Confessions of a Seminarian

Who am I?

One star-gazing night in my convertible last summer, I found myself with a heart-broken gal-pal, a box of Kleenex, and a carton of cookie-dough ice cream.  What’s a girl to do?  One of the most friendship-boosting activities is to sit with each other during a time of need.  Everyone needs a smile, a hug, a listening ear, and at times, a shoulder to cry on.  No one wants to feel alone during a time of hurt, especially after an abrupt change or a loss in relationship.

Every girl knows that after such a time, a new chapter must begin.  Girls entertain certain rituals to set into motion a new beginning.  Sometimes it is a haircut, cleaning out her car, rearranging her furniture, or completely changing up her Facebook profile.  A new day calls for new pictures, new interests, and a new you! 

 Why is it that making some simple change can really help refresh and renew us?  Why do we return home from travels or new adventures with a grand sense of, “Aha!  Things look differently now!”  Why does a mission trip completely change the way we see our hometown?  Even wearing a new shirt or borrowing a car can change the way that we feel and experience who we are. 

For example, I generally love driving around my convertible, blasting the tunes, taking in the breeze and all the glorious sunshine, but the past month or so, I have been driving a little four-door-mom-car, and something in me has changed!  Even new curtains, or a new rug, can really change the way you feel as you walk through your house!  Is it a sense of newness, or freshness, maybe of a clean slate?  There is sometimes a bittersweet feeling that comes with starting over.  I feel this every time my little Mario dies and I have to start over in Level 1, Mushroom Land!  I feel defeated, but refreshed at the chance of having a new start and another try!

Change is difficult to accept sometimes, and a gentle period of transition is sometimes very helpful.  Just think of the way that mothers gently sing their babies to sleep; sometimes it takes a lot of coaching and encouragement to make the new phase seem more appealing than the old phase, but ultimately the new phase is necessary for life to go on.  The sun has to go down for it to come back up again!

So it is with us when the Lord moves us, changes us, shapes us into who we are as His children.  Not all changes are as exciting and wonderful as the day we receive our driver’s license or buy our first car.  Some changes have to occur and we don’t understand why they had to happen, and some changes really affect us deeply inside our hearts!  I think of those little walks with my mentor and as I’m simply explaining something that concerns me, she whispers so gently to me that the Lord is making me His, changing me up, making me different, shaping my heart to look like His!  Sometimes it hurts, sometimes it is really hard, but sometimes it is the best thing in the world!  It’s like I’m growing like a little plant, and someday I will be able to help other little plants grow too!            

So if you ever feel that you have completely blown it (perhaps you stained all your carpet or totaled your car), there is hope!  The Lord is the master of seasons, the designer of all sunrises, He understands and He can work with the ugly and broken parts and make us into new people, give us a new start, change us from the inside out!  Can you even imagine what that would be like?

Ezekiel 36:26 “And I will give you a new heart, and a new spirit I will put within you.  And I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and I will give you a heart of flesh.”