I took a year and a half of welding in high school so I’m what you might call a bit of a metallurgist. In metal working there is a process called tempering, wherein metal is heated to just below its critical point for a period of time and then allowed to cool naturally in open air. It’s a process meant to refine the metal and increase its toughness.
I feel like my time in Orlando has been a tempering process. In a lot of ways I’ve felt myself heated just below that critical point; weakened, weary, and ready to give up. While I can, and have, lamented this greatly; I think I’m finally beginning to see the intent behind the process.
Iron and Steel
Before steel can be tempered, it must be created. Unlike many of the metals in common use, steel doesn’t just exist on its own. You cannot get steel without iron and iron cannot become steel of its own accord. Iron, which is naturally occurring, comes with a high carbon content. It is strong, but it lacks the strength of its potential. Iron is more brittle, more susceptible to changing temperatures, prone to rust easily, and more easily shaped. Steel is stronger, more naturally magnetic, resistant to rust, and more difficult to bend and reform.
Iron is not without its value, but it isn’t the fundamental building block that is required for many of our buildings and appliances. Iron is not without value, but it lacks the ability to meet the needs of its makers.
In order for iron to become steel it has to lose some of itself. When high amounts of oxygen are blown through molten iron it loses some of its carbon content, refining its deficiencies and making chemical space for other compounds to be added. Iron has to be heated beyond its limits in order to lose its form so that it may gain something outside of itself and become something stronger.
Iron and Squeal
Each of us have critical points, times in our life where the transition from one stage to another occurs. There are times when we are broken, picked apart, separated, and either added or subtracted to. Rarely can we choose when the temperature rises or what elements are added; like the iron in this metaphor we are forced into the states predetermined by our maker. We don’t always see the purpose, but we feel the intensity as what we have been becomes what we were. It is difficult to endure transformation when you don’t know what it’s for. It is painful to be melted apart when you don’t see the schematics that God has drawn for your life.
Like molten metal, it is easy for us to writhe and hiss as the makers do their work. It is natural for us to resist the elements being added and to detest the works planned without us. It is also easy for us to fall under the assumption that once the steel making process is over that we are complete. The breaking apart can easily become the focus for us when in reality it may only be our middle or even our beginning.
Steel Beams
I moved to Florida somewhere within this state between iron and steel. The transition to full adulthood and the responsibilities that come with it is big. Moving under the impression that I was stepping into a bold new career, I felt like a lot of the deficiencies had already been purged. While this may have been true to an extent, I moved down here with the asinine assumption that the refining process was complete. Here I am two years later and I realize not only how much of myself has been removed since, but how much I’ve spent lamenting the excesses that did nothing but hinder the grand design. The point of the refining process isn’t the excess carbon, it’s what remains once it has gone.
I’ve shed many a tear and wasted many a thought reflecting over lost friendships, missed opportunities, and foolish decisions. These things hinder us when they are a part of us and they are painful to unbind from ourselves. The point of life isn’t the friendships you no longer have, the jobs you almost got, or the decisions you’d do differently; the point is that we have survived them and will be different the next time those challenges rear their heads. It’s easy to miss that, and I know that I certainly have; there is plenty of record on this blog of those laments.
Jet Fuel
I moved down here and lived with the presumption that, being refined into steel, I was immune to the pressures and footfalls that have always been my greatest internal enemies. These jet fuels were something that I have had to wrestle with almost as long as I’ve been a Floridian, and while they may not be able to melt steel beams they most certainly weaken them. A weakened steel beam isn’t the metal it’s supposed to be and it will easily crumble underneath the immense pressures pushing down on it. Even once iron has become steel, the refining process isn’t done.
Not only have I spent too much time lamenting what was lost, but I’ve spent a lot of time deluding myself with the assumption that those loses have made me impenetrable to others of like kind. I never had the impression that I was Superman, but I do see moments where I chose to move forward despite the obvious damage I was bearing. It takes time to heal, and it takes a much smarter hand than mine to guide the process. The strength that was required for one thing might not be enough to handle the next.
Tempering
Much like the transformation process from iron to steel, tempering requires the metal to be heated nearly to its critical point. The metal is heated just below that point for a period of time and kept there until the process is complete, being left to air cool thereafter. Unlike steel making, tempering doesn’t necessarily require the removal of one thing or the addition of another. What it does require is the metal to be held to its breaking point and to work its way back down.
The last month I’ve felt the heat turned up. If I haven’t reached my critical point then I don’t know how far off it can possibly be. I’ve gone through a breakup, I got denied a job that I recently interviewed for, and an IRS mistake nearly had me on the hook for a hefty some over a tax return I filed three years ago. The heat is on just at a time when I felt things were starting to cool off. At the same time, there has been a peace about me in this period that is incongruent with how I’ve felt in similar situations before. Things are rough, and my mental health has definitely been through the ringer, but I find myself more optimistic than I’m used to being. There is a peace about these revelations and transformations that I know does not belong to me, but that can only be one of the elements added in by the one overseeing the process.
Thank the Maker
A day or two after the breakup became official, I found myself in my early morning prayer. I was lamenting what had happened, and in particular how unfair it felt that it had ended in the way that it did. I prayed asking for calm and understanding and instead I felt chastised. It was as if God was looking down at everything I had just complained to Him about and said “Well now you know how I feel.” I felt guilty because I knew that the point was true and that often times in pursuit of the thing I was praying for, I neglected to remember the person who helped deliver it. I felt abandoned in the same way that I have abandoned. Much like Jonah, I found myself sitting underneath the only shade in the desert and moaning “God, this sucks.”
Prayer time hasn’t made the breakup any less painful but it has given me the perspective I needed to begin the process of understanding and moving forward. It was a hammer stroke that gave shape to something that until that point had felt pretty formless and hopeless. It was a needed reminder that even when things aren’t a part of the plan, they can still be a part of the process. Tempering has a purpose and even if I don’t know what that purpose is, I believe in a God who knows it better than I will even when that purpose is standing right there in front of me.
Perspective
Now that a concrete period of my life is over, I can truly begin to look back on it. I know who I was when I moved to Florida, I know who I was when my relationship began, and I know who I am now. Those three Collin’s are all very different people. They have different hopes, different hurts, different agendas, and different makeups. They’re all still me, but they are a me that has been heated, treated, and intentionally guided towards becoming a better creation. We are a creation shaped by everyone who lays their hands on our life, good or bad. We can bemoan the bad, but even the bad is a part of the process. The heat is no fun, the critical point is difficult to endure, and the hammer that swings down can cause us to recoil; but all of that difficulty works in tandem with the good to help shape who we are and who we are meant to be.
The Collin that writes this blog post has learned to trust the hammer and the hand that holds it in a way that he didn’t before. I’m only 26 and I am certain that life still holds its share of tempering ahead, but I know now to trust that process in ways that I did not before. I trust the Lord to lead and guide with a level of freedom that I have not offered Him before. There are parts of me that I have long held with clenched fists and hid behind my back when God came asking. Those are the parts that He needed to be expurgated and only in their removal can my hand find itself fit to the work He has called me too.
I do not know what the great works of my life are to be. I don’t know when I’ll have children or who their mother will be. I don’t know where I live in a year or who I’ll be whenever my time in Florida comes to an end. What I do know is that for once in my life I am comfortable not knowing, and as impatient as I may be, I am tempered enough now to do the waiting. More importantly, I am tempered enough now to trust the Maker and the designs He has laid, not the shoddy ones I have been craving for so long.
Collin Willis 