You are one of a kind

​Last fall, I guest lectured for an adolescent child psychology class at Randolph Macon College where I work part-time. A few weeks after that experience, one of the students who was in attendance that day came to my office and asked if she could do an internship with me in January.

Everything in me knew I didn't have the time to accommodate that, everything in me knew I should do what I'm much better at doing these days - saying no - but somehow the word yes came out.

Yes. I can do that.

My experience with Bailey last month was more than I could have imagined. Mainly because I thought the experience would be about what I'd offer her, not what she'd offer me. I thought the experience would be about me preparing her for her future, not her reminding me how much is still left of mine.

Bailey hung out in meetings with me. Traveled across the state to visit a couple of sites. She read books I was reading. Sat in trainings I suggested. And through it all, she kept asking questions.

Questions that made me think. Questions that made the work I do feel important in ways it hadn't felt important before. It's one thing to go into the world with a desire to save lives, it's something else - and in some ways maybe a bigger something else - to know you're shaping the life of someone who wants to save lives.

Last Friday was my last day with Bailey. After we met, she handed me a note she'd hand written on a piece of lined notebook paper. She said you can read it whenever you want.

When Bailey left, I read it.

The note told me how much she appreciated her experience. How much it was going to shape her personal and professional life going forward. She said she was grateful for the time we had spent together. And with her closing words she said, 'you are one of a kind.'

I read those words - you are one of a kind - and I got emotional. The words triggered a response in me that couldn't be stopped. I've reflected on that since, and I've decided the emotion wasn't as much about me and my experience with Bailey as it was about this longing we all share to hear and know that we are - in someone's eyes - one of a kind.

The world is so big. Its people so many. And in so many ways we are all running around lost. Feeling indistinguishable from the guy to my left and the girl to my right. What on earth am I doing here if I'm nothing more than disappeared into a crowd?

The words 'you are one of a kind' make you feel - if only for a moment - found. Discovered. Important.

Does this world make anything easier to forget than you are one of a kind?

I think it breaks God's heart when we get to feeling that way. We are wonderfully made, God has told us. Each of us wonderful in our own way.

But some days it's hard to hear God's reminders of that within the noise of the crowd we are lost in. So God leans on us. He leans on us to remind one another, you are one of a kind.

On a piece of notebook paper, in a conversation, in a drawing or in a song - in our own way God counts on us to remind one another you are one of a kind.

There's a void that forms - a hole of sorts - when you get to forgetting that. When you aren't reminded of it. A void ever ready to be filled with emotion - the emotion of hearing, you are one of a kind.

If you know someone who is one of a kind, tell them today. Use those very words. Because chances are they have no idea it is true. And something living deep inside them is longing to know it.

There is something unknowingly living within each of us that longs to hear: you are one of a kind.