Rulers Relinquished

It started years ago with a song lyric: "Pencil marks on a wall, I wasn't always this tall."  A song about growing up; a song about how God stays beside you in the journey.

In the span of high school ending and college ending, pencil marks on a wall became for me synonymous with all the measuring rods of childhood: growing physical stature, growing maturity, advancing from grade to grade, acing tests, changing schools.  A sense of accomplishment and forward motion traceable by pencil marks everywhere.  On walls, on papers, on the forms you filled out to secure the all important first driver's license.  Rulers that showed your progress.

And one of the most jarring facts of adulthood for which I was completely unprepared was the sudden absence of all those mile markers that had helped me gauge my progress and prove my growth for all those years.  The sudden, unmeasured continuity of things.  How hard it can be to place forward motion in years that merge and blend unbroken, in the work-home-church-chores lather-rinse-repeat redundancy of adult life.  Rulers unexpectedly and unwillingly relinquished.

But there is another sort of ruler that has also been a constant companion on this long journey from childhood to here.  The kind that wears crowns, the kind that leads people - the kind that we always thought we were to be.

My first education on leadership came from old books read as a young girl.  Valiant kings and queens: gracious and diplomatic on the throne; fearsome warriors on the front line; moved by a deep sense of purpose and responsibility.  Always described as beautiful, always unconditionally adored by the people they served.  Always walking especially near to the King who governs kings, who I didn't yet know or understand.

The concept of leadership was further complicated by first brushes with a sense of the presence of this great King who governs kings.  The church royalty comprised of pastors was so transformative, so capturing to the heart of that broken girl with those dream whisperings of what a ruler was meant to be still echoing down after all those years.  They became heroes instantly and I assumed my role immediately.  I admired and adored them.  Unconditionally.

I admired them so that I wished I could be them someday.  Touch others that way, lead others that way, become the gracious ruler.  And when a calling whispered to that passion-stirred heart, young and impressionable, on a youth camp floor I felt dwarfed but determined.  If my name was being called, I needed to respond.  I had been chosen to lead.

To say my first steps were stumbled would be the understatement of all time.  I have never been patient and have always been an old soul.  To me the call to lead meant leading now.  And that brought all sorts of heartbreak.  Feeling neglected when not chosen for responsibilities that I was infinitely unprepared for.  Feeling immense pressure when met with the slightest leadership responsibility to do it well forever, adored by all and to transform the world in that role as my ink-on-page icons always had.  And hurting people, that to.  Shows of power, demands for loyalty, faking knowledge I didn't have.  Because I couldn't fail at this.  And for me showing any signs of fallibility would have been just that: a failure of the highest sort.  Because in my mind, leaders were perfect.  Because in my mind, rulers were flawless heroes.  And I felt like such an impostor because I knew I would never fill that role.

In the years since, the marks on this dream of rulers have been many.  We've seen beloved leaders fall.  We've seen twisted, hurting and hurtful leaders keep leading.  We've wounded others, wounded ourselves and I'm sure at times wounded the heart of God in our quest for leading well.  Ash and dust have settled on this dream, like so many other dreams.  And with the shine that dazzled our eyes dulled by experience, that most brutal teacher, we have come to see it more clearly and less amorously than we once did.

We know without an inch of doubt that leaders are only humans.  Just people - flawed and troubled, full of struggles and striving, full of doubt and pride, full of ambition and feeble attempts at surrender.  Completely mortal, completely imperfect, completely clay-footed.  Just human.

We've learned that there are callings that lift and push and lead; that fill with passion and endow with purpose and demand that we keep pressing on.  And we've learned that there are a thousand, thousand temptations at every side that would use this dream to twist and warp the man who bears it into a monstrosity, obsessed only with his own influence, power and success.  We have learned.

And so in this season of life, I am again relinquishing some rulers.  I've come to realize that both of these loaded types - the kind that measure us and the kind that mark us as influencers - can carry unparalleled spiritual and emotional dangers.  The one driving us to compare, to compete, to strive - and to hide our imperfections.  The other pushing us on to climb, to demand, to power-play - and to hide our imperfections.

My name is Mandi.  I am deeply flawed.  I am failing all the time.  I am constantly crying out to God to remedy the weakness that never seems to diminish in me with the strength that never seems to diminish in Him.  And at my worst, I am not crying out to Him very often at all because I am numbed by the exceeding crazy and the exceeding sane that seem to constantly collide in these lives of ours.  I am no true hero.  I've just come to find a God whose face inexplicably shines on me day by day and draws me ever nearer into the beauty of who He is.  And I wish I could just vanish within Him altogether - melt into His perfection and finally forsake these flaws - because both of these types of rulers in my head are driving me to the worst version of me.  And it is time to lay them down.

The only model for leadership or for measuring success that does not seem to warp me is to love and to serve; to try it the Jesus way.  There is no glamour in washing feet.  But then there are no games there either.

I am not shiny and perfect.  I ask for no adoration or loyalty from an army of followers dazzled by my gracious reign.  I once did, but I will no longer.  I just ask to bring some healing to the hurt that everywhere surrounds, to retain some anonymity amid the cries for a new person to crown, and to be where His heart can define me instead of their fickle applause.

I am trying to let God measure me and measure out influence to me as only He sees fit.  To truly mean in heart what I say by tongue - that they can have all this world; that I just want Jesus.

I am learning to reach for Him.  And I am relinquishing rulers and rulers alike.

Heading...

The certain way to miss your destination is not to have one.

That's the tone the conversation with the family took recently.

When the ship is without a heading, you can be assured that you will not reach it.

I delight in deep discussion and truly loathe small talk.  So I am thankful for the loves who quarry the depths with me.  Deeply thankful.  Yet I digress.

When the ship is without a heading, the voyage is robbed even of the chance for success.  There's no definition of it, no measure for it.  It is nondescript and therefore unobtainable.

When the ship is without a heading, the best to be hoped for is pleasantly lost.

When the ship is without a heading.

That word plays a bit in my mind tonight.

The heading.  The coordinates that clearly define the desired end.  The exact location where you intend to arrive.  The one point that all must move towards.  The heading.

Where am I heading?

If ever I do teach teenagers (as I hope to) about all of the things they don't tell you about being a young adult, I think this one would have to top the list: there comes a moment when you are not just expected to steer or to navigate.  There comes a moment where it is left to you to chart the course.  To set, not just sail towards, the mark.

There comes a day when the heading is asked of you.

Where are you heading?

In youth, this is all simplicity.  Heading to grandma's house because that's where we go on Christmas.  Heading to recess because that's what we do after lunch.  Heading to middle school because that's what follows elementary school.  And so to high school.  And so to college.  And then...

Where am I heading?

The farther I get away from the predetermined course, the deeper in the woods and the farther from the path, the more two things happen simultaneously.

First, I feel dwarfed by the open space, insufficient to the task of determining the course with the wide world laid before me.  I feel inadequate to determine the heading.  How should I know?

And then, most inexplicably, I feel grateful that the heading is not being chosen for me.  That I am no longer riding the conveyor belt being taken where the world thinks I should go.  Because, after all, why should the proper directing of my life's course be left to them?  How should they know?

And so to the page tonight.  Very largely because I have been away from the page for so very long.

And somewhat for the need to state a simple truth.

I do not know where I am heading.

Perhaps a foolish confession to make; certainly the bit of honesty we most often aim to conceal.

But truth nonetheless: I do not know where I am heading.

I know that God is truly the One who directs my days.  I know and find comfort in the assurance that He holds my tomorrows.  I know that life's greatest object is to love and follow Him.  I know.  My heart knows and is at rest in all these things.

And yet there is something of knowing where to work and when to quit; where to serve and how long to stay; who to walk with and who to part from; who to be and who to be free of - this whole toward and away - this constant journey quality of the time-riddled world in which we live that is very like being in open sea and very much without a map.

I love Him and I trust Him.  But I seldom know just what He is about in all these strange every days.

And there's something of me being left to the fine details, to determine the practicality.  And in all of that - that grit of free will meeting Diving providence - that place where it's a dance, not a Dictatorship - in that place, I don't really know where I'm heading.

And I wonder, is that true of you too?