Be Sincere

Me, After Falling off a Mountain Bike my Freshman Year 

Freshman year of college: the first line of A Tale of Two Cities come to life, the best and the worst, squished up in eight months running by on fast forward. I am a confident eighteen-year-old when I arrive, a battle-worn, insecure nineteen-year-old when I leave. Nothing will ever be the same.

I sat in the bishop's office that September and received my first calling as an official adult: ward missionary. The words of the blessing I received when I was set apart still ripple through the events that followed like an echoing mantra.  Be sincere.

Sincerity. Dropping down from the superficial place of rules, and rote motions, into the nitty-gritty of life. Exploring the rawness of the human experience in a way that can't leave you unmarked. The only way I could reach God's children as a missionary. Diving in took me from room to room, place to place until that time is an "everything has changed" moment, the fall-back point I still return to after nearly twelve years. Be sincere.

We can't help if we don't see people, if we don't let ourselves be touched by their experiences. We can't give of ourselves if we are protecting ourselves.

It's watching the ones I love struggle. Wanting to give them the gospel, but knowing it's not time yet. It's inadequacy, crying harder than I ever had in my life, and hurting someone even though I tried everything I could not to. It's getting sick, winter depression, and anxiety attacks on the steps outside the dorms. It's the parking lot in mid-day, couched by a sobbing friend who's world had been split through and crumpled up. The worst of times.

It's first love, piles of leaves, rainfall, and sketching on the quad. Music, paper mache balloons, and the safety of my friend, Anne's, bedroom day after day. It's standing in front of a life-size painting of Christ and being moved in a way I'd never experienced, feeling the veil thin in the loneliness of learning of my cousin's passing, and telling God I would let Him lead me to wherever He wanted me to go. The best of times.

It's going home for the summer, and not realizing I wouldn't go back. A single experience, gone. There'd been no time to waste on anything but being sincere.

No time to waste.

In the last few weeks, I sketched over my outline for my newest non-fiction book. I struggled to fill in the gaps, the ever lingering left-over pages. What did God want me to do with this book? How could I make it worth something to someone?

The answer came at writer's group, simple and familiar. It is to peel back the wall between me and my reader, exposing the person underneath the words. It's letting the person I am, and the girl that I was enter the pages and bleed out a little. God made me me for a reason. I can't wall-up myself and help the way I need to. The words are on replay, echoing to me with colors of freshman year.  Be sincere. There are no pages to waste, no words to loose.