In honor and remembrance of the one year anniversary of the calling that God gave me (Or rather me finally listening), I thought I would repost my initial realization that I wrote that first night.
I'm Gonna Follow
I just had my life changed, minutely and significantly.
While listening to the awesome and amazing Bill Mallonee tonight, singing a song about Van Gogh and the trials of not realizing your potential in life, or rather never knowing that you have realized it, I recognized that I have been stuffing a part of myself down for the last few years in regards to the calling that God has placed on my life and the gifts that God has blessed me with.
At the age of 17, I knew that God wanted me to go into Youth Ministry, that that is where I was created to be, reaching out to youth at a time in their lives when so many people tell them that they aren't good enough because of their age, their awkwardness, or their ways of thinking. For the last decade, that call has not changed. I went to college and got a degree in Youth Ministry, then did Youth Ministry, and am now getting a Masters degree and going through the ordination process because of my sureness of that calling that God planned for me and has placed in my life.
Let me preface this next part by saying that I don't feel that I have lost that calling, or that I don't want to do Youth Ministry anymore. But I think that there is a part of me, a part that continues to get bigger and more pronounced with each passing year, month, and day, that I have been pushing aside and ignoring because I am terrified of it and what it might mean for my life to try and rework things when I am 11 days away from my 28th birthday and 7 months away from graduation.
I am an artist. I feel called to do Arts ministry. I want to do Arts Ministry. I feel that it is something that is under-appreciated, ignored, or simply not even considered in our churches and in our world today. We are beings that are created in the image of God. The Imago Dei. And because God is creative, we must, as humanity and as individuals, be creative too. Even though we learn from Scripture, from prayer, from hearing sermons and singing hymns, there is a crucial part of our being that is never touched in a common (or uncommon) worship service or time of meditation.
So many people in this world think that they are not "artistic", that they are "uncreative" because maybe someone, somewhere along the road of their lives told them that they weren't. Or maybe they were never given the opportunity to express themselves creatively. Or maybe they were told that making, creative, moving, touching, looking, were not "appropriate ways to worship".
This idea breaks my heart, the idea that people are squelched in who they are as beings created and loved and intricately known by God because they are not able to express themselves fully in worship, or that even if they are given that opportunity, that they doubt themselves in the same way that many people doubt their ability to pray because they feel they don't know all of the elaborate, flowery language that is represented in so many prayers.
Don't get me wrong. I think, I know, that people can and do connect with God through the reading of Scripture, through the writing and hearing of sermons, through all sorts of prayer, and through the hearing and singing of hymns, along with many other forms of worship, and that these practices are all vital to a healthy relationship with God. I have connected with God and had my relationship with God strengthened and deepened as a result of all of these practices.
But as surely as God gave us a mouth to speak and ears to hear, God also gave us hands to touch and create with and bodies to move around with. We are not complete in ourselves, in our created-ness if we are not utilizing all of our senses and abilities when we worship God and live our lives.
All of this being said, I know that God is calling me into something different than what I was called to 10 years ago. I do not feel that I am being called away from Youth Ministry, but that the ministry that God is going to have me embark upon in 7 or 8 or 10 months is going to look different than what I thought.
My life has been changed. I have been called by the Great Creator, by my Creator, and it is a calling that I can no longer ignore. I pray that I will be able to follow the path, with all of it's hills and valleys, with all the turns and twists, and to stay true to who I am, who God made me to be, and the faith and community that has supported me my entire life.
