All I have to be
When I was 10, I went to a YMCA camp with a group of girlfriends. It was my first summer camp experience and I loved everything about it, except maybe the salamanders in the showers.
My counselor was named Carla and I thought she was the greatest thing I had ever seen. She was so mature, pretty and grownup. Looking back, she couldn’t have been any older than 17, but to a 10 year old she was IT.
Carla was a Christian and she played a song for us called Mountaintop by a singer I had never heard of named Amy Grant. I fell in love with her music immediately and for years she was pretty much the only Christian artist I listened to (well other than the occasional Petra song, but I’m not sure it stands the test of time as well).
When I got home from camp, my mom bought me an Amy Grant casette tape. I can’t remember the exact name, but it was a live recording. I listened to it so much over the years that it completely warped. One song stood out to me more than any other. It was a song that Amy wrote when she was 16 and to this day when I am struggling with something in my life the words come back to me and envelop me like a familiar friend.
Are the words simple? Yes, but they resonate in my core. I get so busy trying to be or do what I think God wants me to be or do, that I forget to stop and ask Him. Sometimes, I just press on and press on and work so hard to be something or do something that ultimately I’m not cut out for. I’m just me, but He created me and knows better than anyone all of my strengths and weakenesses and has plans for me just the same. All I ever have to be is what He’s made me.
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