Grand Rapids had me a little wary.
I grew up in Grand Rapids and went on to Hope College, a not-so-distant land that always felt different enough. Upon graduating, my soon-to-be husband and I intended to return to Grand Rapids, but I was timid about starting adulthood amongst the tottering and teeming memories of childhood and adolescence. My young memories are both sweet and salty, not unfortunate, but before moving I knew that our homelands have a way of drawing out our earliest, most dogged selves. I was ready to reach and refresh, not return.
Upon moving back to Grand Rapids, I joined a Young Life team in the area—the same area through which I experienced Young Life in high school—and began pursuing friendships with high school students. My new friends reminded me a lot of myself then; sincere, tired, unsure, vital. We walked together for many months, and I celebrated small victories as they began to ask me to meet, to coffee, to talk.
As we reared our relationships, my friends began trusting to me their inner conflicts; they struggled to understand the gravity of right and wrong, the shares of good and evil. Why are some of the adults in my life so hard on me? How could someone who loves me cause me so much pain? What’s the right way to show sadness? Who can I trust with my wounds? I questioned with them, and I listened to them vie for the right and good answers; they feared very much the wrong ones.
It is this that reminds me so starkly of my high school self, and this reminder for which I was wary of returning to Grand Rapids. The inner conflicts of my friends convict me of what remains of the person I was at their age, and what I believed then, what I still sometimes believe: the perception that the Christian life is a rulebook, an order of rights and wrongs, shoulds and oughts and, most certainly, ought nots.
As I reflect on my friends questions, I’m convicted of my internal autocrat who regularly briefs me on the appropriate and acceptable life of a Christian leader. This voice within me—gently named the Loyal Soldier by Fr. Richard Rohr—began sometime in adolescence, and has grown with me since. The Loyal Soldier maintains its own command of shoulds and oughts, and believes that good people get rewarded and bad people get punished. At its best, the Loyal Soldier prompts me to abide by laws and social niceties. But somehow, in the course of my Christian experience, this warrior within me began breaching far greater territories than lawfulness and moralism. At some point, my Loyal Soldier assumed a startled, cautious approach to life and faith, loudly wondering, How am I coming across? Will people like me? Am I doing this right? Will this be acceptable? Will this help me succeed (Rohr)? These questions arise, in fact, even in the safe and gracious spaces of church, fellowship, and communion.
I don’t think I’m alone in this battle; I would suppose even the most saintly Young Life leaders and staff members still struggle to quiet these voices crying to be right, to be well-liked, to be justified. Certainly our college, high school, and middle school friends are alongside us in this. Both within the Young Life arena and without, we each attempt to keep a controlled sense of self that will satisfy our Loyal Soldiers and, presumably, our communities. Sometimes we hesitate to speak up, to question, and to make healthy decisions for our relationships and communities for fear of our Loyal Soldiers barking at us. Other times we say yes when we should say no, we muffle our dissatisfaction, we believe that approval comes from the people around us.
What we can be most grateful for in this is exactly what is most troubling to our Loyal Soldiers, so steadfast and sure: that God has not called them into ministry. God invites our much deeper, much truer souls into his work, and God attempts every day to relinquish our Loyal Soldiers from duty. It is from our legion of voices that Christ seeks to resurrect us.
Because what our Loyal Soldiers don’t understand is grace. Strapped to the legal bounds of right and wrong, good and bad, the voices that seek to keep us composed cannot fathom a life where sinfulness and saintliness coexist; where blood and wounds would bring healing; where blessings and insults both lick at our lips and Grace would blanket them both. Our Loyal Soldiers uphold boundaries; Grace breaks boundaries by dwelling in every space, everywhere. Our Loyal Soldiers would prefer to suppress the shadows of our souls, but Grace in Christ invites us into the shadows, through death, and unto resurrection. Our Loyal Soldiers tell us to live half as much as we want to. Grace asks us to live forgiven, fully human lives.
I do not doubt that the will to accept Grace is slow-growing, nor that our Loyal Soldiers will leave their posts willfully. It is a lifelong journey to unlearn the autocratic and self-serving voices inside us, let alone to discern how fearfully we follow them. But God has called us each to our posts of proclaiming the truth, a matter much higher and truer than legality and boundaries. The Loyal Soldier must be left behind.
Thankfully, eternal life in Christ means that slow-learned lessons are not threatened by the timeline of death. We have assurance that our beings and our ministries will surely survive the stripping of appearances and falsities; it is through this sanctification that we encounter that which is everlasting.
So, I bid us to accept the invitation to Grace; to relinquish from duty, with utmost forgiveness and gratitude, our Loyal Soldiers; and to let our soulful selves step from shadows into light, as we are, human and God-breathed.
Can you relate? Do you more often tune in to the militant voice inside than the grace-soaked voice of the Spirit?
Natalia grew up in Grand Rapids and, after attending Hope College, moved back to lead the Young Life ministry at NorthPointe Christian High School. She loves simple things: to write, read, walk, and travel. Natalia and her husband, Mike, live in Eastown, where they walk & eat cookies on their front porch.
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