Orientation: Mid-Week Reflection

EMILY RUTLEDGE, Youth Minister

Today something really scary happened.

We took our daughter to kindergarten orientation.

My daughter: the one that carries my heart around with her and who made me a mama. Kindergarten: the bullet train to her moving out of our house. Orientation: the time babies (seriously, she is a baby!) ride on a bus and meet their future teachers and my husband and I learn about all the amazing things that will be happening that are so far past what we can digest because we went to kindergarten decades ago in the middle of the Pacific Ocean.

Before getting to orientation we picked my husband up from work and I asked him how his morning had been. His reply: I don’t even know, I haven’t been able to focus on anything because I am too nervous about this.

We are basically super calm parents who are comfortable with change.

We pulled into the school: one excited four year old and two terrified parents… and there was our neighbor. Then one of my daughter’s preschool classmates, then another, and another. We were surrounded by our people. Most of them seasoned at this Kindergarten thing and laughing at our petrified faces and my watery eyes--as only real friends would.

Then, it happened, we were oriented. We were given our ‘relative position’ in this new world. That position: surrounded. Supported.

In Paul’s second letter to the Corinthians he writes that God’s “grace is sufficient for you, for (God’s) power is made perfect in weakness.” For me, parenthood is a continual reminder of my own weaknesses. It is the magnifying glass, the mirror, and the projector which reinforces that I cannot and will not approach being even close to perfect. My issues, my failings, and the depths of my heart are all exposed as a mom.

Alone, I am not sure that I would have even made it to a first birthday let alone kindergarten orientation. It is only when I orient myself to the people that surround me that I realize I am held up and knit-in by a community that God’s grace and strength flows through. That is when I find some sure footing.

God's power is not limited to a gathering of believers whose membership belongs to the same organization. It’s not constrained by denomination or even belief. There are people that transmit grace and are beacons of strength that do not believe in a God. They are my children’s emergency contacts and a knowing look across a crowded cafeteria when I’m scared of my baby growing up. They are neighbors who are more than people that share a street name, they have become the extended family we experience life with. They are the continual providers of grace and strength when life seems too hard.

I know some believe that to be oriented as a Christian means keeping our eyes firmly fixed on God by following a moral code and being steadfast believers through life's storms.

I think they are wrong. It’s impossible to live this life fully and not experience times and situations that seem devoid of God. Instead, if we orient ourselves to love and be loved, God will be revealed in more people and ways than we can imagine. When we orient ourselves to connection, to community, to unity we give God the space to encounter us daily and reveal Her nature and love no matter our weakness, how unstable the ground, or how scary the situation.