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 ;) |
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.
Sweet NCFCA friends |
These people never fail to make me laugh! |
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 |