I was recently in a church personnel
committee meeting where we were discussing whether to hire one of our own young
adults as a youth ministry intern. Paul mentioned that this would be a great
opportunity for our young man to understand the stirring he is feeling in his
heart toward full-time ministry. Paul said, “He is hoping for a defining
moment.’
I joked (but like all jokes I was
partially serious), “I am in my 50’s and I am still looking for that defining
moment to tell me who I will be when I grow up.”
A fellow committee member joined in,
“After 70 years, I am still looking.”
Then Lee kicked in, too: “I still
haven’t found it after 80 years of looking.” It was a tough room; hard to be
the sage.
The next day during my noontime run,
I spent five miles thinking about our discussion of defining moments. I
thought, “There is good news and bad news in this.” The bad news was that none
of us would ever have that single defining moment that lays out the whole path
of our life. The good news? The same thing; we would never have that single
moment. We are more likely to have many moments that lay out our near term
plans and mark the phases of our lives. As I ran, I thought back through my
life of those occasions when I got a glimpse, maybe just a sliver, of defining
moments.
I remembered the moment when I knew
beyond a doubt Cyndi was the girl for me. It was a few weeks before
Thanksgiving of 1978, and I was sitting at the kitchen table in my college apartment
in
She was in her dorm room at the
of
calling long distance was a big deal and cost lots of money. As we talked, I
was flipping through my Bible, and my eyes landed on Proverbs 16:9. Right then,
in that moment, in the middle of my conversation with Cyndi, I knew what to do.
I was crystal clear to me. It wasn’t scary. I knew I should marry Cyndi, and I
knew God would bless it. It was a defining moment for me.
I remember another moment, in the
spring of 1990, while sitting in my adult Sunday school class at First Baptist
Church, Midland, when God called me out. The challenge I heard so clearly in my
head was, “You are wasting our time and wasting your gifts sitting in class;
you should be teaching.” Later, over lunch, I told Cyndi about it, and she
said, “It’s about time.” That evening I asked Marilyn, our department director,
“I need to be teaching, can you find a class for me?” That moment has defined a
large part of me for almost 20 years.
The next defining moment I
remembered was when I was riding in my red Ford Ranger pickup on a snowy winter
Friday, in November 1998. I was driving to Martina’s
Bakery to pick up some beef tortas to take to Cyndi for lunch, when God spoke
clearly to me about a new writing ministry. My heart had been hungry for a
wider audience to share what God had given me. It was a breakthrough. I decided
that afternoon to start emailing weekly essays to a small group of friends, and
title them Journal Entries. After a few months, when I started having doubts
about it all, Cyndi reminded me, “You were called by God to do this. I know it,
because it comes from your heart, and your motives are true.”
I remembered
more moments when God continued to define me as a writer. Both were at Wild at
Heart camps. The first time was at a Boot Camp in the fall of 2003, in
spiritual conversation about my true name. The second was at an Advanced Camp
in the spring of 2008 after I saw the movie, August Rush. The message in both
of those encounters was too deep and too personal to write about, yet, but the message
I heard was similar – there is more here than you know.
And then I heard again when I
published my first book, June 2009. It was a defining moment to hold it in my
hand, to see the official bar code printed on the back, to see it for sale
online, to understand that I can do this, and to know that I can do it again.
It felt like the first moment of my next phase.
Not all my defining moments were
happy. In 2007 I lost a city-wide election after serving in city government for
twelve years. It was a hard message, that it was time for me to move on, time
to move boldly into the next phase of my life, time to put past successes
behind me and press forward. It was easy to write, but hard to do.
As I continued to run, nearing the
gym and hot shower, the familiar soreness in my left knee reminded me of a
couple more defining moments. My first marathon finish in 1983 at the Golden
Yucca Marathon in
and then my 6th marathon finish in 1998 at the Paper Chase Marathon
in
They were separated by many years and thousands of training miles, yet they
were similar moments, similar gut checks. Both races were too slow, but in each
case I was proud of myself that I could suffer and survive, that I could finish
without walking off the course.
Do you
have any stories you’d like to share? Any defining moments from your life? Mark
Batterson wrote, “It is the favor of God that gives me a sense of destiny. I
know that God can intervene at any moment and turn it into a defining moment.”
(Wild Goose Chase)
Tell me
yours …
“I run in the path of Your
commands, for You have set my heart free.” Psalm 119:32
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Copyright 2009 Berry D.
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