I Was Made to Learn
By Christy Martin
Associate Dean of Student Success
At this point in my life, I can honestly say that I love learning. I am fascinated by the way that humans develop and grow. The human ability to interact with our surroundings, digest knowledge, and constantly synthesize information is captivating to me. We learn things through conscious effort and we learn when we’re not even trying. We are always putting pieces together. Whether we intend to or not, learning and development are a part of being human. We are lifelong learners.
The phrase, “We are lifelong learners,” is a cliché that I believe now, but I didn’t always. In fact, I was quite the opposite. For most of my life, when I would hear people say things like, "I'm a lifelong learner” or “I love learning," I would internally laugh, thinking, "That's awesome for you, but I'm so not in that camp." I preferred to know everything immediately and then be done with it. On some level, I knew that that wasn’t possible, but I wasn’t interested in the work that learning requires.
As a young person growing up in Southern California, I planned on being a high school math teacher. I spent a lot of my time as a high schooler tutoring other kids with their math homework, and I loved it. It made me feel like I could show someone who didn't think they could do math that they could and it would unlock their confidence in themselves. If I could be a part of changing what one person believed about themselves, then that could be my way of changing the world; one student at a time.
When I graduated high school, I realized that I had grown and changed so much over the past four years. I appreciated my high school experience as a transformative and exciting time, and it sparked an interest in me to work with young people. Valuing the positive changes in my own life, I thought it would be exciting to work with other young people as they went through that kind of transformation in theirs.
While I was interested in teaching math, I also wanted to grow in my faith and know more about what I believed. I decided to attend LIFE Pacific College (now LIFE Pacific University), a Bible college in San Dimas, California, to earn my bachelor’s degree in Biblical Studies. My hope was to study the Bible and learn more about God. While I was there, instead of pursuing a career as a math teacher, I felt God calling me into youth ministry, which I was excited about; it was right in line with my interests. I was intrigued by high school growth and development, and while I never expected to be a youth pastor, there was something inside of me that latched onto the idea. If I wanted to work with high schoolers and integrate that with my faith, being a youth pastor made sense.
During my time at LIFE Pacific, I took a Greek class with a professor named Mr. Duzik, the head of the Greek department. Toward the end of my college career, Mr. Duzik asked me if I was considering earning a master's degree. When I said no, he encouraged me to do so, which I thought was ridiculous. I wasn’t a naturally ambitious person. I had no interest in going back to school and never intended to specialize in anything. That partially stemmed from an assumption that my husband, Levi, would be a youth pastor, and I, prepared with my B.A. to support the ministry, would just get any job I could to help with the bills. I told Mr. Duzik that I wasn’t going to get my master’s and that was the end of that, but his confidence that I should stuck with me. I thought it was really kind that he asked me about it.
When I graduated from college, I was struck again by just how much I had learned and changed during my four years in school; much more than I had changed in high school, which I hadn’t thought possible. I was energized by that realization. Once again, I scratched the surface of my interest in the process of learning, but when I was honest with myself, I didn’t like the process. I saw positive progress in my personal development as a result of school, but it was also hard work that took a lot of emotion and effort. It wasn’t fun to have to learn lessons and grow and change. Being someone who lacked ambition, I preferred not to exert that effort. I was far more interested in the results than the process.
In 2006, Levi and I moved to Portland, Oregon where he got a job as a part-time youth pastor and I was offered a job at Multnomah University in an office manager position, which I accepted. During that season, Levi and I both realized that working in a formal capacity as a youth pastor was not what we wanted to do. It was a disillusioning realization for me. I thought that youth ministry was my calling. I had always known that it was dangerous to put too much emotional investment in my career, so I tried my best to not be too attached to it, but sometimes that is easier said than done.
Meanwhile, I was thriving in my job at Multnomah. I was getting promotions, transitioning to different departments, and I was encouraged to get my master’s in Higher Education, specifically in Student Affairs. I had bosses and coworkers telling me that I was good at student relations and development. While I was working as the Office Manager in the Student Life department, a colleague said jokingly before he transitioned roles, "When I'm president someday, I want you to come work for me." Then I had my boss say before he left, "I want you to go get your master's so that you can work for me again someday." In my role as Assistant Director for Housing, my next boss said, "You really have to go get your master's degree. You're good in this field. If you really don’t want to earn your master’s, you don’t have to, but if you want to advance in this field, you need to go get it." I had yet another mentor tell me that I was not only going to have to earn a master's, but I was going to need to get my doctorate, too. All of these people whom I respected saw potential in me to do more in this field. Just like Mr. Duzik had said, they wanted me to specialize. Go back to school and learn.
I wrestled with it for a long time. Not only was I struggling with the idea of going back to school in the field of education, but I was also struggling with reconciling this new reality with my desire to work with youth. I had never planned on working with college students. Then, one day as I was driving home from work and getting off the I-205 off-ramp, I had an important encounter with the Holy Spirit. He said, "This is your youth ministry. Your work with college and graduate students is all about human growth and development. This is your youth ministry." It was that moment in the car with God that made me realize that college education—the development of these people in this way in this space—was the "youth ministry” that He had called me to all those years ago. The "youths" were more diverse in age than I was expecting, but it was all about human growth and development. That was what I was made for.
“I don't call the trajectory that I have been on a “career path,” I call it an employment journey. It was not intentional on my part, but God knew what He was doing, He humbled me in the process, and He helped me to rely on my community and Him. ”
- Christy Martin
In that season of deciding whether or not to go back to school, I had a conversation with Dr. Craig Williford, Multnomah University’s current president, and he took the time to encourage me to pursue this field on purpose. He affirmed my leadership ability and pushed me to develop my skills in order to better serve God’s kingdom. Essentially, he encouraged me to go and learn something on purpose. He saw that I was good at what I was doing and he knew that education would help me grow. I was grateful for his input, just as I was grateful for all my other mentors’ input. I needed that encouragement in order for me to feel like going back to school was something I needed to do. That feeling of necessity motivated me. Thanks to those around me, and the redefinition from the Lord of what I thought I was supposed to do with my life, I had the encouragement that I needed to feel like going back to school was a necessary undertaking. But I was still reluctant to do it.
I would say that one of my biggest obstacles was myself—I wasn’t excited at the idea of putting a lot of effort into it—but there were also logistical obstacles to contend with. By the time I felt like I knew what I wanted to do and that I wanted to pursue a master's in the field of education, I had been married for ten years, I was having babies, life was full of family, and I was working full-time. It wasn’t going to be simple to take on a difficult and time-consuming responsibility while I was in the middle of an already busy life. I would not have blamed myself if I had decided, “Now's not a good time," because it wasn't. It wasn't a good time. But I felt the Holy Spirit saying that it was the right time. I had to embrace what I knew God was telling me to do at the moment that He was telling me to do it in even when I knew it was a bad moment.
It was a solid nine years after I had earned my undergrad degree, but in 2014 I went back to school to earn my master's degree. In December 2016, I graduated from Portland State University with a Master of Science in Educational Leadership and Policy and began working towards my doctorate in the same field at Oregon State University in 2019. It was a massive undertaking and a shift in the structure of my life. I had to wrestle through the new reality of being a mom, a wife, an employee, and a student. Mental health became a new obstacle for me. In the midst of all of that stress, I started dealing with anxiety, which I had never experienced before. I was buckling under the weight of all of the responsibilities in my life.
During that time, I became aware of my tendency towards self-sufficiency. At that point in my career, I was working in the Student Life office at Multnomah and, one day, a student came into my office to talk to me about a really hard thing they were going through and the very tangible experience they were having with God helping them navigate that process. When the student left my office, I had a very sincere moment of prayer, saying, "God, why don't I experience you like that?" And the very clear answer was, "Because you don't need me like that." I knew immediately that He wasn't saying that I didn’t need His help, He was saying, “You rely so much on your self-sufficiency that you don't and can't tap into me the way that your student is tapping into me." It was a potent learning experience for me about the way that I am wired and the way that I interact with God and those around me. I had to admit that I couldn’t do it on my own. I couldn’t control everything.
It was a humbling experience to recognize that if I relied on only myself, I wasn’t going to be able to accomplish my goals. I realized that the factor that was triggering my anxiety was expectations—the ones that other people had given me and the ones that I had given myself or thought that others expected of me. It was too much. If I didn't allow my community to come around me, the community that God had placed around me to help, and if I didn’t rely on God for direct strength, then I was going to crash. I had to learn that I was stronger when I was depending on the Lord. Slowly, I began to relinquish my sense of control and self-sufficiency. I allowed my community and my husband, in particular, to come around me, confront the expectations of my life, and lighten my load.
When I went back for my doctorate, our two housemates initiated a family meeting with my husband and me to discuss the situation. They got out a whiteboard and wrote "Dr. Christy's Keep Alive Plan" at the top. Together, my housemates, my husband, and I listed all the things that I do in my life. They asked me, "What are the things you have to do? What do you want to do? And what are the things that only you can do?” We answered all of those questions, listed out everything else that needed to be done, and then the three of them divided it all up and said, "This is how you're going to stay alive. We're going to do all these other things." It still brings me to tears thinking about that day and what it meant to me. If I didn't have that support, I would not be able to do all the things that I'm doing now.
That transition took a huge logistical weight off my shoulders, but it also for me was a very emotional weight that was being lifted, and I needed help to lift it. It was through the support of my community that I recovered from my anxiety and learned how to mitigate my emotions and deal with stress better. I learned how to get the sleep that I needed and how to let go of some expectations. Being able to tell myself, "This is not something that's being expected of me right now. I don't have to worry about that. Someone else is going to do it," made all the difference in the world to me. There was a heavy weight that I wasn’t able to lift on my own, and the people around me took it upon themselves to lift it for me.
“God opposes the proud and gives grace to the humble”; a difficult but important lesson to learn. God humbled me in that season. I couldn’t do it all alone. But my life was so much fuller once I stopped trying to do it by myself. That’s the purpose of community. God wants us to rely on other people. It's not a matter of dependency but interdependency. Learning, growth, and development can’t happen in a vacuum. We need each other and we need God.
The thing about education is that it is so much more than just what you learn in the classroom. It impacts everything about who we are. We are all lifelong learners. We are all capable of growth. As we discover what God has planned for our careers and our lives, it is important to hold our expectations with open hands because God undoubtedly shifts the trajectories of our lives in ways we wouldn't expect. At the time that this book is being written, I am working towards my doctorate in Leadership and Higher Education. When I was a high schooler dreaming of being a math teacher, I never expected that I would be here. I didn't set out to learn the things that I learned. I didn't set out to have the career that I have or to pursue the level of education that I am now pursuing, but my willingness to be self-reflective allowed God to speak into those spaces and pull me forward. I don't call the trajectory that I have been on a “career path,” I call it an employment journey. It was not intentional on my part, but God knew what He was doing, He humbled me in the process, and He helped me to rely on my community and Him. He helped me to overcome my lack of motivation and set aside my ideas about where I thought I was going so that He could teach me to be about who He created me to be.
The passion I have for learning and the passion I have for human development, in many ways, has always been inside me. Even as a young person, I knew that those seasons of growth and change were special, but I didn’t see change and growth as lifelong pursuits; I saw them as something that young people went through in high school. My desire to work with that age group was colored by my inability to embrace and enjoy the reality, potential, and excitement of learning as a whole life experience. Being someone who naturally prefers immediate information and results, I had to die to myself in order to give up the idea that I would eventually arrive and be done at some point.
A tip for life that I joke about with a lot of students at Multnomah is to have really low expectations about your life because if you have low expectations, you'll never be disappointed. Of course, that is a joke because, with God, we can and should have great expectations, but I think there is some truth in the statement as well. With God, we have to hold our expectations loosely because God has a way of constantly modifying them. We don't know what to expect. We can't. We can only let God work in that space, be open, hold it with open hands, let Him shape our experiences, and then take away our experiences as lessons. When you do that, you will find that you were made for more than you would expect. You were made for more learning and discovery than you could ever imagine. You were made for more belief and more engagement and more community than you would think possible. You are made for more.