I want to be a follower.

It’s been ingrained into our brains since we were little: be a leader, not a follower. From the “don’t be like a lemming or you’ll end up being led over a cliff” talk in elementary school to studying every inspirational person under the sun in our textbooks—we learn from an early age that followers don’t make history, leaders do.But what if I don’t want to be a leader? What if I want to be a follower?The question of whether or not I’m really following Jesus with my life has been on my mind a lot lately. Maybe it’s the five-week series on the topic we’re doing at the church I work at, or just that a lot of circumstances that had come to define my previous 22 years of life have changed in the past 365 days. Whatever the reason, I’ve found myself questioning where I’m at on my walk with Jesus more than I ever have in my time as a Christian.I want to follow Jesus with everything I am, but how do I do that? What does being a follower actually look like for this 23-year-old-pastor’s-assistant-coffee-shop-loving-always-looking-for-the-next-adventure-but-also-wanting-to-take-a-long-nap-in-a-hammock kind of girl? (I apologize for the run-on, but I refuse to believe any one of us can be described in anything but overly adjectival run-ons, but I digress).Lucky for you and me, as is true with a lot of super awesome God things, Jesus shows us how to follow him in the most unexpectedly amazing of ways: by being a leader.What? Wait, back up. You just said you wanted to be a follower, now you’re being called to be a leader? What is this dark magic?Just keep going with me for a second.The way I see it, in order to be a follower of Jesus we’re called to be leaders of the faith, but a leader in a way totally different than the kind the world so frequently puts on a pedestal.The world’s leader garners praise.A leader who follows Jesus? He most often receives no recognition at all.A typical leader is tough, loud, and has a lot of people who listen to her.A leader who follows Jesus on the other hand is called to be humble, meek even, and is quick to listen and slow to speak.A leader according to the world’s standards pulls people in a certain direction and compels them to act.A follower of Jesus who leads is more often than not asked to give up what he wants for what God wants, to act in a way that not a lot of people would deem popular.I long to be the kind of leader who follows Jesus, but it’s hard. It’s hard when I have to say no to things I want (and deem within my comfort zone), and yes to people and activities that I often think are scary.It’s frustrating when the world wants me to go one way and God tells me to go another.It’s tempting to give up on a daily basis because really what tangible progress am I seeing? Is what I’m doing, reading, and believing really making a difference in my own life or more importantly in the lives of others?These are all concerns of mine when it comes to following Jesus, and yet I still want to follow.I want to follow because it’s better.I want to follow because even when I think He’s not there I can sit down at my computer in the middle of the day and these words I didn’t plan on writing appear on the page and I feel His undeniable presence.I want to follow because the thoughts, ideas, and dreams I have in my head are not my own, and they’re so much better than what the world could ever offer me.I want to follow, and in turn fall more in love with Jesus every day because I don’t want to get to the end of my life and realize I’ve lived and loved in pursuit of all the things that will pass away instead of the One that will remain.I want to be a follower, but to follow well I have to lead.So I’m starting a new season in my walk with Jesus, a season of following by leading—a season that looks and feels and moves differently than the seasons before it. Because maybe this season is the one all the others were preparing me for.This time of learning to follow is one of trying new things—reading the Bible with fresh eyes, serving in unexpected places, discussing ideas that are less black and white and more shades of gray—and probably failing more often than I succeed. But it’s in those stumbles that I learn what it means to be a leader by following, by walking in the footsteps of the only leader who has ever perfectly lived up to that title.Today I’m choosing to follow, because it’s only in following that I will someday be able to lead.words by Kaylyn Deiter and photo by Leah Van Otterloo