Last year, For King & Country remade “Place in This World,” which was first released by Michael W. Smith in 1990. As I’m cooking dinner, it will start to play on Alexa’s radio app, and I’m transported to my first year of college, when my heart first resonated with these lyrics:
A life of pages, waiting to be filled
A heart that’s hopeful, a head that’s full of dreams
But this becoming is harder than it seems
Feels like I’m looking for a reason
Roaming through the night to find my place in this world
Not a lot to lean on
I need Your light to help me find my place in this world…
I’m back there with the big hair and my Campus Crusade friends, sorting through boyfriends and theology and majors. I saw Michael W. Smith unplugged at his hometown church, where I got an autographed cassette of that song, its lyrics so timely.
Now in my kitchen, 35 years later, I ask myself, did I find my place in this world? I wish I had a straightforward answer. Instead, I have a rambling one.
I finished college and launched into full-time ministry, so certain that I was going to help change the world. So certain that there was something big and good that would be my contribution to the Great Commission — “a vision that I could call my own,” as the song says — that would please God and make Him glad He’d saved me.
In November, 1995, Toy Story released (the original). Now I’m a year and a half into marriage, trying desperately to be a good wife and homemaker, as well as a good evangelist, mentor and Bible study leader. I remember the movie because it hit my spirit hard. Buzz Lightyear doesn’t realize he’s a toy. He thinks he’s a Space Ranger on which the fate of the universe depends. Through the course of the movie, he learns the truth: he is “just” a toy; he can’t save anything. But he’s valuable because of who he belongs to — Andy, who has inscribed his name on the bottom of Buzz’s boot. Andy is his purpose, not saving the world.
“Yeah, I get it, Lord,” I thought. But I didn’t get it, not really. I had babies. I moved overseas. I came back three years later feeling like a failure. Why? Because I hadn’t changed the world! I hadn’t made a significant enough contribution! The world added a billion people to its population, while I added two more babies to our family. How was I going to make a dent in that while buried in diapers, nap schedules and phonics books?! Overwhelmed, I gave up, hunkered down, and focused all of my attention on our home. I considered it a victory at the time, and it was. Jesus had pried my hands off one faulty source of identity. But I had unwittingly grabbed onto another.
The babies grew up and made choices that broke my heart. And I remembered Buzz, when he was so sure he could fly, launching himself off the top of the stairs only to end up flat on his back in the entryway with his arm broken off.
He couldn’t fly. The fate of the universe really didn’t depend on him after all, and it’s a good thing, because he could never save it.
As the song says, “This becoming is harder than it seems.” Tell me about it. How long does it take to move a truth from the head to the heart? Sometimes 30 years. But I can say a few things now for sure: My “place” is not really in this world at all. I was made for Jesus. He’s saved and sealed me. My name is written on His hands (Isa. 49:16), and His name will be on the forehead of my new body when I take my place with Him in His kingdom (Rev. 22:4) Eternal life is to know my Father and the One He has sent. That’s my value, my purpose, my place. It was never about me, but about Him all along. He will use me, or not, but I don’t need to make a “big contribution,” and there is so much pride and self-importance wrapped in the idea that I should! He’s already pleased, already glad, because of Jesus. If I focus on the relationship, on loving and obeying Him (because Jesus said they go together, see John 14:21), the Spirit will accomplish whatever God’s purposes are for me.
So when I hear that song, I remember the younger version of myself, but I don’t want to be her. I don’t want to return to that angst, that striving, that insecurity about just who I am. I’m His — that’s all that matters. I found my place in Christ, which I’d actually had all along.
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