"Remember, You are the Prize."

 I was all starry eyed with a glittering gleam in my eye when I was visiting my former pastor.  

My then-man friend (can one call a man a boyfriend?) gave me his Mercedes-Benz to drive a few states over to visit some former friends.  That still baffles me, sometimes, that he gave me his luxury car to drive around. He actually had two and gave me the better of the two to go and visit. It was me and my sons on this visit.

A bit of context, by the time I was that ripe-old-age-of-barely-thirty, I had already lived through the darkest days of my life, had already been married-and-divorced, had juggled the disappointment and shame that society heaped upon women (and all before social media made our every move ubiquitous with content), and was in a rebuilding my dreams stage of life. Back then, I was considered old, funny looking at it now, my children - all adults - are still figuring out their lives at the ages when I was responsible for someone else. Anyway, back before camera phones and recordings and when life was slower, my existence seemed an endless serious of responsibilities.

So it was a bit of refreshing when after I had all-but-given-up-on-ever-dating-again, in walks this tall guy in a black turtleneck, RevRun Hat, and jeans. I was working at the university where he was getting his PhD. Instantly, I knew. As he shared later with our children, he said the same thing.

He and I were both people of faith.

He and I had both had our share of disappointments in relationships (although he had never been married).

He and I were both in our thirties.

He and I both wanted something more.

He and I both had dreams of our life.

Something sparked when we met, we found a comfort in each other, a companionship in each other, a connection, and a friendship.

Now, let me just say that by no means are we perfect and by no means have the last thirty years been perfect - who can say that!

We ebbed-and-flowed.

Through graduate school, through wonderings if this was right for either of us (I, after all, had been married before and had sons, and had the hurts that went along with it. He had been through his own series of wonderings and fitting in or not and questionings).

Once it was definitely decided...we began to see a future.

Now that is where this trip with the Mercedes fits in.

I had already answered the call on my life a few times and in this trip, went back to visit my pastor that I spared with theologically but because of denominational thinking, he never considered me for ordained ministry, but always motivated me in my study, go figure. Anyway, I deeply respected him and found myself visiting this little country church in this little suburb to let me see how I was doing after the five years since I had last been there.

He smiled at me and gleamed like a proud father. In a lot of ways, he was spiritually that to me and he helped me heal, helped me see there was a possible for me.

I was going on and on about my now-husband. How he was a university administrator, how he was getting his doctorate, how he loved my sons, how he whatever-whatever-whatever.

He got quiet, sat back at his desk.

He was a big dude - big and dark, not fat, just like a former football player type with broad shoulders.

He leaned back.

He looked at me.

Then said something that has sat in my spirit.

"Daughter, remember, you are the prize."

"Oh, yeah, I know that."

"Daughter, remember, YOU are the prize."

Then he let the silence sit for the deep reminder to penetrate into my soul, past the disappointments of my early twenties, past the hurt, past the parts that needed to be healed, past the journey, past the wonderings, past the what-ifs, past the everything, to get to my soul.

All these years later, at the ripe coming-of-age of 61 and having celebrated twenty-five years married to that dude who walked off the elevator, I am holding those words again, chewing on them.

We live in a society now with phones ever in our faces.

We live with every moment recorded and every action scrutinized.

We live with our lives becoming content for gossip or some marketing scheme.

We live to be consumed in a society that keeps saying that the we that we are is not enough.

I am thinking about my former pastor and what he shared with me.

I am enough.

I am worthy.

I am cherished.

I am worth it all.

I.am.the.prize.

Me.

Just as I am. Unadorned.Unapologetic.Unashamed.

And it is precisely that - that simple message - that this brown skinned Palestinian Jew was reminding us all when he chose the least of these to be the holders and messengers of his story of love and acceptance.

We didn't have to do anything else to measure up.

We didn't have to belong to the right clubs, wear the right monogrammed sweater, vacation at the right beach.

We just had to exist in the assurance of the One who created us who loved us.

I am in a season of becoming, as the poet Danielle Doby wrote in her book, I am Her Tribe. In that seasoning and in this next third of my life, I am reminding myself of my gifting. My being. 

I am not the prize because that same man I married was once a university president, I would be the prize if he was a janitor and we lived in a shack. 

I am the prize because I am beautiful and amazing and talented and adored.

I am the prize because I put my entire heart into my work and have nurtured the lives of now five adults.

I am the prize because I am genuine.

I am the prize because I am giving.

Somedays, we have to take a step back from the noise of the world to go inward, to reclaim what is and has always been. 

I'm not sure what the tomorrows will hold. 

I'm in the middle of becoming, of choosing a next-option-career as I consider moves and what life will look like.

I'm in the middle of a residence-in-ministry in the public square as an introvert who is more comfortable surrounded by books.

I am in the middle of accompanying said husband as he is in the middle of a transition, now as an executive director.

I am in the middle of supporting and surrounding my young adult children as they navigate their next in deeply troubling and uncertain political and social times. 

I am in the middle of a lot of middles and trying to remind myself of myself.

I am a deeply feeling, reflective, and thinking person.

I am an Earth person - that May birthday part of me is very much real. 

I am a person of nuance.

So on this Saturday morning, looking out at the ways that life is coming and going, I had to pause and hold dear the sage proclamations of long ago.

When everything around us wants to tell us what we are not, we have to tell ourselves what we are and today, I am remembering what Pastor Freddy said.

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Sipping a lavender honey latte looking at the cars go by.