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Everything in My Life Has Brought Me Here

Jun 17, 2013

Everything in my life has brought me here.

     Rainer Maria Rilke

I (Michael) had worked hard on a paper for high school senior year Problems of Democracy class.  I thought that it was good.  My teacher did not.  When he handed back our papers a few days after turning them in I barely received a passing grade on the essay and he wrote on the top of the page that my paper was “banal” – trite, ordinary, dull.  That hurt.  It was especially hard to accept since I was preparing to attend college to study government and political science.  A barely passing grade in a Problems of Democracy class was not the most affirming grade to get. 

But it compelled me to strive to be a better writer, to be more intentional about the way I communicated with the written word.  Even though I was wounded by the term “banal” from my teacher it motivated me to do all I could to avoid receiving a remark such as that again.

Eight years later I wrote my first paper for a Master of Divinity degree.  The subject was the Old Testament and the iconic Jewish patriarch Abraham.   When our professor handed back our papers, I was one of several students who did not receive a grade.  That was almost worse than receiving an “F”.   Our papers weren’t even good enough to have a grade.  So, the professor asked each of us to rewrite the papers again, giving us each individual suggestions on how we could improve.  In my case it wasn’t my ability as a writer that she commented upon, but the way in which I was approaching the subject.  She wanted me to not merely treat Abraham as a saint, but as a very real person who had flaws and weaknesses like anyone else.

I took her suggestion and rewrote my paper.  She gave me an “A” for that paper and ultimately for the class.  The next year I was chosen to be one of four teaching assistants for the class that followed ours.  After that inglorious start, I had gone on to prove that I could take a more critically nuanced approach to the “heroes” of the scriptures.

Throughout all our lives most of us have all gotten bad grades or negative job performance reviews.  Most of us have worked with difficult bosses or colleagues who were not team players.   Most of us have struggled with disappointment, difficulty and derision.

It’s not easy, when life challenges and knocks us down.  In times such as those it seems as if things will never become better, that our circumstances will never change.  It’s hard to be grateful in the midst of a season of adversity and pain.    

But everything we go through in life brings us to this moment we have now.  Even the most challenging times define who we are today.  And many of those challenges have, in the end, helped to make us stronger and better.  They temper us, reshape us and motivate us.   

Today, I write – a lot – for a living.  I’ve written sermons, articles, stories and essays throughout my entire career.  My writing has been published.  

Even in those hard moments when my writing and ability to communicate was criticized or considered lacking, I learned from those moments.  I listened and I learned.  And I found a better way to share my thoughts through the written word.

 Those difficult moments have brought me here.  While I did not appreciate them at the time, I can now.  They motivated me to grow and I can be grateful for them today.

Photo by Aaron Burden on Unsplash 

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