 
 Some pastor once said to a room full of college students that most of us, in not all, would be nothing but ordinary. The chances of us being exceptional or extraordinary were slim. He went on to say wonderful things about how living an ordinary life is great and you can do great things in the ordinary, but I didn't care about any of the good he said. I realized that day that my biggest fear was to be ordinary.
People dream of marriage and kids and white picket fences. Security is the name of the game. But I want more. I want to do great things and meet great people. I'm afraid that if I turn out to be ordinary, that means that I didn't do enough or I didn't try hard enough. The most awful thing about my fear is that I'm not extraordinary at anything. I'm a jack-of-all-trades. I can do many things acceptably. While this is my favorite thing about myself, it inevitable scares me that it's what will doom me to an ordinary life. I'm screwed. I have to be okay with being ordinary. I have to be okay with becoming old and wise. Regardless of who I become, I'll have great stories to tell and maybe being exceptional isn't all it's cracked up to be, right?  One of my biggest fears in life is that I could go blind. It used to be a toss up between going deaf and going blind, but the more I embrace the artist that I am, the more I realize that I don't know if I could live without sight.
But in a way, I grew up without being able to see. When you live in the hood and you're surrounded by people who have no drive or no resources to instill passion, it's hard for you to envision a life that's any different than the one you have. Being successful and being college educated was a dream you were too scared to think about, let alone chase after. But God sent people to make me think about that dream and to chase after it even if I didn't know what it looked like. The future is invisible and that doesn't become easier when you're invisible God is the one leading you down this invisible path. How can we have faith in what isn't physically there when what is right in front of us is so hard to swallow? Even when it's hard, I always try to remember the power of an imagined life. Slaves imagined a world where their families could one day be free and so it was. Immigrants imagined a better life across borders that turned them away and so it was. Kids from the barrio imagined walking across that college graduation stage and so it was. Trusting God is so easy when he keeps proving himself right and merciful. |
