Watching the Creator Create

A year ago I attended a Focus training seminar here in Boise which I have blogged about a couple of times. Recently, I was privileged to be given the opportunity to participate in a Focus seminar as a Training Assistant (TA) where I helped as others went through the same process that I had. It was both a rewarding and profoundly moving experience. Although I can't provide details due to confidentiality and non-disclosure agreements, I very much want to put my experience into words inasmuch as I can.

There is a movie I remember that conveys a powerfully relevant picture. The 1990 movie "Awakenings" tells a poignant story of rebirth. Here is a brief synopsis from IMDB:

A new doctor finds himself with a ward full of comatose patients. He is disturbed by them and the fact that they have been comatose for decades with no hope of any cure. When he finds a possible chemical cure he gets permission to try it on one of them. When the first patient awakes, he is now an adult having gone into a coma in his early teens. The film then delights in the new awareness of the patients and then on the reactions of their relatives to the changes in the newly awakened.

I see striking parallels between the awakening in the movie and the one that occurs during the Focus training as people more fully understand who they were created to be and how they can live their lives going forward. It's like they are given a small glimpse of what relationships and community could be like if we lived as our Creator intended us to. As a friend of mine put it during the training, "It's like watching the Creator create."

I was blessed to watch as people's lives were transformed by a process that allowed them to be awakened. There is a statement in the Declaration of Independence that I had not been aware of until recently that describes the state in which we often find ourselves: "...mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed." Although this declaration was made in the context of an oppressive government, it is nonetheless true in the larger context of life in general. As I stand and survey the shackles with which I am encumbered I am galled to observe that most are of my own devising. What joy is found, therefore, when I take my keys and allow myself to be free.

Serving as a TA was undoubtedly a sacrifice but it is truly better to give than receive. In giving I have received so much in return from each and every person in the training. I am excited to see what they do now that they have been awakened!