By Kris Freeman, Revolution Church
It was Christmas break of 1993, and I sat down on the ottoman at a family member's home. My dad and step-mother talked with family, my sister looked at the Christmas tree in the other room and my brother was giggling and wrestling in the floor.
And with those happy thoughts was a world crashing inside of my own heart. It wasn't long before the question came, and without thought I blurted out an answer and regretted it from the very second. My extended family asked how school was going, and here I was one semester into my first year.
I was an elite high school student. I was on a scholarship for "scholars" awarded to superior academic kids. I was in four honors classes and had 18 hours of credits and working a 50-hour a week job. Yet before my father could get his words out his mouth to brag on my achievements, I silenced the room with a knife through hot butter.
"I failed. I lost my scholarship. I just got my grades. I failed. It's over."
My dad's face turned to utter shock. The whole room went cold, dead silent. I cried, got up, left and then he followed me and I got the chewing of a lifetime in the back room that I will never forget.
At 18 years old, I listened to the wrong advice and abandoned my dream of being a journalist and declared my major as business administration. I chased my future as a CEO, because I thought that's what someone wanted me to be. I was the first person in my family to go to college and have the potential of graduating and becoming rich. All the signs were there. And with honors American history, honors English literature, business economics, statistics (not the sports kind, mind you but more like trigonometry on steroids), accounting and golf, I waltzed out of my first four months of college with a cumulative GPA of 1.6. I failed two classes. I made a D in another. I surrendered my scholarship.
I was one semester away from academic probation and I took out my first credit card to pay for my own tuition to stay in school so that my parents wouldn't find out. It took me 10 years of my young adult life to pay off that card. I had no financial aid, because collectively my divorced parents made too much money to apply for grants.
But you don't understand, with my scholarship, EVERY SINGLE THING was paid for. I had money for tuition, books, food, gas and even some to spend on a sweatshirt. And it was G-O-N-E-See ya.
I completed that freshman year with a 1.9 GPA. I had to retake five classes before I graduated a two-year degree in three years with a ridiculously low GPA by every academic standard. I switched my major to journalism and communications, where I had a 4.0. But ghosts of academic pasts don't go away, and since accounting, stats and economics weren't required courses in the second major, I left some Ds sitting on the table.
You know why I failed? Not because I am not intelligent. It may sound arrogant, but I don't mean it that way. I should NEVER make a failing grade or below average grade in a class. I am well-brained enough to pass with flying colors. That's why until Christmas of my senior year in high school, I never made below a B. In anything. And then, it happened. I dumped my dreams to pursue what someone else wanted for me and then I blew it. I blew it. Not them, me.
And the chasing of the ceiling began. It was a bar that no one else could see that has haunted me for the rest of my life.
Now, I met my wife there. I learned how to be a broadcaster. I coached some amazing baseball teams and I worked some incredible sporting events. I enjoyed my time in communications. It does not mean that I don't wish some things to be done again.
You see, I won the award for music in my high school. I had letters from Duke University, Western Kentucky, Middle Tennessee State and even dreamed of attending Vanderbilt. I took the ACT and made a 25, but I didn't even try. I had to go to the bathroom the last two hours of the test and just marked answers to get it done so I could, well....go. And with academic and music offers all around me, a small school dropped a scholarship offer in my lap. The minimum? A 3.8 GPA and a 25 ACT. I took it. I gave up music, I ditched my dream of broadcasting and journalism, and I walked into a small school so arrogantly believing that in two years, I would be the top student on campus. I'm telling you, I believed that.
And so, I loaded my schedule, didn't take breaks at work, and I quit trying. Why did I fail? Well, for one, I hated economics, accounting and statistics. I loved golf. Thank God for golf. It was my only A. I made a C in English Lit and I'm a writer! I attended class about 70 percent of the time. I spent more time at Taco Bell than the academic building. I partied late with friends and never told my parents where I was. I mistreated young ladies and ended every relationship because I was foolish and didn't take their affection serious. And looking back to that mid-semester in senior year of high school, I figured it out. That's when they locked in our grades and I was awarded the scholarship. You know what I did the final semester of high school? I goofed off. I made two Cs. I irritated my teachers. I worked my butt off at a fast food restaurant and played a lot of golf.
So if you've read this far, you're probably wondering why I wrote this now.
That's because tonight, I busted the bar.
I completed a pastoral ministries degree in 2001. It was a three year school, but no accreditation with normal institutions. So with a two-year degree in 1996, an unaccredited ministry diploma and unfinished business, I enrolled at Western Kentucky University in 2007. Taking two classes at a time, I was scheduled to graduate in 2010 but we moved home to plant a church and Noah was diagnosed with a hip disease and placed in a wheelchair. I quit school again, and this time I honestly believed my time had passed.
Last year, I was offered a chance to step away from my church and take a position in full-time athletics. As a result, there was a possibility I would be able to be paid for my work full-time, and then also have my academic work paid for by a stipend. I sat down with an advisor and realized how close I was to completing my Bachelor of Arts degree. Within four years, with the right precision and dedication, I could complete my Bachelors, Masters and Doctorate.
I declined the offer to go to work and remained with my church after prayer, believing it was the right decision. However, I was intrigued by the educational opportunities, so I pursued them and paid for the school out of my own pocket. People often ask why I work so many hours announcing, and this is part of the reason. My church salary does not afford me enough money to pay for my education, vacation or my taxes effectively, and raise a family. So I chose with the majority of my debt eliminated, to pay my own way.
I am five classes from finished with my Bachelors Degree. Because of schedule, I will not officially be done until late, 2018. I have to wait to take my final class next fall.
My GPA entering Trevecca Nazarene University was carried over from my two-year degree, and my class work at WKU. The cumulative GPA had always hovered under 3.0.
I currently have a 4.0 at Trevecca and plan to keep it that way. I had a 3.8 at WKU, with my only B coming in a very difficult honors Hebrew Old Testament class taught by an agnostic professor.
For the first time in my academic life post high school, tonight my GPA reached 3.019.
That was the bar. The "average" number that haunted me finally shattered tonight at the age of 42, 24 years to the month that I lost that scholarship.
Why was 3.0 the bar? Because 3.0 was the number I was required to maintain to have my school paid for. It has been like a nightmarish ghost floating in my mind for 24 years. A beacon of failure, incompletion and turmoil.
My lack of a degree is embarrassing. There are pastors with doctorates and academic profiles that would make Jesus look like a peasant who secretly make fun of pastors like me, who work their tails off to learn the Bible and don't have a Ph.D. at the end of my name. I would LOVE to be teaching, but I walk through the halls of our high school every day and know there are 24-year-olds fresh out of college coaching and teaching at WHHS and I can't dial it back and go where they are now.
I stare at the certificates and diplomas on my wall and realize there's an empty space. You see, I don't need a degree to be a servant, or a counselor of friends, or a hero to the broken. I don't need paper to validate my spiritual credentials, but I realize the immense pressure and power and respect it brings to obtain it. I know to ever teach, I need it. I have to complete. You couldn't stop me right now with a bulldozer if you tried because I am determined.
But the expectation I placed on myself to shatter that bar was nothing more than a figment of some false imaginary god I had lorded over my own failures.
And if you're still reading, God bless you, because you have one, too.
It could be a relationship you ended, a job you lost, a promise you broke or a situation you blew. And you're chasing this bar that no one else can see and determined that when you reach it, everything else will change.
I have news for you. I logged in tonight and received the A that put me over the bar, and no cameras flashed. No confetti popped. My family is asleep and I am sitting in front of a computer screen with Family Feud and Sportscenter competing for the tv screen in the background.
The only one who noticed the bar was busted was me.
And I'm the one who set it in the first place. So what could God do with your life if you erased these imaginary expectations and decided that no one could stop your dreams of the potential you have that God has placed within you? What if you learned to forgive (and figured out that YOURSELF is the first target)? What if you quit making excuses, quit putting yourself down and quit believing that you are validated by some paper tiger you framed in an four-dollar plastic 8x10 idol.
What if, for once, you went after it?
Don't let the bar be your standard, instead let your dream be bigger than the bar can hold.
John Maxwell says every person has a lid. Unlock it. Bash it. Hammer it. Throw away the key. Own it, live it, make it, dream it, serve it, achieve it.
And if anybody gets in your way, give them a little Will Rogers with a smile.
"You might be on the right track, but you're gonna get run over if you just sit there."
By gosh, ladies and gentlemen, start your engines. And Satan, with all due respect, get the heck out of our way.
That's an A-plus paper right there, so frame this sucker cause when you make it, I'll celebrate with you.
I love you, and these are my thoughts.
Pastor K
