My preferred seat of meeting or learning is at the back of the classroom near a window, away from the door. As such, I try to make a point to be early to classes or meetings on the first day so that I can get a seat in which I will feel both comfortable and safe. I am not a seat hopper. I believe in the sanctity of the seat. Once I find my seat, I return to my seat. And if someone takes my seat, then I feel a slight sense of panic. I’m not a confronter, though. [I’ve only seen one person confront a seat stealer, and that moment was priceless.] Instead, I sit as close to my original seat as possible or try to find another seat at the end of a row.
February 15, 2007, however, was a day that I found myself completely displaced. I have no idea why my seat was taken by the time I managed to drag a very weary body and soul into class, but it was. And so were all the seats around it. I think it may have been visitation day at the divinity school. So I had to sit somewhere really weird—near the middle of the class or something—and it was horrible—because all I wanted to do that day was disappear.
I had a really bad day that day. If you remember a day seven and a half years later, then you know it was a really bad day. I remember standing in the bathroom after getting to divinity school from elementary school work, wanting desperately to go home and sleep, but knowing that I needed to go to class. I needed to go to class not because of anything special but because going to class is what I did. I only missed one class during my entire under-graduate career, and if I missed a class during my divinity school career then it was because I had mono.
I am a people-pleaser.
Students going to and participating in class is pleasing to (most) professors.
So I went to class.
I always went to class.
But I almost skipped class that day.
And if I had, then I would have made one of the biggest mistakes of my life—
which would have been fitting on February 15, 2007—
but instead, that class became one of the biggest blessings of my life.
“I believe that as God is forming us from golem, God holds us to God’s chest and whispers into our ear who God desires us to be. Once we are born, the world begins telling us who it wants us to be. Family. Friends. Society. The church. So many voices tell us who to be. They wage battles within us, trying to form us into their image. But I think that our life’s journey is learn to hear through those outside voices and into the voice of God—the voice that once whispered to us who we were created us to be. This is perfection—being exactly who God desires—and Jesus was the only person ever to reach perfection—the only person ever to live into the fullness of who he was created to be—despite all that the world tried to make him.”
As my professor spoke that day, I sat in a strange seat surrounded by strange people and wept.
It was as if he was speaking those words directly to me and
I was being held against God’s chest as he did.
It was also as if God were telling me,
“I created you.
I believe in you.
I’ve got you.
Even when all else fails.
You are not who they tell you that you are.
You have failed but you are not a failure.
I love you. I love you. I love you.
Always.”
That moment forever changed my view of God, life, and self.
And to think I almost missed it.
And that it happened in the wrong seat...
Thank you, Dr. Brock, for allowing God to use you to change me.
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