You Get Out What You Put In

3/29/2023

Written By: Christina Gregory

It was move-out day of my freshman year at ISU. I lived on the top floor of Cromwell Hall, a primarily freshman dormitory featuring no privacy and stagnant body odor thanks to the shared bathrooms and no air conditioning. But its charm started at the elevators. Alarmingly old and impressively slow.

Most days I was racing the elevators to the first floor in an attempt to get to class or work on time. I always won, even from the twelfth floor. It wasn’t much of a competition. But this day, I took the elevator. The end had come too soon, and I welcomed the slow down. Packed in tight with fellow students and parents, and all their belongings they had stored in their shared 10x10 cells.

A mother, grandmother and a fellow student, a girl, was in the elevator with me. I didn’t recognize her. But ISU isn’t small and neither was our dorm, so that wasn’t surprising. But the conversation, I remember well and recall often. “Good riddance to this horrible place.” said the mother, unwarrantedly. “I am so glad this is over,” said the grandmother. “Good year, huh?” I said, breaking the awkwardness with the only way I know how…sarcasm.

“This school is a joke! There’s nothing to do and they don’t care about their students at all!” the mother informed me. “Hmm. I think college is like most things in life, you get out what you put in.” I replied. I don’t know if they were as shocked and impressed by my response as I was. I would assume not. Our conversation ended there.

College wasn’t for me. I think I knew it then. I probably even knew it before I started. But I also knew that my success, my enjoyment and involvement, and my future was no one else's responsibility. I might not have a degree to show for it, but dang it I had fun!

I made lifelong friends, because I accepted the invitations and put myself out there. I became confident in my independence as a young adult, because I didn’t (always) run home when things got hard. I figured out how I learn best, because I failed…a lot. And so much more. My time there did not return void, despite the diploma.

In Paul’s 6th chapter in his letter to the church of Galatia he tells them:

“Brothers, if anyone is caught in any transgression, you who are spiritual should restore him in a spirit of gentleness. Keep watch on yourself, lest you too be tempted. Bear one another's burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ. For if anyone thinks he is something, when he is nothing, he deceives himself. But let each one test his own work, and then his reason to boast will be in himself alone and not in his neighbor. For each will have to bear his own load. Let the one who is taught the word share all good things with the one who teaches Do not be deceived: God is not mocked, for whatever one sows, that will he also reap.” Galatians 6:1-7

“You get out what you put in” or “you reap what you sow” has served me well since that day on the elevator. In work, friendships, marriage, ministry. But parenting is where it’s been the most fruitful in this season of life.

The first few years of parenting is a whole lot of sowing, and then they start talking and you reap the gift of hearing their pure hearted prayers, reciting Scriptures they learn in Sunday school, singing along to worship songs. You sow some more and you reap seeing them stick up for someone at the playground, using discernment over what they’re watching, picking up the Bible instead of the remote.

We’ll continue to sow, reap and repeat so long as God allows us to. But I know that the season of sowing will slow as they grow in their own faith and responsibility for their actions.

Paul’s encouragement to hold each other accountable while also being responsible for carrying our own loads, thus reaping what we sow, is not built on a doctrine of karma. It is a principle of how God uses the good in our lives to encourage and spur on others in the faith, whether it’s our children, a co-worker, your spouse or your pastor. And His merciful, just nature is what we reap in return. None of it returns void, friends.