounded by her crazy grandchildren and loved ones, she can finally say she gave all that she could and whisper the truth about living a short, short life:
A life well rooted in Jesus and the lives of those around her was a life well-spent.
And friends, I don't want to wait. I want to start now. Because in all honesty, if not here and now, then when? And if not me, then who? Father, hold me accountable to my words.
