Seated: An Illustration of Identity

For the aid of the reader: This post is mainly about the Green Room, the team of RAs I'm joining this year and the people who helped bring to life the lesson of my place in Christ. This team includes our fearless leader and supervisor, Sarah, and eleven RAs: Katie, Lavi, Zoe, Kelly, Bri, Kaci, Ireland, Lizzie, JenJe, Kristen (my sister RA!), and me. I could go on in great detail about their character and encouragement, but instead, I'll try to sneak in glimpses as I tell the beginning of our story together.

...

Over the summer, all of Moody's RAs were required to read two books. One was fixed, required for everyone, but the other we got to choose from a list. I read and reread that list, changed my mind a few times, and finally decided on Heather Holleman's Seated With Christ, mostly because my mother had suggested that this summer, I focus on identity in Christ.

I cracked open the cover a month or two before school started and realized Mrs. Holleman was onto something, but I couldn't catch her vision. This summer was a hard one—a winter of the soul, ironically—and anything I might have learned hunkered down beneath the harsh wind and the layers of ice. While my body soaked up the sunshine, my heart hibernated. So I read the book, checked it off the list, and hoped that the germ of knowledge it had planted inside me would bloom into something helpful for my new residents--but I was doubtful.

I arrived at Fall Training feeling numb and unprepared--anything but seated with Christ. The peace and joy that Mrs. Holleman described, peace and joy born of deeply knowing one's position as "seated with [Christ] in the heavenly realms" (Ephesians 2:6), was nowhere to be found in my life. I began to wonder if God really meant me for the RA position.

...

A few days after I moved in, I gathered with my team in Sarah’s apartment. Sarah asked us all to rate our summers on a 1-10 scale and share why we chose our number, which instantly filled me with trepidation. If I answered honestly, I would be laying myself out in front of them in a way they probably hadn’t counted on and weren’t prepared for. But if I didn’t—well, I’d be lying. Unfortunately for me, my values prevented me from lying and encouraged vulnerability—so I told the truth. I couldn’t have felt more shame if someone had stripped me naked in front of them.

There was little acknowledgment of my vulnerability that night: a few words of encouragement from Sarah, a sweet prayer from Kristen, and maybe a hug goodnight. But overall, it was received with silence. I wondered if I should have kept quiet, so they didn't have to.

I had hoped that confession might be the antidote to my soul's winter, and it was. But I didn’t know it that night. I forgot it then, but if there’s anything I’ve learned living in Chicago, it’s that ice takes a long time to melt.

I fell asleep under a blanket of snow once more.

...

Wednesday night, I sat on the beach with Bri, Lizzie, and Zoe, hemmed in by them, laughing at the antics of the RAs around us. I joked and asked questions and still felt absolutely nothing stirring in my soul. I was like an outsider watching the proceedings from afar. I had heard this feeling described and never experienced it before; now here I was, wanting out.

“Jessi, what made you want to be an RA?” Bri was a second-year, an intimidating factor, and I hadn’t known her gentleness until today. Watching her now and hearing the tone of her question made me wonder if she already knew everything about me just from observing.

I told her the story, how I’d gone from feeling completely competent when I applied to feeling completely broken today, and she just listened. There wasn’t anything to say about it, except “wow” here and there, to show she was listening. She didn’t try to fix anything—she couldn’t. She simply cupped an ear to my heart, unashamed, and let me be exactly where I was. And that was enough.

Later, we sat around in the sand, all of us gathered and laughing and excited about each other, and Sarah asked, as she often would in the coming days, if we had any affirmation for each other. I think she expected three or four people to speak up, but we just kept going, for twenty minutes.

And somehow I succumbed to my winter again, right there on the beach. “I can’t do this,” I thought. “I’m telling Sarah tonight and going home tomorrow.”

When Sarah asked if anyone needed encouragement, I said yes, mostly to acknowledge that they had already met my need, as two people had just given it to me. “You don’t have to say anything else!” I explained.

“Can I anyway?” Kelly looked across at me, smiling deviously.

Sarah nodded yes, much to my embarrassment.

Kelly and I had been together in Israel, though we’d hardly spoken, and our connection had grown slowly special over the summer. She told the story of how we’d bonded at Spring Training and then said, “You keep saying you feel like you can’t do this. And yet we’ve just heard three people say how God has used you in their lives. You keep giving God the little that you have and He’s using it!”

As she spoke, warmth broke out over my wintering spirit.

...

A day later, the twelve of us were seated around a campfire in Michigan, licking burnt marshmallow off our fingers and quipping lightly at each other. Our comfort with one another after only two days was a strange delight, and I reveled in it. Somewhere inside me, crocuses were blooming. I was learning to hope again.

“What do each of you think you will need from the team?” Sarah had her notebook out and pen at the ready, eagerly taking down each of our unique needs as if they were precious, valuable things, worthy of preservation.

Are needs good? I remembered scribbling that question into the margins of a book last year when I was learning how to ask for help. Since then, I was developing a much more robust theology of need and finding that the message of Scripture is overwhelmingly in favor of it. Each voice around this circle was confirming that we were created with needs, never meant to be without God or one another--and God called it good!

One by one we spoke, and I had never felt so free to be open about my requests. It was deeply okay to allow these women to help me.

I wondered why. Why here and not so much elsewhere? What was different about this place, compared to the others I had been in?

Seated with Christ.

It clicked around the time Sarah was asking about what gifts we bring to the group. That was the reason it was so sweet. This small group was a tiny illustration of the realities Mrs. Holleman had tried to teach me. Every single one of us had a seat around this campfire, one we had been chosen for. We were uniquely equipped to serve on each of the different floors we’d been placed on. No one was better than another; we worked together to serve the people God had given us.

And so we spoke our gifts, gladly offering ourselves to each other. Maybe I would learn this lesson after all.

...

“This is the lava river.” Ever our fearless leader, Sarah was marking out a path between two groups of trees outside our cabin. She picked up a stack of wooden tiles. “You all have to get across the lava river—only using these. And if you stop touching one—“ She tossed it in and waved at it— “It floats away—bye!”

I had a love-hate relationship with team-building exercises. I loved them for what they formed in people; I hated them for the frustration they formed in me. I did not want to cross the lava river.

But we had a killer team, already, after only three days, and we managed to beat the challenge within ten minutes. So Sarah handicapped us, gleeful as she did it.

“Four of you are going to be blind and it will be...Lavi, Ireland, Kelly, and Kristen!” She took too much delight, I thought, in torturing us. We tied bandanas around the heads of Sarah’s victims and set off, Kaci blazing the trail before us and Zoe calling the shots from behind.

I took Ireland’s left hand in my right, Lavi’s right in my left, and stepped into our imaginary river. “I hope I'm worthy of your trust,” I told Lavi.

“I totally trust you!” she said, as much for herself as for me. Her words carried a loving choice; trusting was a gift to me, an act of complete faith. In a moment, when I was steady on my stepping stones, I took her sandaled foot in my hands--something I would never do otherwise--and placed it gently on the tile next to mine. Twelve more blocks to go, and I remembered now that this was an exercise in intimacy. I could get behind that.

At one point, in directing both Ireland and Lavi on either side of me, I lost focus for a moment and allowed a block to be carried away by the river. Bri, bringing up the rear, came to my rescue and passed me the tile she had picked up from the back of the line. We made it to the end.

“It’s so easy, Lavi, you’ll totally make it!” Even with my reassurance, she hesitated. Eventually, though, she leaped into my arms and I caught her rather awkwardly. “You’re healed!” I said, tugging at the blindfold. She took it off and sighed relief.

We debriefed from the exercise and someone brought up the concept of gentleness in our teamwork. “When I think of gentleness, I think of Jessi,” Sarah said. I smiled. This was word God spoke over me often.

The next day, when someone else used the word to describe me, Lavi’s whole face lit up as she yelled, “Yes!” in agreement. She smiled at me and I almost couldn’t look in her eyes for the sudden knowing there. Because of a blindfold and an imaginary river of lava, she knew my gentleness better than anyone else here and she was calling it out.

My love for team building grew a little bit stronger than the hate.

...

"I'm not looking for someone to hang out with." Just now I'd said that to Ireland, but as I came back into the cabin, I realized I was wrong. I climbed on my bed, restless, and tried to type out thoughts for a blog post, wishing I knew the girls better.

It was my own fault. I hadn't gone swimming like everyone else and now they were all together and I was alone. I remembered the silence the night I had shared my story and felt a stab of insecurity. Maybe what I'd felt the last few nights wasn't true. Maybe my chosenness didn't automatically equal belonging. Maybe I'd never--

"Are you doing something?" Katie came crashing down on the bed in front of me, her dark eyes smiling above my phone screen.

"Trying to write a blog post, but it's not really working," I said, tossing the phone aside. "What's up?"

"Would you wanna talk for a bit? You can totally say no if you're busy, but I wanna get to know you."

"I wanna talk." I was tugging on shoes before the answer was fully out of my mouth, floored by the mercy of this moment. You are seen, you are chosen, you are seated, you belong...Here in His daughter, God had spoken to me yet again.

Katie and I hadn't talked much since the first night and I had worried about some imaginary wall between us. The thought had crossed my mind that we would never be close, but suddenly here we were, settled on the dock together, taking a shot at friendship because of Katie's boldness.

"How's your heart?" The question was becoming a trademark of our small group, and Katie touched my shoulder as she asked. So much tenderness. I wondered why I had ever doubted.

A week ago if she had asked me, I would probably have burst into tears or sealed myself up in the icy weight of my heart. But today, there was warmth all over me, with my feet in the water and a song in my heart. Healing was happening, partly because of these moments when God proved that I was not alone. Katie's probing questions and honest responses to mine were another spot of sunlight.

After everything, spring had come at last.

...

I stood up to snap a picture in the near-silent room, self-conscious because I never take photos. JenJe peered over my hands and saw that the screen was filled by only a row of folding chairs.

“It reminds me of Seated with Christ,” I answered her silent question. “All the chairs are counted out.”

She counted silently and her eyes grew wide. "You're right." There wasn’t just some random circle of chairs in this chapel. They were set up in specific lines, the total number of chairs in each equaling the number of people on that team. There would be no more and no fewer seats than we needed.

They told us our cue to start singing was when every seat was filled.

We had all been chosen. We all belonged. And we were all learning to love each other, not just because of our chosenness in these roles but in Christ! I caught my breath as everyone silently filled their seats and Kelly and JenJe began the chords of "Jesus Paid It All."

I hear the Savior say,

Thy strength indeed is small...

The words washed over my broken-and-healing spirit. Jesus knew my small strength when He chose me as His own, and He knew it still as He called me to the RA position. My power wasn't the point.

Child of weakness, watch and pray,

Find in Me thine all in all.

And there was the peace and joy of seatedness. It did not come in competence. It didn't even come in a good attitude about life. It came in Jesus. He knew my every need and would meet it. I could trust Him.

And hadn't He proved it? Hadn't He shown Himself faithful in Bri's empathetic gaze and Kelly's words of encouragement? Hadn't He provided in Lavi's affirmation and Katie's boldness? Hadn't He been present in all the hugs and prayers and notes and moments?

We ended the night with a foot washing, a beautiful affirmation of the place we have with Christ, and when it was over, my team went back to our cabin for another half hour of worship on the porch. There would be more of this to come. I had to remind myself that this was just the beginning--I didn't even really know them yet! But as I looked at their faces and heard their voices harmonizing in familiar worship songs, I knew that to be seated with them was a small taste of what it was to be seated with Christ.

And it was goodness and spring and resurrection.

...

Our sweet team at the commissioning service, a few days after the retreat. From left to right:
Zoe, Katie, JenJe, me, Ireland, Bri, Sarah, Kelly, Lavi, Lizzie, Kristen, and Kaci.

Move-In Day!