Inspired by - the Professor

I started a series of thoughts about a year ago in which I mentally isolated certain individuals in my life that had left a profound impact. These were people that contributed to the defining moments that shaped me as an individual and they are also the people that I credit largely for getting me to the position in life in which I find myself today. In continuation of this thought process, I thought that I would turn attention towards a person who taught me more about life, happiness and spiritually than anyone I know…

The Professor:

I’ve known the Professor my entire life…I knew him back before he was officially the professor but even then he was always teaching me something.  One of my earliest memories of him was when I was sitting in the child’s seat of a supermarket basket, my stubby toddler fingers resting on his knobby knuckles that gripped the handle of the cart. That day I asked him a question that every child wants to know and one that every child needs to hear the answer.

Do you love me?

The response was prompt and reassuring.

Yep, love you to pieces.

Following this reply I broke out in giggles, with the image rolling through my brain of my little body being scattered in little pieces.  The Professor didn’t make it a joke (he was rather solemn back then you see), just smiled and continued to assure me that he spoke the truth about his love for me.  That was the day that I learned something about love.

Years went by and the Professor continued to teach me. He was the one that encouraged me to dream big dreams. I didn’t understand what he meant at the time but that conversation was carefully tucked away for a later time to appear. That was the day I learned something about setting high standards and foreseeing a purpose for my life. The Professor is also the one that confronted me with how stubborn I was and he insisted that if I could only make myself teachable and center my stubborn streak in the center of God’s will, then no power on earth will be able to move you. That was a day that I learned about inner strength that comes only from God.

He managed to use frankness and humor just when I needed to hear it the most; I credit the Professor for being the one to stress that laughter and joy was such an important part of living. He retains so much knowledge about life and about the Creator of life and he was always finding ways to correlate life lessons with a heavenly meaning.

As a child I feared and loved him at the same time. As an adolescent I know I frustrated and infuriated him. As an adult I continue to respect and honor him. It wasn’t until I was a young adult, and going through a difficult crisis of spirituality and identity, that I realized things the Professor was teaching me had a purpose…his teachings that were sinking in were having an impact in my life. In that crazy and stressful moment in time…

…I was inspired.  

Inspired by all the late night discussions, all the heated debates, and by all the quiet moments when we just sat and existed in the same place.

I know now that I don’t always have to agree with everything the Professor teaches me, the student after all makes sense of what they learn in their own way.  No matter what my opinion is of what he teaches, I have always managed to glean pieces of the Professor’s wisdom and apply it to my own life. 

Fortunately I still have contact very often with this source of inspiration. He drops in from time to time to entice me to either go fly fishing with him or to run wind sprints down a country road, or to just sit on the steps and chat. He’s not just the Professor, teacher, Biblical scholar and author that everyone else and myself knows him by…

…he also just so happens to be my father.

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The Professor with part of his entourage several years ago.

Inspired by - the Missionary

There are so many people, ideas and events throughout my life that have offered me profound inspiration. These inspiring circumstances came upon me in a wave of enlightenment and left me a changed individual. I thought that I would dedicate a few upcoming posts to some of the things that throughout my lifetime of defining moments, were more than a mere passing thought…they were impressed on me with sincere revelation.

So to begin I will start with an individual whom I came into contact with at a young and vulnerable age.

The Missionary:

For those that are or have been foreign missionaries at some point throughout your life, there was probably a time when you made your way to a local church in the states to process some of your many spiritual travels with some local people. It’s such a familiar scene- the card table set up at the front of the church with the printed, tribal linen cloth spread over as a makeshift table covering. The artifacts and souvenirs scattered around on the table like a bad craft show and the foyer littered with fuzzy photographs of the world traveler awkwardly smiling at the camera with lanky arms draped around the indigenous people. The screen is set up and the slides of pictures are ready to roll before the congregation so they can bear witness that the traveler was actually doing something with the money donated to them.

If the above description has ever been you, know that first of all, you’re not the first missionary to have ever gone through this process when visiting a church to reminisce about your adventures. The congregation probably already has a good idea of what you might have to speak about and show them.

Second of all…in being faithful to your divine calling and “going to the ends of the earth” it could surprise you that you just might impact the most unlikely of persons….even a child perhaps. This is where one of my first inspirations came from….The Missionary.

He and his wife had lived in Brazil for most of the years that I had been alive up to that time…I’m pretty sure I was about 12 years old when I first encountered them. He had come to serve in the church as an interim pastor first and later gave his missionary spiel to the congregation. I had never heard such a personal presentation from an individual that had actually lived there and formed relationships with the indigenous people that he witnessed to.

I remember distinctly sitting in the hardback pew, transfixed on every word that was spoken. In that hour-long presentation I was transported to a world very different than my own comfortable lifestyle…it was a world of rice and beans, of alley-way soccer among the school children and of political red tape in need of cutting whenever there was a discrepancy in foreign documentation.

This was the first time that I ever experienced a spiritual force other than the superficial self-talk that I was used to telling myself. For the first I heard an inner voice telling me that I was going to do something great with my life…something that would have an impact on my world. At the time I was picturing myself picking my way through crowded, unsanitary streets in Rio…nowhere near what I find myself doing today. At that moment in time, with my 12-year-old ears impressed beyond comprehension at the testimony I was hearing…

…I was inspired.

God used that moment and went on with that initial spark of inspiration to begin a work in me that has spiraled beyond all that I pictured myself one day doing. When at the time I originally believed my calling was foreign mission work, the Creator prodded me in directions that I never would have taken on my own. Knowing that a calling has been inspired is the first step…acting on the inspiration is the second.

In the years that passed since the missionary, before I began to act on inspiration, I have witnessed the carrying out of missions throughout every faucet of my life. Today while I may not be waking up in a grass hut on the banks of an African river, nor will I be strolling the outdoor market in Sao Paulo to form relationships with the farmers…instead I daily sit across from a hopeless parent and hopeful child in a therapeutic setting….listen….and offer my own version of hope. An occupation that seems so trivial and simple was at one time something that terrified me to the core. I have the missionary added to my list of people to thank…because of his testimony, a sense of boldness had been inspired in me that waited many years to surface.

The process of allowing Christ to cultivate this boldness has taken me to places that I never would have imagined.

So…take some time to think about those that have inspired you. My list is long, this is only the first one that I’ve written about….but they’ve all served to be one of the defining people that made me the flawed person I am today….and for that I am forever grateful and indebted to that inspirational person….The Missionary.

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Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us,

to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, for ever and ever! Amen.

Ephesians 3:20-21

can't we all just get along

[Disclaimer: to all the wonderful women, girls, mentors, sisters, gal-pals and besties that are invested in my life…don’t read too much into this post as it may not apply to you…if you find that it’s offensive…ask yourself why that is]

One of the greatest conundrums that I have ever mulled over throughout my twenty-five short years on this earth is the whole issue behind why the female gender seems to consistently be engaged in conflict with each other. Look around. You see it.

It’s the group of 5^th grade girls that collectively exclude the former friend just because they decided to one day. It’s the high school girl that is spoken about in a negative light because she makes friends with all her male classmates. And it’s even the woman in the workplace that is smiled at through tight lips and given a shallow compliment when just moments before she entered the room was being tattled on to the supervisor.

Really this has baffled me ever since I can remember. It’s seems innate in some ways, yet learned in others. Ultimately women have relationships with one another yet they always seem to be on thin ice…one false step and they’ll plummet.

I interned for a time for a Psychologist and former grad school professor that bluntly asked me one day, “why are you all so mean to each other?” (by “you” he meant girls in general I promise). I replied with a profound, “hmmmm,” then set about trying to make sense of the matter. So far here’s what I found through contemplating, researching, questioning, praying and seeking advice from several wise people I’m fortunate to interact with.

Cat fights, drama and survival of the fittest aside, all conflict between the female gender seems to boil down to one key issue that we all possess BUT not all utilize (this is important to know so we're not all lumped in the same category with each other).

Continual defense mechanism: there’s no way to explain it other than to out my sex and state the fact that for women, we always have a wall up. It’s a defense and at times proves to be necessary. There’s always something that we’re trying to keep from others…how we’re feeling, what we’re thinking, how much we're going to choose to share about ourselves and so on.

Now, try to keep up with this scenario because it gets complex, but then aren’t women known for being complex?

Watch an interaction between two girls when they meet. You’ll find that they tend to greet each other, size each other up and down and use that first impression determine whether the other is friend or foe. Some determining measures include physical appearance, personality and acquaintances that each girl associates themselves with to name a few.

Depending on the level of defense radiating from girl #1, girl #2 needs to determine if it’s a low enough defense that the two can be friends. If not, they usually won’t interact after the first greeting except on a surface/superficial level. If the defense is low in girl #1, then girl #2 will determine that the two can possibly be friends given the defense doesn’t raise on girl #1. Some tend to have high defenses yet maintain high-stakes interactions…sometimes this works but back-stabbing is always a threat should one do anything to tick the other off.

Confused? Good, it gets worse.

There are exceptions to this competitive standard that women seem to have with one another:

1. Physical attractiveness and age: if one is perceived to be less attractive than the other, the more attractive might decide that a competition is out of the question since there’s been an unspoken one-up (to put it bluntly). The same goes with one being older (or younger) than the other.

2. Family members: I'm purposefully avoiding the mother-daughter, sister-sister relationship scenario, therefore this exception is not addressed in my theory.

3. Lack of defensive nature: let’s face it, there are some women that are gracious to the point that their defense is not perceivable if it even exists. These are the ones that I prefer to surround myself with. Grace and a non-judgmental attitude win out in the end and is the most admirable quality that I find in any human being, let alone woman.

4. Grace of God: the defensive nature can also be used in conjunction with those that can’t see past themselves. Striving toward a more selfless personification will serve to make you a much more attractive friend, girlfriend, sister etc. This I’m determined can only be achieved by the grace and love that God gives us towards others. (1 John 4:7-8).

I once heard someone say that you can see a girl’s true character by the way she speaks about other girls. The truthfulness tied to this is so important to tuck away and ponder…how do your gal pals speak about others? In life it’s so important to be able to rely on one another and this can’t be done if we’re constantly defensive and trying to one up each other. Girls need to have the support of other females…this world is brutal enough without us turning on each other in jealousy and superficial pettiness.

SO, I hope this conveys the meaning that I’m attempting to get across. Keep in mind that it’s a just a portion of a much larger theory of mine that I’ve been populating for a long time and you can always choose to disagree if you wish.

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“A kindhearted woman gains honor…” Proverbs 11:16a