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When We Become the Work
I cried A LOT yesterday. Not the sophisticated, single stream type of tears – I mean the ugly, blubbering, messy, painful kind. For some, tears are a welcome and trusted friend. For me, they’re more of an awkward, well-meaning companion at best. I don’t feel this way about all tears of course. I feel fine about tears sliding down my face at the movies. It’s these kinds of tears that send me – the tears that accompany refinement. The tears you didn’t ask for but needed. The ones that, while disruptive, echo the promise of grace, hope, and love.
These types of tears flow from a deep place; a place one might not even be presently aware, and a place language is limited to fully articulate. To me, these tears feel like holding the the smallest, tiniest, most miniscule piece of the Father’s heart for people and being utterly enveloped by the weight of something you simply could never bear alone but have been invited into all the same.
I’ve been thinking about submitting a Seasons piece to Ideas since the summer. After nearly twenty years in the field, I have plenty of stories I could tell. I could write about the importance of just partnership in service-learning, about adaptive leadership and institutional change, or about developing student leaders and curriculum design. All worthwhile topics. But as I sat yesterday, tears running down a face that is usually dry, smiling, and confident, I realized those aren’t the words I need to write. What I need to write about is the crucible I currently find myself in – the moments when we become the work.
A vocation shaped by formation inevitably draws us into refinement. Participating in a students’ deforming and reforming requires that we not only witness the process but join in this holy work. It is so easy to enter these spaces believing we, alongside the Holy Spirit, are shaping students. Yet, the same Spirit uses these moments to deform and reform us.
My friend and former supervisor at Wheaton College, Rev. Brian Medaglia, once told me to pay attention to patterns because patterns reveal where the Holy Spirit is at work. Looking back over the semester so far, I see that truth unfolding in me – and it has been TOUGH. I have experienced a gentle unmaking and dismantling of self; the parts of me that found their home in confidence rather than humility. How quickly professional habits that once served me well turn in on themselves! Confidence and excellence, at one time rightly ordered, had unknowingly transformed into well-polished, well-meaning forms of pride! Somewhere along the way, the habits and work that I was really good at had become things I needed to get better at.
This is EXACTLY what I mean when I say we become the work. In our ministry of formation, the Holy Spirit often reveals the very places within us still in need of reformation and sometimes, it may be our most developed skills, praiseworthy accomplishments, and deepest convictions that require the refining. And though the refiner’s fire is hot, I am grateful we can have confidence that ashes are never wasted. We know from scripture that God often brings beauty from loss and limitation. It is in these seasons of unmaking we encounter the Potter’s steady and gracious hand reshaping us for His purposes. His grace-filled touch reminds us that our gifts were never about us to begin with, but about what He desires to accomplish in and through us. It’s just true that seasons of growth often come wrapped in discomfort, and this too is part of God’s good refining work.
I know I should not be surprised by these invitations into deeper sanctification. In our field, we invest deeply in the growth and flourishing of our students and yet formation is not theirs alone. The same story we invite students into – a story of reflection, humility, and transformation – is the one we are continually called into ourselves. When the Spirit awakens us to our own ongoing reformation, we participate in the very learning and becoming we hope to cultivate in our students.
As humans, we live in a continual process of redemption and becoming. That’s the paradox and the gift of this vocation: we are the work. Our lives and leadership are shaped in the same fires that shape our students at the very same time. The tears, the joys, the celebrations, the small resurrections; all of life forms in us deeper compassion anchored by joy and gratitude. So, I’ll sit here, grateful. Grateful for the redemptive beauty that God, in His goodness, continues to bring from ashes – and who knows, I may even learn to welcome these kinds of tears.
