The sessions we sit through are always great, but sometimes they can be challenging/convicting. One of the sessions that stuck out to me this past training was led by Keith Berger, former campus minister at LSU and current area coordinator for...one of the other US regions. (I don't know which one, obviously; I just know it's not mine.) He talked about basic discipleship principles, and throughout his talk, I could feel my internal level of anxiety building. At the end, I would have cried had I not been in a room full of people.
Now, I am not normally an emotional person. ...Actually, I take that back. I haven't been an emotional person in the past (due to the unintentional murder of a pet hermit crab...more on that another time, possibly), but since I began the internship with RUF, I suppose I just have to accept that I have become more emotional. I guess I would be classified as "normal" now. ...In the emotional sense. So as the session ended and I felt the tears building, I began to question myself. Why did this particular session bother me more than the others? (Because it did, I polled a few other interns.) I realized it was because I felt like a failure. I had heard all that Keith said about how we as interns should be discipling our girls, and I realized I was not doing most of the things he assumed us to be doing at this point in the internship.
I began talking with one of my friends there, another intern and wonderful woman. When I told her this, she (with the best of intentions) told me I was a wonderful intern. To which I responded, "You don't know that. You're not there (in Huntsville), you don't see or know what I do." She lovingly tried to persuade me otherwise, trying to be encouraging. And I am very grateful to her for those attempts, but it was ineffective. Because I was right. She can't know what kind of intern I am, for the most part. And I really haven't been doing my job like I should.
So now my anxiety level has increased, because not only do I feel that I've failed my girls, but now I feel like people are wrongly assuming that I'm doing what I'm not actually doing. (Anxiety issues-I see them. We're working on it. ...and by we I mean me.) So I then found Keith, and asked him if I could walk out with him. (To which he replied, quite funnily, "Are we going to just walk?" "Oh no. We're gonna talk.") Our exchange went as follows:
Me: So. ...Your session made me want to cry.
Keith: *insert some sort of sentiment here that expresses sorrow for my state but not necessarily apology...I don't remember exactly what he said here.*
Me: What does that mean (the me wanting to cry thing)?
Keith: Well, why do you want to cry?
Me: ...Because I heard all the things you said, and it just made me realize that this whole past semester, I haven't been doing my job. I haven't done those things.
Keith: *pause* ...It's okay to weep over that. That's a legitimate thing to grieve over.
I don't think I can fully describe to you the freedom I felt when he said that. ...Because he's right. It's a bizarre thing, this Christianity. So full of paradoxes. But it's truth, nevertheless. When you see legitimate failure, when you really see your sin...you need to grieve over that. You need someone to say, yes. What you see, the sorrow you feel, that's real. That's right. Because sin is something to weep over. It shouldn't be in this world; our beings weren't originally designed to be okay with brokenness because we weren't broken when we were made. We were never supposed to be in the state we're in now. So we shouldn't be okay with it!
Now, I'll admit there is a high propensity on my part to be too hard on myself, to wallow in guilt, and that is NOT okay. Because there is the good news as well, that Christ has fully paid for all my sins, past, present, and future. Jesus did in fact take my sin and His righteousness and say, "Tradesies!" [Loose translation of...the Bible. Brought to you by Leigh Douglas.] But the freedom of that comes only with first acknowledging the crimes we've committed. We've got to repent and grieve over our sin, and only then will we be able to celebrate and experience the true freedom the Gospel brings.
And friends...it is indeed glorious.
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