Very few people told me (and I probably didn’t listen to the others) that the day I graduated from college would be the beginning of a type of remolding of myself.
I had been in school since I could remember and now was no longer a student. What about those forms that always ask for your occupation, what would I say? What would I say I was doing with my life when people asked? I had been very involved in campus clubs, ministries, and residential life while in college, and now I was done with that as well.
All these things had changed in my life, but I had little time to notice until August rolled around. Before this, I had just felt like I was on summer break and would soon be returning to the comfort of my friends, dorm, and a familiar class schedule. False.
When August came, a new class moved in and replaced mine, my old roles were filled and life moved on. I was left in the wake of a huge loss of personal identity and community.
As I struggled in this change, my heart began to find new idols for itself. Where school and learning used to sit, I placed any number of things: my boyfriend, my job, social media, anxiety, self-pity, friends, TV shows, etc. During this time I sat through a number of sermons on this subject and piously thought how happy I was that I wasn’t convicted on that subject because then I may need to clean out a couple closets in my heart and that would NOT be fun.
It was in a moment of bittersweet reminisce of my college classes that I recalled a quote from one of my professors. I don’t even know if he remembers saying this, but I have never forgotten what Dr. Alan Bandy said about striving to get three degrees and then teach and how he has sat in numerous classes and seminars and reads and writes books some only dream about. Right as I was thinking, “Wow how awesome is that?! I want to be like that!” he said that he didn’t care about all of those things because he had offered it all on the altar for Jesus Christ. He had counted it all loss for the sake of knowing the Gospel. Nothing else mattered but that Jesus had saved him, and so he would in turn spend his whole life devoted to Christ.
This got me thinking, even years later, about what I was devoted to. As God would have it, the next day in church the young adult minister talked about devotion. How devotion comes from delight. I have spent many recent days mulling over what it means for me to find my delight in Christ and to then to have that sold out delight become devotion.
When I find myself so utterly delighted in the Lord that nothing else is worth placing my life or my identity in then I know what it means to begin the process of being devoted for my whole life. It means that nothing I do or achieve on this earth is worth anything if I am not devoted to knowing Christ. It means that my identity and my struggles both now and always are something to be offered to God in the utmost of delight and devotion. It is in one of the biggest identity transitions in my life that God is beginning to remold me into someone that is fully delighted in him. Are you delighted in him?