When I arrived for my walk in the park the day I took this picture, I don’t think that I was counted.

There is a response that I have to share with the census taker at the park:
I want to be counted.

While I laughed that day as I took the picture, I realized that this is a feeling I have carried with me probably my whole life.

I am being a bit vulnerable here, but as a kid I wanted to be counted as a the best athlete, as being just as important as any other kid, as the smartest person (not the best student), and as someone who could be counted on to help at whatever we were all doing. I was also searching for what I wanted to be doing for the rest of my life, for who I wanted to spend the rest of my life with, and for how I could be counted.

See, I was good at everything. Every sport, every learning activity, and everything kids could try. Not the best at any of them, though I tried. Even my best friend, his best friend was someone else, not me. How would I be counted?

As an adult, my perspective changed to help me understand how to be counted. First was my decision to count myself. Yet with each decision, I quicky understood there was much that I needed to learn. Then a funny thing happened. As I was still learning, I found out people were counting me as someone they could look to in the area. To be an engineer, I had to learn engineering. To be a worship leader, I had to learn to worship. To be a teacher, I had to learn to teach. To be a writer, I still have to learn to write.

” I wanted to be counted, so I had to first count myself. But to count myself, I decided there were things that I needed to learn. Funny thing about learning: people recognize when someone has learned. Suddenly, they were counting me before I was ready to count myself.”

People don’t accept your work until they understand that you learned the work. People don’t follow your worship until they hear that you know how to worship. Students don’t listen to your teaching until they feel you know how to teach. People don’t desire to read your writing until they see that you learned to write.

So, after completing my walk around the park, I walk by the census-taking guy again and coughed, you know, to be counted. Just kidding. He had already left. Count this one as a Happy Friday. Remember to subscribe on the Perspectives page.