In The Remaking.

I grew up taking ballet classes. When I say “grew up,” I really mean I spent roughly 15-20 hours a week from the age of 3 to age 18 practicing turns en pointe, memorizing French vocabulary words, and performing any number of routines and combinations.

I absolutely loved these years of being a ballerina, but in between all those rond de jambes and fouette turns were a few rules I’ll never forget: 1) point your toes. 2) spot your head. And 3) correction isn’t a bad thing.

That last one kind of sticks out like a pair of ripped tights in long line of legs, but I distinctly remember my ballet teacher, Miss Vicki, whispering those words—“correction isn’t a bad thing”—one time while I was practicing my turnout at the barre. You see, as a self-professed serial perfectionist, I hated being corrected, even if it were just in ballet class. Correction meant I was doing something wrong, that my form was off, my turnout lackluster, and (this is my overly-perfectionistic brain going into overdrive here) I wasn’t a good dancer.

Miss Vicki turned that assumption on its toes.

“It doesn’t mean you’re bad when I correct you, Kaylyn.There’re some people I don’t correct, but that doesn’t necessarily mean they’reperfect. I give you corrections because I know you can be better. I know youhave potential, and I’m just helping you to get there.”

Getting corrected by the teacher didn’t make me a bad dancer. Instead it meant that Miss Vicki saw something in me that wasn’t quite there yet but could be. Correction, discipline, and constructive criticism simply meant she was helping me become better.

But as I was in dance, so I tend to be in life: I still chafe at correction. I get quiet at the mention of constructive criticism. I pull back when disciplined. Why? Is it that inherent perfectionism again, whispering that anything too far from flawless isn’t really good enough? Maybe it’s my own inner critic, a voice I hear loud and clear every day echoing those other words of correction, except in a more vindictive tone? Or is it those parts of myself I find hard to look into—the prideful, selfish shades of me that believe I’ve already done enough and that correction and discipline and criticism, however constructive, are just people being ungrateful? Yeah, that’s a hard one to admit, but I’d be lying if I said it weren’t there.  

At the end of the day, it’s most likely a combination of all three—perfectionism, self-critique, and my own prideful heart that get in the way of me truly knowing the love that comes with discipline.  

And love it is: “Blessed is the one whom God corrects; so do not despise the discipline of the Almighty,” the author writes in Job 5:17.

If I’m supposed to feel blessed by discipline, then why do I often feel so un-blessed when it happens? When I receive that text from a friend saying I could have handled that situation with more grace, I don’t feel loved, I feel embarrassed. When my boyfriend asks if we can chat about the words I used, I don’t feel loved, I feel apologetic. And when my boss calls me into his office to chat about the error I made, I don’t feel loved, I feel like a sub-par employee. Yet Job tells us we’re supposed to feel loved when we get corrected? Yeah, that must be a typo.

But it’s not (newsflash, I know). A few weeks ago I was telling a mentor that lately I feel like I’m failing in a number of areas—as a friend, girlfriend, daughter, Christ-follower, writer, employee, Midwesterner who’s supposed to know how to survive this sub-zero temperature thing—you name it. I told her that I felt like I was getting worse, not better in these areas—the more I thought I had life figured out, the less I really did.

She looked down at her cup of coffee for a while and thensaid these words back to me: “That’s the point.”

She shared that, for her, the Christian journey isn’t one of arrival, but instead a constant remaking, a cycle of thinking we have it all figured out only to realize that we’re more trapped in sin than we ever dared to admit.

“The closer you get to Jesus, the more you realize your needfor him,” she said.

It’s a remaking, not an arrival. A process, not automaticperfection. Turns out I had it backward all along.

The closer you are to getting the step down, the more thelittle mistakes in your technique stand out.

The more time you spend with another human being, the moreyou notice how imperfect you both are.

The closer you draw to Jesus, the more you see how destitutewe all are without his grace and unconditional love.

I think I used to believe, however buried this worldview was in my theology, that having a relationship with Jesus means you had made it. Like, I’m 24 years old, I should probably have this figured out by now. But no, a relationship with Jesus isn’t an end, it’s the beginning of a hard, beautiful, long process of learning and loving and growing in that faith as it spills into all other areas of your life. It’s in the remaking that we’re made into people that somewhat resemble the Savior, however imperfectly. But that remaking doesn’t happen overnight; in fact it’s a lifelong process that will hopefully take just that—a lifetime—to truly discover.

It’s in this remaking that I’m learning just how slow and steadythis process of sanctification is. It’s pitfalls and setbacks, little victoriesand moments of deep connection followed by the lowest lows, but ultimately, it’sour life’s journey closer to Jesus. Though we may never experience an arrivalhere on Earth, it’s in the everyday lessons that we learn more and more aboutthis pure and unconditional love we’ve been so undeservingly given.

It’s in the remaking that we’re made.

It’s in the discipline that we find answers.

It’s in gentle correction that we learn to point our toes.

words by Kaylyn Deiter and photo by Arianna Taralson