When Ideals Collide With Identity

Image by Enrique Meseguer from Pixabay

Idealism is commonly believed to be naivete that most people outgrow as ideals repeatedly collide with reality. This post takes issue with that jaundiced assessment.

In a broad sense idealism is a belief in the power of ideas, especially big ideas that are biblically grounded. Such ideas may temporarily founder, but the concept of shalom assures us “Jesus who died shall be satisfied, and earth and heaven be one.” How to live in this space between the already and the not yet presents some unique challenges, not least the tendency to conflate the implementation of ideals with our identity.

What follows is an approximate transcript of an interview with Susanna Hindman.

[00:03] Mike Gray: Join me today for another tale of transformation. Today I'm talking with Susanna Hindman, who lives in the inner city in west Baltimore with her physician husband Daniel and their three children. They have chosen to live in a disadvantaged community, sharing its problems and sorrows. In this candid conversation, Susanna shares how after ten years, her ideals remain, but her sense of identity is being transformed. Today I'm going to talk to Susanna Hindman. Susanna is a mother of three living in West Baltimore, embedded in a disadvantaged community. She's seeking to represent Jesus there, along with her husband, Daniel, who is a physician in the Johns Hopkins hospital system. I interviewed Daniel two weeks ago in our previous podcast, and we had a great talk about what's wrong with our healthcare system. Welcome to the podcast, Susanna.

[01:08] Susanna Hindman: Thank you, Dr. Gray.

[01:10] Mike Gray: Great to have you. As a Christ follower the words of Luke 9:23 and 24, I'm sure, resonate deeply with you. Let me just read those from the ESV. “And Jesus said to all, if anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me. For whoever would save his life will lose it. But whoever loses his life for my sake will save it.” And I would venture that this is at least a piece, a major piece, of your motivation to forego pursuit of the so called American dream. Take us back to the early years of your marriage and what propelled your decision, along with Daniel, to pursue this kind of life, because I know that's not something that's just happened in the last few years. Can you briefly sketch that out for us?

[02:09] Susanna Hindman: Yeah, certainly. That mindset captured in that verse is something that was modeled for me and taught to me from a very early age. So even before the early years of marriage, this was a formative thing for me, even as a young child. My mother read us Amy Carmichael's biography when I was really little, and was about five years old. And her life as a single woman ministering to the poor and vulnerable women and children, women and children in India really resonated with me. And I latched onto her story and really wanted to live life as she did, even as a five-year-old. And I went so far as to vow that I would never marry, but that obviously didn't stick. But I had that distinct sense that I was called to live life differently. And so, when it came time to choose a college major, I was drawn to medicine because I felt like that would be a way of just loving the poor through the care of the body and the soul. So that was the calling. But the actual expression and working out of that calling looked differently, obviously, than my five-year-old heart or my college brain had envisioned. I'm not overseas. I am married. I'm not practicing medicine, but I married someone who is. And when we were in the midst of Daniel's med school training, we began to explore how we might leverage this educational training for the kingdom. Our first summer in med school, we were invited to spend the summer with a group of doctors and their families living in Memphis, Tennessee. I was still considering healthcare education of some form at that point, so we actually both shadowed providers in this inner-city healthcare clinic. The uniqueness of this clinic was not that it was situated in one of the poorest neighborhoods in Memphis, but that the healthcare providers that staff the clinic also lived in the same neighborhood as their patients. We actually spent the whole summer working with and learning from them. In this context of living where you work, no one had a big fancy house or drove the latest model car. The examples these doctors were giving us wasn't one of, like, a promised future professional or financial success, but one of leveraging their personal privilege and power for the sake of those who had been denied those things. And that really captured our attention. The neighborhood was not safe. It was not clean. It was not a desirable place to live. But we saw incredibly beautiful relationships being built and God's peace and hope and healing being shared by both a long-term resident neighbor and the transplanted doctors and their families. So, we actually purposed to live intentionally in neighborhoods like that from that moment. And we've been kind of moving through neighborhoods like that throughout Daniel's medical training. And that led us to Baltimore City.

[05:24] Mike Gray: Yes. And the story keeps going, doesn't it? What are some dangers? I think, in talking about your decision to live this way, I know you try and be careful in communicating, because you might be read in ways that are not your intention and not helpful to other people. So, what are some dangers in talking about this that we're going to do this morning?

[05:46] Susanna Hindman: Yeah, I wanted to clarify here what you mean by dangers, because I know in people's minds, as soon as they hear we live in an inner-city context, their mind immediately goes to danger, to physical threat of safety, or the mental emotional burden that comes with living in a context like this. But you're talking about mindset distortions or inadvertent . . .

[06:14] Mike Gray: Okay, yes. I'm not talking about your own danger or the danger to your family, which you've taken into account in making your decision, but for other people listening, I think there are a whole bunch of things that might happen in their minds that are not what you're trying to communicate at all.

[06:33] Susanna Hindman: Yeah, and that is something I encountered a lot when I was blogging, a lot. In the first five to six years of living in Baltimore and talking about our story, there was a lot of inadvertent messaging. So, in that case, we're talking more about the pitfalls.

[06:52] Mike Gray: That's a good way to put it.

[06:53] Susanna Hindman: In the case of choosing to, quote unquote, shed privilege, there have been several stages of deconstruction, for lack of a better word, that I've had to go through, basically taking my ideas and ideals of what it would like to live like the doctors in Memphis did, and realizing it didn't all fit together for my family in Baltimore. I can't discuss every single one of those on this podcast, but the one that has really shaped and driven most of my decisions and actions throughout my life, but particularly in the first five to seven years of living here, is the belief that hard equals holy. If I wanted to do great things for God, if I was going to truly lay down my life, take up my cross and follow Jesus hardcore, then it had to be the hardest possible path available to me. For some reason, this is just the idea that I took away from all of those biographies and lessons growing up. So, this meant living in the hardest neighborhood, only going to churches that were under resourced or embedded in the community we're called to, sending our daughter to Baltimore's public schools, working with our neighbors to improve the educational system. Like all of these things are good and worthy pursuits, they're part of our calling. But the danger for me and my communicating about it was that the more and more passionate I grew about these things, I made them into mandates or requirements or non-negotiables to Christian living. I eventually equated living this way with God's law. I decided they were the best ways to live well because they were the hardest. And if it wasn't hard, I wasn't doing it right. So, I guess those stories of like, Amy Carmichael and missionaries like her and even our own experience in Memphis signaled to me that God wanted me to be without comfort and comfortable things in order to truly be on mission. And in communicating about those things, I believe people absorbed that message as well, that they needed to also live this way and they needed to also shed all of this privilege in order to do the right thing. Like, not only did this become kind of interwoven in my sense of what was good became interwoven in my sense of who I was. It really became my identity.

[09:29] Mike Gray: So, when we talk about this, these are the things God's laid on your heart and you're not attempting to say, this is the way everybody who takes these verses seriously should live.

[09:41] Susanna Hindman: Yeah.

[09:42] Mike Gray: Although everybody ought to seriously examine the choices that they are making.

[09:48] Susanna Hindman: Yeah, definitely. And that's still a challenge I try to offer up to people, not to necessarily get them to move to the inner city and live exactly like we're living, but to consider why do they make some of the choices they make as far as where they live, where they send the kids to school, how they interact with their neighbors, those kinds of things, but not necessarily assuming it's going to look the same for everybody.

[10:16] Mike Gray: Let's talk about idealism for a little bit, because you've mentioned that already this morning, and you're an idealist. I know you well enough to know that, but so am I. So, idealism doesn't necessarily mean somebody is young and they don't have a lot of life experience. I'm definitely well into my seventies and still an idealist. I would be interested in how you define idealism and maybe list some of your ideals for us.

[10:50] Susanna Hindman: Yeah, that is such a good question to define that. Yeah, I am an idealist, and I guess by that I mean that I have inspiring ideas of how the world works best and expectations for how my actions achieve those ends. So, I'm idealistic about pretty much everything. I think there's an ideal way to organize my time in order to be the most efficient person. Spoiler alert, this does not work. With three kids, there's no way to do that. But I continue to have that idea. Like, if I could just get the right planner. In the context of what we're talking about, one of my biggest ideals is that there is a way to live hyper locally. Like with regards to your church, your home, your school, your shopping, your community, all overlapping in one space, and the beauty that can come from that as you forge relationships naturally and organically as all those circles overlap and intertwine. And for the first four years of living in Baltimore, I actually had that. And it was really awesome. It was beautiful, but it didn't last. And that's kind of when the unraveling of my ideals began. So that's, I'd say, the biggest ideal that I've had to reckon with. It's that hyper local focus.

[12:14] Mike Gray: Yeah. And when you say you're an idealist about everything, I think maybe some people would insert there something that you're not saying which is perfectionist, that whatever your ideals are, you can be a perfectionist about them, or you can be realistic about what's achievable, at least in the moment. So, perfectionism is bound to be thwarted and is not a healthy way to live at all. And my wife and I have both worked to overcome perfectionism in our lives, which, particularly for her, was threatening to her that she didn't live up to her own expectations on a regular basis. And there's some of this flagellation going on, but I'm hearing idealism as being empowered by a vision of big ideas that are biblical at their root, and that would be transformative not just for you, but for your neighborhood, and maybe a bigger sphere than that if they were implemented properly. So, you could be perfectionistic about that, or you can be somewhat realistic about it while maintaining your ideals and working for incremental progress toward their implementation on a practical level. So, I don't think you have to be naive perfectionist to be idealist. How do you view that?

[13:47] Susanna Hindman: I thought about this a lot, and that the things I desire for my neighbors, for my neighborhood, the good that I feel like we are working towards, it, can feel a little bit naive or foolhardy to say, like, that we could accomplish some of these things that we're hoping to, especially with connections with neighbors, to connect with them, to give them just the hope and love of Christ and see their lives transformed, and then a community transformed. And if we were to approach that with that perfectionistic idealism, then that would fall apart really quickly. And it has. At different points. I've actually come to think of cynicism as the opposite of idealism, because it seems to be this mindset that's meant to protect against the pain of disappointment or disillusionment when an ideal collapses. But it tends to also masquerade as maturity or bravado, acting like maybe idealism's big sister, like, you can't fool me because I already know that ambition is hopeless, or I've been there, done that. Let's be realistic about this. And while some like tempering, I think, of our ideals is helpful, I think this extreme dismisses the hope in others, because maybe that hope has been lost in the cynic. I tend to swing between those two extremes a lot. Just because perfectionism can get in the way of things that seemingly the immature or inexperienced, the younger sibling of idealism is, I think, so much more than naivety or inexperience. I think it's this relentless hope that all things will be made new and that I'll get to be part of making things new. It's having eyes to see the kingdom of heaven on earth in the midst of all the broken and hurting and disappointing moments, knowing that it is going to come. It may not come the way I expected it. It's coming.

[16:01] Mike Gray: My dad was an aerospace engineer and a missionary for half of his life after his aerospace career, when he decided that's what God wanted him to do. And he often cited somebody who said that you should attempt something big enough that it's bound to fail unless God is in it. And I think maybe if we judiciously apply that ideals are biblically driven and therefore the motive force, the power to realize that vision is not going to come from us. But we certainly need to have the mind of Christ about those kinds of things. Those are things that he wants as well, and he's the only one that has the power to make them happen.

[16:52] Susanna Hindman: Yeah, for sure.

[16:53] Mike Gray: So, you mentioned it a little bit. But what's the downside of being an idealist? Slipping into perfectionism is one of those.

[17:01] Susanna Hindman: Yeah, yeah, that's really burnout because of that perfectionism. But the flip side of that is you do open yourself up to disappointment a lot because your ideals are driving you towards Shalom. They're driving you towards wholeness. And there isn't going to be perfect wholeness in this life because stuff is messy and unpredictable, and so am I. So, in a sense, you do kind of set yourself up for disappointment, but more so when you do it with this perfectionist mindset that believes that you will accomplish everything you set out to accomplish and that it will look a certain way.

[17:44] Mike Gray: So how do you think ideals relate to the concept of identity, which is something that you've mentioned already and that we'll talk about some more, too. Are those distinct? Does one lead to the other? How do you see that?

[18:00] Susanna Hindman: Yeah, I mean, that's the other big downside of idealism, I think, is because it does become so much part of who you are. Since ideals are what motivate our actions and habits, they shape us as much as we shape them. So, it's kind of hard to separate the ideal from a sense of self. Our pursuits often become our identities, what we're known for. And my sense of being this hyper locally focused inner-city citizen was my main pursuit, one I built an entire social media platform on for several years. That was who I was and who I am, I think, in a lot of ways still. But God was slowly starting to dismantle my identity. When we decided to leave our church in the inner city and start attending a church in the county and driving outside of the city limits every Sunday and then even beginning to homeschool, my daughter threw me into what I started calling like an identity with flesh, because I struggled to know who I was apart from the identifiers of inner-city church member and public school mom. It kind of left me feeling devastated, like I had failed and I was betraying my neighbors. And I lost my sense of self because I built it so much around those things. So, my circles of church, school, and community no longer overlapped, not even a little. And I was stuck with these very fractured pieces of who I was. And so, I no longer had this sense of, identity.

[19:43] Mike Gray: So, you've been on this journey in West Baltimore for how long now?

[19:48] Susanna Hindman: Ten years.

[19:49] Mike Gray: Ten years? Wow.

[19:51] Susanna Hindman: Yeah.

[19:54] Mike Gray: So, some of the changes that you just identified that appear to go contrary to your ideals, that was, at least for a time, your identity there. What motivated those changes?

[20:11] Susanna Hindman: Well, initially, it was unavoidable. It was kind of staring me in the face. My identity was fractured. I was no longer the public-school mom. I was no longer the inner city church member. And so, I had to kind of stare at those pieces and figure out, what do I do with this? Who does God really say that I am? And the Sunday school answer to that question, I know. Jesus is our only identity, that our life is hidden in Christ, and in him we find purpose and meaning. Anything in addition to that, as our identity as children of God, created in his image, is extraneous and liable to distort our true sense of self. Right. But more to the heart of what we're talking about, I think I had gotten to this point where I thought that I had achieved this sense of self and that I was somewhat of a static human being. Like, this was me, and this is who I was always going to be. But we don't achieve a sense of self identity and live into that expectation for the rest of our lives. We grow, we change, and so does the world around us. And that change kind of happened to me. Without my permission. Everything kind of collapsed, and I had to really take stock and look at what am I really basing my identity on? It seems like I've been basing it on something that's shifting or something that was meant to be developing or in development, rather than on this stable, secure place of who Christ says that I am. So, it kind of really disoriented me and forced me to take stock of who God says that I am.

[22:21] Mike Gray: This might be a good place to point out. This season we're talking about encountering disorienting dilemmas that lead us to learning that maybe is painful for a little while. It's definitely upsetting, and that's what I hear. Although we're talking about life choices here that have spiritual roots, I think the principle is part of progressive sanctification in all areas that we think we have it figured out, and then we collide with reality in a way that makes us have to reevaluate the way we were approaching something, the assumptions we were making about it, et cetera. So maybe we can take a piece of this and just talk about the public-school mom piece. As your children have gotten older, it's become more challenging to sustain your original vision of what authentic life in a disadvantaged community would look like, the public-school piece. So maybe you can help us to understand what the collision looked like and what you had to wrestle with in making a different decision.

[23:40] Susanna Hindman: Yeah, I think describing it as a collision is probably really accurate because it did feel kind of like a car wreck. There were casualties and it was painful. I was so excited about being part of our public school system because I really felt like that was a key piece in partnering with our neighbors. Part of living in context like this is that you purposely put yourself in the same space as the people that you are seeking to minister to so that their problems become your problems and so that you work together to find solutions and give each other resources back and forth. And so, I was excited to be part of that and leverage whatever resources God gave us into these public school settings for the sake of all the kids in our area. And so, after doing a year of that with our oldest, I was gung ho and ready for another year. But we had to step back and kind of look at some of the effects on our family, on our daughter and what our goals and values were as a family, not just as a family living in West Baltimore. And so, we made the hard choice to begin homeschooling her and eventually send her to a private school in the county. And that just tore me apart because I no longer had that sense of connection to my neighbors or to my ideals. And I was, in my mind, becoming the person I was trying to avoid, like I was becoming this privileged mom that got to send her kid to the nice, fancy school and my neighbors didn't get to. So that's what kind of felt like a betrayal and where motherhood, in my sense of how do I love my littlest neighbor in my home well while also loving the neighbors outside? Well, I often think of something I heard on a podcast one time. It's actually shared by Michelle Radford. She's an artist at Bob Jones. And she said that the same God that called her to be an artist called her to be a mother, and he's called her to do the same thing through both love God and love her neighbor as herself. And that really stuck with me because it's like, wait, they're not competing callings. They're both coming from the same father for the same end, for the same purpose. And that's given me a lot of freedom over the years to recognize that my calling to love my kids, while it seems to be at odds with my mission, is not. They're both working towards loving God and loving my neighbor in different ways. And so that's given me freedom to meet my kid’s needs, the spiritual, physical, mental needs of my children, while also not insulating them from the actual hard that happens in our neighborhood. Like, we get to invite them into the ministry of what we do here, while at the same time partnering with our neighbors in different ways. It looks different than I had imagined. So, my expectation of what my inner city mission would look like kind of competed for a while with my sense of being a good parent. And for a while it seemed like the pathway to my ideals was blocked, like there was a roadblock there. But when in reality, it was more just like my ideals were taking a turn or my pathway to achieving my ideals was taking a turn and I was just being rerouted and given different tools to love my neighbors and love my kids well, while still also moving towards the same ideal.

[27:55] Mike Gray: I think in the background here, there are a couple of opposite and unhelpful poles about this educating and nurturing children who are responsibility that's been given to us. And one of them is that when I'm embedded in a mission in the inner city or it's also experienced by foreign missionaries and my parents and one of my children actually, and her five kids are missionaries in Thailand. So, we've witnessed this over several generations, but it can be the kind of thing that “we've been called here. We have a mission to accomplish, and my kids will survive somehow because God's called us here and it'll work out somehow.” But I think that's a pole and not a thoughtful analysis of the duties, privileges, challenges that me and my kids have. What's the opposite pole?

[29:04] Susanna Hindman: The opposite pole to that that I spent a lot of time trying to push against is that my kids are my everything and they get the best of everything, and I need to insulate them from all discomfort or provide them with the best of the best every time, all the time. And that's kind of like the American dream that we were talking about, that I live in the right neighborhood, so my kids go to the right schools, so my kids get into the right college, so my kids get the right job. So, all these things being about my kids, whereas what you're talking about and what I've had to really wrestle with myself about is like, well, God's called us to this and therefore my kids will be fine. God will take care of my kids and it's okay that they're being denied all of these things or even put in risky or exhausting kind of contexts. So you can think of them as two extreme poles to avoid, and there are good reasons to avoid spending a lot of time at either end of those poles, but you can also, I think, think of them as rotating poles, maybe that you migrate between in different seasons depending on the needs of your children, ministry and situations like that, because there will be seasons in which your kids just need a lot from you. Like they're just in a really formative stage and they're going to need more support and that's going to look different for different kids and different families and in different contexts. But sometimes you do pour a lot more into your littlest neighbors that live in your home than you do into your ministry. And then other times your kids are in a stable place, and they're grounded and you're able to say, hey, we're going to give up some of our comforts and pour more into our ministry or into the spaces around us and invite them into. We've tried really hard to pose this as more of an invitation to our children to be part of mission rather than them being automatic default missionaries. But like, hey, this is something you guys can be part of. So, one of the things we do in our neighborhood that doesn't seem like a really big thing but has been a great way of connecting is we garden on vacant lots, grow flowers, and so I'm just inviting kids into be part of this. Let's grow these things together and be connected to place by actually connecting to the physical earth of this place and to the people in it by sharing what we harvest and having them get a sense of generosity and selflessness. But that's more of an invitation for them to be part of it. And something that is seasonal. I think just this kind of thing of do we focus on the ministry or do we focus on the kids? Is maybe a false dichotomy. How do we live into our callings? Well, in different seasons. And that just kind of requires constant reevaluation.

[32:37] Mike Gray: Let's come back to the idea of identity here. Of course, that's our perception of who we are. And our perception may not be entirely on the money. In fact, it might be way off. Speaking personally, there was a long period of time when my identity was that I was not the kind of person that would be teaching a group of people, standing up in front of people, trying to persuade them of something. I was very happy for somebody else to do that, and I felt like that was not me. But that wasn't true. That was a warped sense, probably a self-protective sense that that involved risk, and I didn't want to take risk. The dark truth is, I intended to be a pathologist who just sends reports to people. For the most part, “we got the pathology report.” Did you ever see the pathologist? Probably not. And I would have been quite content with that. I felt like that was my identity. And, of course, God knew differently, and I'm happy that I followed, even when it didn't seem to make sense to me. Sounds like you're working to reevaluate your own identity. Probably not as drastic as what I just described for myself. But what's the process look like, and why do you think something so drastic is necessary? I know it felt drastic for me entering the teaching profession.

[34:11] Susanna Hindman: I am smiling so big right now because I'm just so glad that you did become a teacher and that I got to be in your classes. That's a really good calling that you stepped into. I appreciate that. And also, just the wildness of that feeling. I've also experienced that and just becoming a teacher in the last few years, not something I ever envisioned, but it has been exactly as you described. But in this context, what we're talking about with my identity as this inner-city mom, it felt like that unraveling because it had become so integral to who I was and so connected also to my sense of spiritual self, not just my sense of vocational self, but this is how I related to God. So, there was a lot of layers to that. But identity and reevaluating it, I think, is probably always drastic. It's just not easily swapped out like an outdated outfit. It's pretty integral to our personhood. So that's why it can feel like it's fraying or falling apart or like it's a train wreck and you're trying to figure out what pieces still work. I would admit that I'm still somewhat in that phase of figuring out what pieces still work. So I'm not through this reevaluation process, but I am more at peace with the mess of it than I was four years ago. I'm okay with that. It's not all figured out. It is in process. But this particular process of reevaluating identity, I think, is so vital to our growth because without taking the time to acknowledge the dissonance between our expectations and reality or work to find out the reasons behind that dissonance, we get stuck in this loop of confirmation bias. Just doesn't take us anywhere. And I needed to take apart my identity because those extra layers, the ones that were kind of taken on, on top of the righteous robes of Jesus, they were starting to suffocate my spirit because I couldn't live up to all of them, and they were starting to hold me hostage to shame and guilt. And so, I think it was really necessary that I offer that up to Jesus and ask him to help me peel back some of those things and get back more to the root of what my identity truly is.

[37:02] Mike Gray: You know, this distortion of our sense of identity versus the reality. You said it's probably painful for everybody at points. So, for believers, I think the idea that God is orchestrating these collisions, these painful episodes with good intent, puts us in a different place than people who have collisions still orchestrated by God, because I think he's sovereign over everybody and everything. But we can talk about an athlete who has an injury that ends up terminating their career, for instance. And so, what do you do now? Because your identity was—you were this person who had this role in this particular sport, and now you can't even do it anymore. Or people who have a serious health crisis, an accident or even a heart attack, something, a stroke that changes even their ability to interact with other people. Being fired from a job that you thought you would hold for the rest of your life; the list could go on. Those are all disorienting dilemmas that I think people want to avoid, obviously. And yet, in the middle of those collisions, they are in a position to rethink who they are, what they were made to do, particularly for believers, I'm talking now, but we were all made to do something and have opportunities and challenges that are designed for unsaved people, to lead them to an acknowledgement that they need God and for the rest of us to live as though we do need God. If we go back to the verses we started with in Luke, “Jesus said to all,” if could put the emphasis on anyone. “If anyone would come after me, then he needs to deny himself.” That's clearly a universal for Christians. Self-denial doesn't sound very popular these days, in particular, where it's all about me, me and self-actualization and what makes me happy, including walking away from relationships where I've made a commitment, but it's no longer working for me. So, I'm counseled that that's not a productive relationship, maybe even a toxic relationship. Not saying that there aren't such things, but we give ourselves a pass. But this verse clearly is a universal for Christians, that they've got to deny themselves. And that sounds like something we do purposefully, right? That it's not being forced on us. But if we want to follow Jesus, then we need to deny ourselves and take up our cross daily and follow him, and then we're told what the alternative is. If that's not the way we want to go. For whoever would save his life, his identity, we could say his sense of what makes life work, is going to lose it. But whoever loses his life for my sake, Jesus says, will save it. So, I think we're used to some of the implications of the verses, although they deserve a lot more thought than most of us give them. We need to die to self means on some level, to die to our sense of our ideals, not the ideals themselves, but what we thought those ideals would mean for us personally in implementing them and pursuing them. What's the place of ideals in your life now? I know you haven't given up on them and you shouldn't, but ideals and identity are not quite the same thing. So, in closing, what would you say is the place of ideals in your life now?

[41:19] Susanna Hindman: Yeah, I mean, I haven't given up on those ideals, and like I said, I'm still in process of figuring out exactly what the pursuit of those ideals looks like in the day to day. Obviously, I still live in West Baltimore. I'm very intent and committed to this place and the people in it. I feel very strongly that presence and place matters, but I no longer feel desperate to hold on to even that. I'm at peace living here and I'm okay if God moves us away. Before, I felt like that would be the end of me, to lose my residence in the inner city. But I'm more settled now, knowing that this part of my identity is fluid. It's born out of the same sure and unchanging identity of being a daughter of God. So, this is truly knowing that I can do all things through Christ. That's what that verse means. Like, I can be this or I can be that, because I am in that, my identity is in Christ. Therefore, I could be a West Baltimore resident, or I could live in the county and worship and glorify God. I've obviously not mastered this, but I am grateful to be in the place of being held and known by the father in this. And I would affirm that ideals are really good and needed things. Like to anyone listening, I wouldn't discourage anyone from having them. I wouldn't say toss them aside—they're worthless or naive or unattainable. They are the light in life, in the world, like in you. That's what you're sharing. You're moving towards these good and noble things, often with ideals, but hold on to them, loosely maybe, and offer them up as worship to God who called you to do all things for his glory. We often pray a liturgy for daybreak as a family. And within that prayer, as we consider the day ahead and all that we have planned for it, we pray this. We say,

“Oh, children of God, casting your cares upon his strong shoulders. Now surrender your own agendas for this day and instead be led by the workings of his Spirit. May our words, our choices and our actions today be offered as true expressions of worship. Now you who are loved of God, step forward into this new day appointed by him that you might journey through its hours in the peace and the grace and the love of your Lord. Lead us this day, Lord Christ, that we might walk its path in the light of the hope of our coming redemption.”

 I think with that perspective of moving towards the light of the hope of our coming redemption, our ideals find their end and fulfillment in Jesus, and he carries us along the way through all the shifting, changing mess of it all.

[44:30] Mike Gray: That's a good word for all of us. Thank you, Susanna. Thank you for sharing with us, and thank you for your commitment to representing Jesus there in Baltimore.

[44:42] Susanna Hindman: Thank you so much for having me. It was really great talking to you.

[44:47] Mike Gray: Likewise. Join me in two weeks as I talk with Dr. Scott Whitmore, a researcher in retinal diseases at the University of Iowa, about vocation as a calling. I think our discussion will help as you grapple with who you are and the work you were uniquely created to do. See you then.