Fixing the Mirror

I am a Christian. I grew up in the church. At the age of 10, my parents left their high-paying jobs and our upper-middle-class lifestyle, to become missionaries in Cape Town, South Africa. Not knowing if we would have enough money for food the next week, we lived off of donations for the year that we lived there. When we moved back to the States, my dad became a pastor of a church in a new town in New Jersey, very different from the one I grew up in Maryland.

In my seven years of living in Morristown, I now have over 200 community service hours solely from serving in the church. I sang, I ran the soundsystem, I was a part of the dance ministry, I took on leadership positions, I taught Sunday school, I ran the screens, sometimes I ushered, and a couple of times a year I would preach on Sunday morning. I was a Christian. Whenever there was a gap to fill in the church, I would fill it immediately upon the request of the pastor, my dad. I have spent my 17 years of life in the church.

While all the work I did for the church was good, it didn’t make me a better Christian like I thought it did. While I spent hundreds of hours within the confines of the church walls, I did not have a personal relationship with the one I was “working” for. All my life I thought: if I know church rhetoric and I am active in the church then I am a Christian. So I showed up to church several times a week but went home to a “every-now-and-then” prayer life. I was doing the things that church people are “supposed” to do, but I wasn’t believing in God to change me. All my life I was only doing the things that came as a result of loving God, without actually taking the time to understand who God was in my life; how He had provided in my life.

As a result of not actually knowing who God was in my life, I searched for validation in my achievements in church, as a daughter, and a student. Society told me I needed to go to a good school, so I strived for the best schools. I spent four years of my life running towards this goal of success. While I don’t diminish my achievements, all of my validation came from them, not God. After my acceptance into Princeton, I cried and cried at night- I had never felt emptier in my life. My teachers could tell something had changed in me, but everyone was so happy for me because I had “made it.”

Not truly loving God, my Creator, who created me in His image and likeness, I didn’t love myself. I harbored a lot of self-hate and insecurity. As a black woman, society told me to assimilate, that my hair wasn’t naturally beautiful, that my skin should be lighter but that I should thank God I’m not dark-skinned. I was stuck. I didn’t know God so I couldn’t love God, and because I didn’t love God, I didn’t love myself, and because I didn’t love myself, I couldn’t honestly truly live the way God had planned for me.

As I have begun to build a personal relationship with God and learn about who He is, the better I develop an understanding my own identity. With God leading me, I embark on a journey of wholeness, daily. One of the greatest revelations I have had on this journey was that the things I do, do not make me a better person, believing in Jesus does. Being a Christian means that I believe in Christ, that’s it. It means that I have chosen to believe in Jesus and acknowledge Him as my Savior because I am a sinner. I have realized now that we (especially those of us who grew up in church) often associate the actions of church goers as the definition of “true Christianity”, but if the things we did made us better people than it would completely eradicate the need for Jesus. The grace we receive from God through His son frees us from the need to be perfect in order to attain salvation. Now, all we must do is believe to attain salvation. Of course, God’s grace is not meant to be abused. Just because we are freed from behavioral standards does not mean we can act as a world. If anything the beautiful gift of God’s grace should motivate us to do better as a sign of gratitude for all that He has done for us.

Thus, God’s grace saves us, sustains us, and empowers us to do His will. Through His grace, we are empowered to live better, to serve in the church, and give back to others. This is what it means to be a Christian-- to live under God’s grace, not our own works.

Today, I am free from the need to be perfect. I am free from the search for validation from others and my academics. I love myself. Because of Christ, I can be who I really am, fearfully and wonderfully.