Creator of Good

When I was 18 years old, my cousin just one year older than me took his own life. In the weeks that followed, there was a lot of talk about him among my family members. It seemed that people couldn’t say enough good things about him; “he was always so kind”, “he was always looking out for the underdog”... His ever-changing hairstyle was remembered as a peaceful protest for individualism. We talked of his smile, that time he joined in with Grandma to sing that song that no one else knew. He was sainted in our memories.

Listening to all of this, I started to wonder, what is MY always? I’m not always anything. I’m sometimes happy, sometimes grumpy, sometimes friendly, sometimes not. What are people going to say about me when I’m gone? No one wants to attend the funeral of a sometimes person. “She was nice, on occasion. She did that one good thing that one time, let’s focus on that.” It became a constant in the back of my mind, I was mentally scanning my life for my always.

Once on a camping trip I found a moment alone with my dad and asked him. My dad is the kind of dad every little girl should have. He’s the drop everything like it’s hot when his daughter needs a moment kind of dad. No inquiry was too silly or inconsequential to deserve his full attention. I asked the kind of question that I’m sure any dad would be startled to hear out of the blue. I sidled up and asked with all the heavy seriousness of a concerned 18-year-old, “Dad, what are people going to say about me at my funeral?”

He gave a better answer than I had found in all of my mental scanning.

Without any indication that he thought the question was out of the ordinary he said,

“Chelsie was a creator of good. She was always creating.”

Always.

I liked it. I claimed the title as my own, as if I’d been knighted with it. Chelsie Larsen, Creator of Good.

The word “creator” seemed the best in all the world. A creator makes things that weren’t there before. A creator has vision and passion and imagination. A creator is a leader. They take something that once was only an idea, and they make it real. There, for everyone to see. Unmistakable.

A creator turns questions into answers.

And a creator of good? Oh what the world could do with a creator for good.

Goodness, a swirling, golden idea being birthed in a billion different minds at any given moment - bring it into being and watch what it does. An answer to all of those who question the future of humanity, the state of man.

It is good.

God saw that it was good, in the very beginning. A creator of good, I imagined, found himself next to God. Standing in the same way, feet shoulder width apart, head tilted, eyes squinting.

Hmmm.

Yes.

It is good.

High five.