“Consecrate them in the truth. Your word is truth.” // John 17:17
I closed the classroom door and collapsed in tears at the table beside my desk, hiding my humiliation in hands smeared with dry-erase ink.
In the year between earning my master’s degree in English and returning to school for my PhD, I felt called to teach fourth grade at a Catholic school. I had precisely zero background in elementary education but was willing to overlook that minor detail for the sake of forming disciples, and I trusted the credentialing process I’d undergo on the job to teach me everything I needed to know. What was that thing I’d heard about how God equips the called?
Still, the learning curve was so steep that most days it felt like I was staring up at a jagged cliffside. I worked long days on campus and ended most nights in tears on my couch, and then one afternoon, a tough meeting left me feeling particularly vulnerable to accusations from the enemy: What a joke. You’re such a failure. You can’t do this.
I went home that night and filled a playlist with music that sang of God’s goodness and of His love for me. I called it “TRUTH.”—its capital letters and period a declaration of war, a battle cry, a reminder of who and Whose I was.
Over time, as I added to it and sang along in my apartment, my car, and my classroom before school started each day—and as it slowly became the soundtrack to a host of other bad days—I started to learn what it means to consecrate myself in God’s truth. The refrains of its songs became those of my own heart as I let Him tell me Who He is, and who I am as His beloved.
Sister, we are not the lies the evil one whispers to us when we’re down and out. We are the Lord’s, Who loves and delights in us. We belong to Him.
That is the truth.
Wrap yourself up in that knowledge today; consecrate yourself in it.
Dr. Sarah Zentner is a bibliophile and “hygge” enthusiast who delights in steaming mugs of tea, freshly baked pastries, the Little Way, and all things true, good, and beautiful. She holds a Ph.D. in English from the Catholic University of America and lives with her toy poodle, JoJo, in Washington, D.C., where she teaches literature at an all-girls Catholic secondary school.
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