Day 62
Born to…
Porpoise are born to swim. How about you? What were you born to do…right out of the chute? For me, I was born to tell stories, write, teach and encourage others.
We were introduced to a young woman named Celia one evening in our home. She had come to attend our Thursday Night Fellowship group for folks who hungered for God, but didn’t fit into the church or mainstream Christianity and typically were not accepted by most Christians. Celia had a rare medical condition. It was a multi-dimensional immune-deficiency syndrome coupled with being highly allergenic to most everything. This would cause her to endure severe bouts of debilitating fatigue. If you’ve ever seen the movie about the boy in the bubble, Celia suffered from a somewhat similar affliction.
During the next several months, we sat for hours with Celia, listening to her life’s story. During her childhood, she exhibited a love for painting and became celebrated as an accomplished, budding talent who was destined for fame and success. She cherished sharing the memories of the hours she spent as a young girl, creating canvass after canvass of the visions “God placed on my heart.” Throughout these months of interaction with Celia, I can recall the phrase she uttered most frequently, “I was born to do this.”
About the time she reached puberty, things began to change for Celia. She began to become tired at odd times during the day. Her energy began to fade. She began to sleep for extended periods of time. Her appetite waned. She felt lethargic. She stopped painting.
Her parents thought she was getting lazy or bored. Celia knew otherwise. During the next several years, Celia saw physician after physician, then psychiatrist after psychiatrist. Her parents “gave up on me,” and they became estranged. Celia migrated to “people who would accept me.” This crowd turned out to be outcasts who were into drugs, drinking and partying all night. Celia could sleep all she wanted hanging out with these folks without being hassled about it. After a particularly debilitating episode, Celia wandered into the emergency room of a local hospital. After several weeks and examinations completed by a dozen separate specialists, she was finally diagnosed with a medically definable, untreatable, immune-deficiency disorder.
Celia was ecstatic about the diagnosis. Someone in the medical profession had finally, officially recognized what she had known for many years: She was physically ill. Celia went on for hours about how this powerful revelation had positively impacted her life. She gushed with new hopes, new dreams, and an infectious desire to live life to the fullest. She was hungry for the God of More, knowing full-well that there was abundantly more to God than what she had been led to believe. She accepted the fact that she had abandoned the dream of recapturing what it had meant to be born to be a painter. She was highly allergic to any kind of paint.
One of the central lessons that Celia taught us is that there is one thing that surrounds us from birth to death that we had taken for granted; horizons. Think about it for a moment. You can’t escape this reality yet; you can somehow easily overlook it.
As I looked out over the Pacific ocean, sun setting in the west, I realized the gift that Celia had bestowed upon us: the passion to pursue a relationship with God, beyond the boundaries of the horizon. I began to realize that perhaps, “God is bigger than the Christian faith.”[i] Maybe there’s more to God than what we presently portend to comprehend. As one author suggests, “We must learn how to perceive the living God who is building a new world in unexpected places and shapes; indeed, we must learn what it means to enter the new world of God. In short, we must relearn the meaning of being a Christian.”[ii] To this day, Celia’s life provides me with the encouragement to move on, pursuing the God of More, beyond the horizon. Maybe that’s what I’m truly born to do? Then again, maybe Billy Graham said it best when he wrote about a time in his life when he was absolutely convinced that, “I would never become a preacher.” [iii] Perhaps it’s about what we become, no matter what happens along the way.
NOTES
[i] Bell, Rob Velvet Elvis-Repainting The Christian Faith, Zondervan, Grand Rapids, MI Copyright © 2005 by Rob Bell, p. 27.
[ii] Marsh, Charles The Beloved Community – How Faith Shapes Social Justice From the Civil Rights Movement to Today, Basic Books – A Member of the Perseus Books Group, Cambridge, MA Copyright © 2005 by Charles Marsh, p. 214.
[iii] Graham, Billy Just As I Am – The Autobiography of Billy Graham, HarperCollins Worldwide and HarperSanFrancisco and Zondervan in the U.S. Copyright © 1997 by Billy Graham Evangelistic Association, p. 32.
