You Are Free

Have you had a time in your life when you learned or experienced something and your future perspective changed immediately?

Over Mother’s Day weekend, my mom and sister and I took a cooking class. The chef leading our culinary experience was exuberant, energetic and expectedly informative. Our menu for the day consisted of homemade pasta, a special Italian preparation of zucchini and yellow squash over a lemon ricotta mixture and finished off with an indulgent peach and blackberry galette. To say it was divine would be an understatement.

 
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As a student, my focus was on what I was going to take away to apply in the days that followed. I was going to learn how to make homemade pasta from start to finish, not to mention make a memory with two incredible women in my life.  What I failed to realize was that the majority of the learning took place in the small steps. How do you hold a knife? What is the proper way to chop so as to preserve said knife and your fingers? What is the easiest way to press garlic without a garlic press? What tool can you use in each process for maximum efficiency? Each step was thoughtfully described, and with each new tip realization hit that I had been going about many of these procedures the wrong way for years. Aha moments were going off like lightening bugs on a summer’s evening. And at the completion we were praised for our ability to follow instructions.

As our course moved into preparing the tapenade for the vegetable dish, we were instructed to collect our fresh herbs from the ingredient tray below. Scents of fresh dill, oregano, and cilantro filled our workspace and a mutual sigh of excited expectation could be heard throughout the kitchen as we smelled possibility with each herb. The chef gave us permission to begin prepping the herbs, chopping them, de-stemming if need be. One woman in our group began to painstakingly take off one cilantro leaf after another. We all commiserated with her, as that is the job no one really wanted if we were being honest. The tediousness required great perseverance and there were plenty of other more satisfying jobs to be had with a quicker turnaround.

 After what felt like 15 minutes, our culinary instructor came by and nonchalantly said, “You know you don’t have to do that, right?”

We all stared back with embarrassment like we were back in elementary school and the teacher had to remind us of something we should have learned by now.

Over the next few minutes, something so basic brought a complete shift in my thinking.

“Cilantro is one of the herbs that you don’t have to de-stem. In fact, there is more flavor found in the stem than in the leaves themselves!” She stated confidently.

That was it. In that moment, all of the scenes from my life of making guacamole – which is a weekly occurrence in the Sullivan household – flashed through my mind on a continuous reel. Evidently the same rule applies to parsley. Life-changing!

Some of you may be thinking, how did you not know this?! The answer: I didn’t know it because no one ever told me! Imagine that.

The freedom that comes from sharing truth is life-changing for those on the receiving end. I began to think of the life-changing freedom that comes when we believe Jesus really is who he says he is and we are who he says we are.

That he really does have a plan for each of our lives and a purpose that will not be thwarted. That no matter what our degree or pedigree, we are significant because He has chosen to love us and adopt us into his eternal family as heirs to his kingdom, despite anything we accomplish on our own. Why is that so hard for me to believe?

Growing up, I relished in the praise from others of my accomplishments. My identity and my resume began to take shape around that desire to be praised. Top 10 in my graduating class, elite dance team ribbons, two college diplomas, past relationships, awards and accolades all praising my past achievements now simply fill cubes of plastic in my garage. As life began to unfold for me in my 20’s and 30’s, I realized that the life I was choosing to live, out of conviction and faith, wasn’t receiving the same level of praise and encouragement from those around me. Many times people’s comments erred on the side of hostile, not simply a lack of support. As a result, my identity came into question. Not only did I feel completely alone, but I was also filled with anxious doubt and began to grow in bitterness towards a God who wasn’t making things in my life easier despite all of the things I thought I was doing for ‘him’. I did not feel the earthly reward of man’s praise.

Perhaps you can relate with me. I desperately need the daily reminder that the love of Christ and his purpose for my life is not dependent upon my performance or level of significance according to the world.

How my kids end up, how much I use my college degrees, how I look in 10 years, what social circles I find myself in or not, where I live, what my house looks like, what vacations I experience or don’t is not what defines a soul-satisfying life. So, if my successes and accomplishments do not earn for me an easier and more successful life, then the opposite is also true. My failures do not define me nor create a less valuable or satisfying life. They are both apart of the journey towards the one thing that truly matters.

You are loved. You are significant. God loves you; fully, completely, sacrificially, unconditionally. It is basic but oh so complex. His love for us is not out of anything we do, but because he is a loving God. I pray we can all stop trying so hard to prove we are worthy and just embrace that we are not worthy and yet He loves us anyway. I seriously have to preach this to myself. Every. Single. Day.

May we go and live out of that freedom for our own joy and for his great glory. And, may we all go and make guacamole this week with greater joy, feasting upon the freedoms we have been given.