it is well

Explaining to regular people why speech and debate tournaments are fun is extremely difficult. Yes, you’re wearing suits the whole time. Yes, you have to discuss dry topics like the federal court system for multiple hours a day. Yes, the schedule is so packed that you find yourself with five minutes to scarf down lunch in between rounds. But somehow, between the stress and – to put it bluntly – the sheer weirdness of tournaments, laughter and rich conversations abound. Friendships form quickly in the high-pressure environment of competition.



Ryan and I at our first practice tournament. It was at a corrective school for juvenile offenders...you should ask me for that story sometime ;)



Sweet NCFCA friends

 

 

These people never fail to make me laugh!

Considering how important tournaments had been in my life since sixth grade, I was surprised to find that I really didn’t miss them this year. As a matter of fact, when I spent time investing locally instead of prepping for and travelling to tournaments, I started to find the friendships, adventures, passions, and personal identity I spent so much of high school longing for. On a surface level, you could say this is because I cultivated deep roots in one place instead of trying to maintain dozens of long-distance connections. That’s true. But on a deeper level, I was happy because I stopped needing things like friendship, adventure, passion, and a personal identity. I just didn’t care that much anymore. After my wayward heart spent years wrestling with doubt and loneliness, I realized that I really didn’t want anything besides God.

When I felt most lonely, I looked to Him for companionship and learned that He was my best friend – the best friend I could ever ask for. When life seemed meaningless, I looked to Him for purpose and found in Him every reason I needed to charge joyfully ahead. Instead of expecting achievement to validate my existence or people to meet my emotional needs, my heart sang, “I am already filled, I have already become rich, I am already a king.” (1 Cor. 4:8) And, in accord with the beautifully backwards laws of God’s kingdom, I began to receive in abundance all the things I thought I had needed in the very moment I stopped needing them.

But as Mumford says, “this city breeds the plague of loving things more than their creator.” Now I wonder - have my affections relocated from God to the gifts He has given me? Do I really believe that I would be no better off if I had God and nothing else besides?

God has given me friendship. I love people – therefore I must be endlessly miserable as I try to look just right, act just right, and say all the right things to win people over.

God has given me work. I love feeling productive – therefore I must constantly push myself through crash-and-burn cycles of stress and exhaustion in order to accomplish things.

God has given me words. I love creating beauty with words – therefore I must feel as though I have no personal worth unless I can prove my superiority in the use of language.

God’s blessings quickly morph into perversely overinflated idols, making endless demands of us as they crouch on the thrones of our hearts. It’s not that we love them too much; it’s that we love God too little. We can free ourselves from these bloated blessings when we love Him more.

“Our heart is unquiet until it rests in you,” writes Augustine. This fits with the Christian axiom "rejoice in the Lord always." When our happiness is fixed on Christ our joy should be permanent because no one can take Him from us or us from Him. But the application of this principle is infinitely more difficult that its articulation. It is easy to love a friend who writes me beautiful letters and hugs me when I’m crying and makes me laugh. It is hard to love someone who I cannot touch, someone whose voice I have never audibly heard. As a human, I am so bound by my senses that it feels impossible to love something they cannot perceive. Such is the nature of this earthly city, which breeds the plague of loving tangible created things more than their transcendent Creator.

I am currently re-reading Genesis, which I find stranger and more wonderful each time I return to it. In the first few chapters of the Bible we hear about two particularly righteous men: Enoch and Noah. Both were saved from destruction – Enoch from physical death, Noah from the worldwide flood – because they found favor in God’s eyes. Why did they find favor? They “walked with God.” A brief visit to Strong’s Concordance suggests that walking with God does entail following His commandments. But it is also more than that. The same Hebrew word is used for “walked” and “went”, as in “Lot went with Abraham”, “Rebekah went with the servant,” and “Abraham was walking with his guests.” Walking with someone implies actually being with them. Walking with God does not simply mean you do what He says; it also means that you experience His presence in an interactive way.

As an introspective person, I relate strongly to St. Augustine. Sometimes I feel like I am reading about a more brilliant and spiritual version of myself when I read the Confessions. Here is how Augustine describes his thought life: “I questioned you about each thing, asking whether it existed, what it was, how highly it should be regarded; and all the while I listened to you teaching me and laying your commands upon me.” Augustine knew the meaning of walking with God. He willingly welcomed the Spirit into his consciousness, fusing his own mind with the mind of Christ.

The human thought process is an endless conversation with oneself. Augustine allowed his thought process to become an endless conversation with the Creator of the Universe. No wonder his mind was able to reach heights that make mine spin! From the inside out, Augustine surrendered his whole being to the influence of God. And so, even after losing his mother and several of his dearest friends, Augustine could write to his Lord: “Blessed is he who loves you, and loves his friend in you and his enemy for your sake. He alone loses no one dear to him, to whom all are dear in the One who is never lost.”

God has richly given us all good things to enjoy (1 Timothy 6:17). But the world can only be rightly enjoyed if we love it through Christ, in whom all things hold together. The things of this world are intrinsically brief. They are made to be beautiful in their passing, just as a spoken sentence has meaning only when one sound dies away to make room for the next. A heart fixed on transient things will experience constant death as the things it loves passes away. A heart fixed on Christ can say, as Augustine said, “Praise God for the beauty of corporeal things, and channel the love you feel for them onto their Maker…If kinship with other souls appeals to you, let them be loved in God…and carry off to God as many of them as possible with you, and say to them, ‘Let us love Him, for He made these things and He is not far off.’”

God has given me friendship. I love people – therefore I will thank God for the people in my life and do everything I can to draw them closer to Him.

God has given me work. I love feeling productive – therefore I will prioritize the tasks that matter most to Him and trust that He will work everything out when the body He has given me needs rest.

God has given me words. I love creating beauty with words – therefore I will use my mouth and my pen (or my computer!) to exalt Him.

Friends desert us, work unravels, computers crash, but if we have loved these things in Christ, none of our affection is wasted. Our love for these blessings has brought us nearer to God, opening springs of delight in us and in Him.

Returning to the world of speech and debate tournaments: I visited regionals at the beginning of this month. After the tournament ended, I was a saltwater wreck - black mascara tears and all. Of course, I will stay in touch with some of my NCFCA friends, but there are literally not enough hours in a day or days in a year to keep up with everyone. And in a sense, I love everyone. Each person’s presence affects the atmosphere of an entire tournament, so that the difference is acute when even one person isn’t there. I will miss each person’s unique presence in my life. And as the departure of San Antonio friends to their respective schools fast approaches, I can sometimes feel myself becoming melancholy, maybe even afraid of the change.

I’m glad I feel sad when people aren’t around - it means that I actually like them. But the sadness should not be ensnaring; it should not become a “slough of despond”. My friends are all safe in the hand of God. I can trust that our time together is made more beautiful by Him in its very passing away. And who knows when He will choose to snatch us up from the four corners of the earth and weave us back into each other’s lives. “All manner of things shall be well” in His time.

I long for my thought life to become a conversation with God so that I can see from His perspective, acting and speaking with His love. I have such a long way to go, but I am excited for the journey.

For now, thank you, dear friends, for being in my life. I hope we learn to cherish Christ in each other and each other in Christ.

 

CrossLife seniors