I am writing this on my 55th birthday, one that feels like a somewhat significant milestone. Some places consider me a senior citizen. I could now officially retire from my university position and own the title “Professor Emerita,” though that is unlikely to occur any time soon.

This milestone has me thinking a bit about what I have learned from the years I have spent on this earth. After all, the gray under my hair coloring is supposed to come with some wisdom.

What Matters

Of course, I have accumulated a fair bit of knowledge as you might expect for someone with my education and over twenty years of experience as a university professor. I value that knowledge and constantly work to add to it, but one thing I have learned is that it is not actually worthwhile as an end in itself.

There was a time when knowledge itself was one of the things I valued most. As my husband supported me through my graduate degrees, I think he was beginning to be afraid that I would spend my life as a professional student, and I once believed that would be the most enjoyable way to live if we could only afford it. I have since learned that knowledge is only truly valuable if it has a point. For me, the important point has become using the knowledge to help students learn the skills and concepts they need to succeed in their field. The knowledge matters only as I can use it to impact people’s lives for good. And my greatest professional joy is not the new knowledge I create through my research, but the alumni whose lives I have impacted.

Being Me

For many, many years, I lived with tremendous insecurity. I did not handle the teasing I faced as a child well. That and certain events in my childhood helped to build very low self-esteem. I spent much of my adolescence in pretty deep depression, and only concern for my family and a reluctance to suffer pain kept me from attempting suicide.

Over the years some counseling, some dear Christian friends, the love of my family, and a lot of time in the Bible have helped me learn what a lie I lived in. I have come to understand that God actually wants me to be myself. That he created me the way he wanted me to be. Yes, I am to die to self, to deny my fallen nature, to grow closer to Christ and learn to have his desires. However, the result of that process is not a cookie-cutter, bland non-entity, but rather the best version of the unique person created by the God who loves me more than my parents or my husband or my children ever could.

So I have learned to be myself. I have learned not to waste time worrying about what others around me think. My focus has to be on where I am in relation to my Father and doing what God has called me to do, not where others may think I fall short.

Letting God Do It

Perhaps the most important thing I have learned in the last few years is that the Christian walk is not something I do for God, but something God must do in me.

I think it is very easy for Christians to fall into the trap of focusing on good deeds. After all, it is certainly a common trap for humanity as a whole. Even those of us who emphasize that faith is a matter of grace, a free gift of God, too often worry about works and not having visible sin in our lives.

Now, I’m not advocating for sin, visible or otherwise, and good works should certainly be part of every believer’s life, but I think we approach things backwards. We worry about others seeing our sin, but we are called to confess our sins and pray for each other and let God forgive our sins and clean us up and heal us (1 John 1:9; James 5:16). We are to walk in the good works which God prepared beforehand (Ephesians 2:10), not just do what we think we should for God. 

God has been bringing to my attention more and more verses that point out that the sanctification process is never something that I am to do on my own, never something that I am to feel guilt over. Instead, God will provide the fruit; God will shape the desires; God will do the work: my job is to spend time with him, to immerse myself in the word and in prayer, and to obey. That’s it. Remarkably freeing.

Are you approaching any milestones? What has God been teaching you?

 

Photo by Stephanie McCabe on Unsplash