Intelligence in the Eyes of The Maker

As I sit with my thought, and take a closer look at the unique qualities of each and every person that I call my friends and family, I always delight in their unique and amazing qualities. Each person in my life has a different and unique talent or ability that makes them so special and meaningful in my life. Each one has an intelligence that sets them apart from each other, and yet each one, on some occasion or another, has believed themselves to be unintelligent.

What is intelligence really though? The dictionary says its the ability to easily comprehend. It says that an intelligent person has the capacity for thought and reason especially in a high degree. The capacity for thought and reason it says. Does it say for what though? Does it say that someone is intelligent if they have the capacity for thought and reason about a specific thing or subject, and that only then can they be considered intelligent? No. It doesn't. Why, then, does our society make us to believe that some are intelligent and others aren't, depending on the things they can think and reason about? Is one person more intelligent than the other if they can ramble off spelling words in a spelling bee? Is one person more intelligent than the other if they can multiply and divide faster than you can say your name? Who knows?

Why then does the world have an obsession with trying to classify our intelligence, forcing us into little boxes that ultimately are supposed to classify our future and our worth? Do you think when God designed us he said I am going to make this person way more intelligent because I wanted him to be way more successful at life. No. He created everyone uniquely to edify the body of christ. (Romans 12)

With out the fingers the hand suffers and cannot do the work its meant to do. Without feet the legs cannot balance. With out the body the head can’t move and without the head the body is lost. So, which part is more important? Is it the head, the foot, or the finger? We can ask this same question with ourselves. Are we more important if our degree that we hold is in finance or in art? Which person is more intelligent. Is it the one that has the capacity to produce organization out of a chaotic mess of numbers? Or, is it the person that can create beauty out of something that we never even knew had the capacity to be beautiful. Is it the person that can recite history and facts easier than you can tie your shoes or is it the person that can organize a home in a split second of a thought? Is it the person who thinks of new and innovative ideas to change the world, or is it the person who helps them to organize their thoughts and make them into a realistic view?

Can you pick? Can you really classify these people into little boxes and rate them on a scale? Then why do we try? The outcome can only be production of people who strive to find worth in a classification that cannot even be defined. The evils of our world have created a mess of intertwined systems to inherently make people feel unworthy and not good enough, when in reality we were created by God with a purpose far greater than what our systems can define. We are all intelligent. We were all made special and unique by God himself to edify his body. We were not a mistake. (Psalm 139 15-16)

I realized this just recently when I thought of how many times I or my friends and family have felt unintelligent by the classifications of this world. The world says to me on occasion, “you are a hairstylist so you must be too unintelligent for college or a real Job, when in reality that is far more false than one can even begin to know. Hairstylists are uniquely gifted with an ability misunderstood by many. We have been entrusted with the intelligence to make people feel on the outside how they know or hope they feel on the inside. We have the unique gift of intelligence in the field of design, shaping millions of tiny strands of hair into structures others marvel at and structures that in turn make people feel beautiful. I can't tell you the amount of times I have heard lawyers, doctors and politicians say, “wow, what you do is amazing and I would never be able to create that”, and yet I also could not tell you how many time I have seen the pretentious stairs of judgement when my profession is brought down to the level of dirt. How then, can we feel justified in classifying people by their Jobs status, degrees or intelligence?

Our society insists through these classifications that some people are dumb, some people’s professions are not worthy, and the things they are good at is some how not good enough.

I almost ager at times when I realize what destruction these systems of colleges and rankings in degrees cause to the human heart and sole. Not to say that college is wrong, obtaining a degree is pointless and having a good job doesn't matter, but to say that these things should not classify our worth as individuals. I love learning, college is fantastic and being able to work in a field your passionate about through consistent education and training is amazing, but to make it a goal to prove your worth will be a means with no end.

How sad that the world has succumb to making each other feel unworthy of our own unique gifts, by means of flimsy pieces of paper with black ink that says degree and an underlying message that whispers failure to all that do not possess it. How sad that we wander thru life trying to receive our worth from a piece of paper and prove our worth by our title, but how joyful that there is another way.

God says we don't have too. He says we are fearfully and wonderfully made (Psalm 139:15-16). He says “for you are my treasured possession ( Exodus 19:5). We were created in his image (Genesis 1:27), and so we are loved for who we are by our creator. We are wonderfully made and in all our glory we are loved and unique despite what our world tells us and despite what the evils of this life try so hard to make us believe. In His eyes, our intelligence is beyond what even we can comprehend, and only through relationship with Him can we truly know the full extent of the amazing potential we possess.

The Romance of God

Lost in a sea of sadness on Valentines, I found myself broken hearted. I found myself upset, overreact-full, and melancholy beyond what I had even imagined I would be. Not only was I feeling the bitter sting of insignificance, but the strong resentment of past love and a past life. I found myself at the core of my being believing how insignificant the devil of this world so desperately wants me to feel.

It began with a small attack on my personal space as I arrived at work only to find my locker ajar, my things carelessly moved about as if to say you are nothing, your space here doesn't matter and your insignificance hear is uncanny. Insignificance is my struggle and realizing it right away, that my overreaction came from a vulnerable spot in my heart, I put it away to revisit it later when my work day was done.

Guests came in and out. Stylists busily did their jobs of taking good care of the patrons in the salon, leading them around and seating them in their designated spot, pouring champagne, spoiling them for valentines, providing an act of service to make them feel beautiful and taken care of. As I graciously blow dried my guests hair into polished perfection to make her feel beautiful, I realized not only was I serving her but I was giving her my quality time. Genuinely excited for her wedding plans coming along nicely and exotic weekend trips I realized how loved and taken care of each women in that salon must have felt when leaving, haven been listened to and made to feel beautiful. It was at that very moment though, that I also realized how unloved I was feeling and how insignificant I truly felt.

Lunch time came before I knew it, and the planning for the evening began. The offer to be taken out for Valentines was on the table and for some reason I still felt dismissed. I had for some reason no desire to go out to eat on Valentines day. My suggestion to cook was shot down in a tizzy of no one in the mood for dinner at home on Valentines, and out of some dark place in my heart, anxieties and emotions began to rise. I began to remember a time when my heart of hearts was destroyed. It was stolen once for years and held captive never giving it a chance to beet or even feel the warmth of love. I saw my past, my youth, stolen by those who continuously reminded me that what I thought was insignificant, that what I wanted didn't matter and that love was not something I would ever be allowed to experience.

My flash back was to a time when I was never loved in a way I so desperately needed to be loved, to a time when I was so charmingly brainwashed into thinking no one would ever love me as much as I was already loved. These exact words, which so apparently meant from the circumstances in which I was treated, that no one would ever love me at all.

Devastated and heartbroken by the thoughts of the day, I began to drive home. Memories flashed like a movie through my head; memories of dinners being offered in a gesture of love but in essence forced into paying for them by manipulation. Forced into overwhelming debt to restaurants and clubs by a partner in life never allowing me to contribute my innate sense of financial wisdom, a partner that convinced me that the only way that I was ever going to be loved was if I used borrowed money to pay for non existent quality time. A partner who would take me to dinner on my line of credit proceeding to ignore me as he talked business on the phone. I ate silently for years in cold, loud and dark restaurants in which I had no opinion in picking and no choice in going. I ate anxiously for years in restaurants not of my choice and exorbitantly out of our combined parameters of wealth, wanting desperately to allow this man in my life to lead me and love me. Yet, as the meal was done, the only place I had been lead too was down a silent weary path of misery, debt and destruction.

I realized, that a genuine offer of love by my friends, who I hold with high esteem and love, to take me to dinner on this very Valentines day was destroyed because a place in my past had so intrusively surfaced out of the depths of my heart where I didn't even know it still existed. My past was haunting my present and blocking me from receiving genuine love that I knew God so desperately wanted me to see.

Not only did I feel the sadness from the lack of love I once experience but feelings of anger were evoked in my heart. Anger that I not only never had someone love me in a way I needed to be loved but that I somehow now was being blocked from accepting love that was being given to me.

As I drove in my furry, tears streaming from my soIe, I cried out to God and asked Him why. I asked him,” Why cant I just feel loved? Why cant I allow myself to forget the past and will I ever trust again? I asked in desperation, “God, am I too scarred, too ruined or too insignificant to feel loved?”

In that moment, driving over the bridge that stretches over the bay separating the island I work on from the beach that I reside in, He spoke to me. He said, “ I made something for you, look.” And I looked up out of my terry eyes and saw the soft pink sky. I saw the shadows of the palms stretching across the horizon and the snow capped mountains in the distance. My eye caught the glimmer of the slightly fading sun as it glimmered on the water in the bay beneath my vehicle. It was magnificent. Boats stretching as far as my eyes could see on water so blue you could only describe it as heavenly. “Look”, He said again, “I made this for you. I took the time to make something I knew you would love, and then give it to you in a way in which you would see it and enjoy it every day. I made a living portrait for you that changes day to day as you drive back and forth to work.” He said. “I knew how much you love to gaze into the sky and how much you love the water and the palms and the mountains and the sunsets, so I took the time to make this for you. I took the time to work it out so that you would see this divine creation every time you drive to work.

I starred and listened in aw. Is God really talking to me right now. I thought? Is this for real; am I making this up? His voice again clear and calm, “turn off and follow me to the Jetty and watch the sunset I have made for you,” and so I did. Parking on the side of the street, I walked down to the small hill to the beach that rests just a few blocks west of my house. I watched as the glorious sun met the water just past the island of Catalina and just next to the skyline of shadowed buildings and twinkling lights. I watched the sun romance the water with colors beyond describing as if it were painted with the most supernatural of mediums. Its as if the glorious sun gently kissed the calm blue water with such a passion that the suns beaming Joy was naturally absorbed and reflected by the waters soft and gentle waves. As the sky darkened, it was if the sun whispered to the waves, “come and be alone with me in the darkness and the still of the night.” I heard Him again say “this is how I love you, just as you desire to be loved, with a genuine act of service to you and a genuine gift of my time. Let me be the one to love you and you will never know hurt like you felt in this world. Trust in me and I will love you how I know you want and need to be loved, because I designed you. I know every hair on your precious head and I created you with a plan in mind and knew you even in the womb.

Walking back to my car In my flurry of thoughts I pondered this magnificent yet hard to believe vision in my head. Could I truly be loved so wonderfully and unconditionally? I started my car and my heart began to feel light and a tear began to role down my face. I was morning. I was in morning of a life I once lead. I was gently being delivered from a cavern in my heart I had never thought to ever revisit. It had been pulled up and out of my heart like a full screen movie in all of its entirety. It was a movie that to re-watch took courage and to forget took God. As I watched the last seen of Gods love for me ending in such a dramatic loving romance, I knew it was over, and I morned the memory with tears of lament, morning what had been done to my precious heart but also delighting in the true healing I had to look forward to from my one true love, the all mighty creator of earth itself, God, the designer of the universe and maker of my sole.

P.S Thank you for a wonderful dinner.