40 Days of Faith

Day 40: Finishing A Chapter

2010-07-09T19:49:00.001-07:00

As any writer will tell you, reaching the end of a chapter is both totally exciting ("Yay! I finished something! Progress!") and daunting at the same time ("Oh crud...blank page...what next?") I feel a little bit of this each time we end one of our 40 Day seasons together, and never more so than this year. Perhaps this is when I'll finally get over the illusion that I know what's coming next, because really, I never have. In writing, and in life I guess, all we can do is turn the page...and wait. So that's what comes next.

Each year, my emotions are a little different at this point, which makes sense--we'd be robots if we could just soldier on at one level year after year. But it's a bummer when the feeling du jour isn't as filled with hip-hip hooray and jazz hands as one might hope. Because you can't fake jazz hands. (Or at least you shouldn't!)

One of the song lines we've visited in the past here in the 40 Days is from Nichole Nordeman's song, Someday, where she says: I believe in the rest of the story. I believe there's still ink in the pen.

I hear those lines differently now than I did when I first ripped the plastic off her CD a few years ago. Here's what's I realize now: there IS a rest of the story, and ink in the pen, whether we believe it or not. Sometimes its a big relief to not have everything depend on our faith, to trust that things just are. We're not the same people we were 40 Days ago, and if we get to gather here again next year, we'll be different still. We'll know the next chapter ("Yay! I finished something! Progress!") and we'll be wrestling with the "what comes next?" question anew. I don't think that ever changes.

Thank you for spending this time together with me. I was re-reading some of the posts and comments the other night and was so touched by this amazing chance we have to connect, to know each other in our deepest hopes and desires and cheer one another on, even though most of us have never met. It's an honor to be part of that, and to know you guys.

BLESS your next chapter.
Love, Trish

Day 39: How Far We've Come Without Going Anywhere!

2010-07-09T07:23:00.000-07:00

Thirty-nine days...that's quite an accomplishment. They say it only takes thirty days for us to form a new habit (good or bad) so whatever it is you've been doing differently for these thirty-nine days, studies suggest that it matters, in terms of the person you're becoming...and that you've accumulated nine whole bonus days!

(Whenever I read these studies I'm struck with a mixture of delight and terror, as I mentally catalog the mixture of smart & dumb choices that comprised the past month of my life. Anyway...)

This time around, I'm happy to have given my little boat some time in dry dock, even if some days I couldn't even figure out what color paint to use to pretty-up the hull. It's nice here on the shoreline; I don't always have to be out in the depths over my head. A friend of mine recently posted on Facebook about how cute it was to hear her young daughters wake up one morning expressing their excitement over the adventures for their summer day ahead. I'm trying to recapture some of that feeling myself, and a sense that the seasons of our lives are supposed to be different from one another, rather than just one long, all-out slog toward the finish line.

For example, I went out on an adventure with my friend Gwen last night (the same Gwen as Chapter 10 of MAZE), south of the city in some south shore neighborhoods I'd never been to before. We went to my friend Lynne's book reading, and then out to dinner (we tried to go to the restaurant run by the former New Kids On The Block--because honestly, what's more fun and twitter/blog-worthy than that? But the wait was 2.5 hours. So we dined at a little burger bistro by the water instead...not too shabby!) It was the kind of thing I wouldn't have had room in my brain for 39 days ago. It would have felt like too much, driving south of Boston from Cambridge during rush hour (because yes, everything you've heard about Boston traffic is true...) and then finding a bookstore way out on the south shore to buy a book I was planning to buy anyway...it would have seemed like too much to handle, what with everything else banging around in my brain demanding attention. But yesterday? It was perfect. I'm excited to have made enough mental space to make my world a little bigger again. That feels good.

I'm curious: What have your 39 days looked like? What are you pleased with? What did you think would go differently?

And perhaps more importantly: What is your hope for the next 30 (or 39 days)?

Day 38: Happiness Meters

2010-07-08T06:39:00.000-07:00

I just read a New York Magazine article entitled "All Joy and No Fun" about the ongoing question of whether parenting makes you happy. (Why I read these things, given that it doesn't appear I'll ever have the a horse in this particular race, is beyond me...perhaps I'm a glutton for punishment?) The general tenor of the article is that 98% of research shows that having kids lowers happiness in every way imaginable. But then at the end, the author makes an important distinction: Do we define happiness/satisfaction/fulfillment in terms of moment-to-moment assessments, or the big picture? That distinction, according to the author, can change the answer.

This is worth thinking about, no matter where we are in life. My sense is that most of us define things both ways...and that either perspective carries with it the possibility to either buoy us up or sink us like a rock tied around our ankles.

My tendency is to live minute-to-minute, at least in terms of my happiness meter. Which helps me survive disappointment, but leaves me vulnerable to being overwhelmed when the big picture flashes across my screen. One of my best friends, in contrast, gets through the never-ending demands of her particular life by keeping the big picture right at the forefront, finding motivation to get through the endless little demands by having such a clear sense of where her efforts are taking her.

I'd guess that most of us drift back and forth between these two...and that often it feels like we're floating in a sea of question marks. And as I turn this dilemma toward God, I can't help but notice that the less tied in we are to specific relationships--spouses and children in particular--the tougher it can be to see where we're going. Those are some pretty big relational holes to fill, and they play a big part in defining who we become, how we spend our time, and what are goals are. So the question becomes, What do we do in the meantime? How do we stay on track for that sense of happiness/fulfillment/satisfaction that comes from living a meaningful, purposeful life?

There's no one answer to this...but there must be answers. Today, let's ask God for an individualized program for OUR happily ever after, both in the minute to minute and big picture sense.

If you hear something encouraging, share it below!

Day 37: Brave Irene

2010-07-07T06:20:00.000-07:00

We might be onto something with this 3rd grade thing. On a whim, I Googled "3rd grade curriculum" to see if there might be insight into how to spend my summer, and there in the Reading/Creativity Module I found a bevy of recommendations that could come straight from any self help book. As it turns out, in the 3rd grad we learn to:
1. Identify a fantasy
2. Use context clues
3. Answer critical questions
4. Recognize and use strategies

Don't these things seem like areas most of us struggle with as adults? Discerning fantasy from reality, picking up on context that would tell us something if we'd pay attention, being willing to answer (and face the answers) of critical questions? And don't even get me started on the whole strategy thing...to the extent I've used strategy in the past, it's looked more like grim manipulation than thoughtful forward progress. Clearly, I've got some lessons to repeat.

Now, by way of full disclosure: I looked for a picture of a 3rd grade classroom to post here, and seeing that barrage of color and information plastered across every wall/desk/rug made my head spin. So I'm thinking of this as an outside-the-classroom adventure. You know, a field trip.

The good news is that the second module in our curriculum is called "Discovering Courage," which has full indoor/outdoor applicability. It says that we'll learn by reading about BRAVE IRENE, a dauntless girl who goes out in a raging storm to deliver a dress for her ailing mother.

I might be reaching a bit here, but maybe that's what courage--and life lessons--are about: The question of, "Do you have what it takes to do what needs to be done for the people you love.... Even (or maybe especially) when no one else thinks it matters?"

I may have shared this here before, but my BRAVE IRENE moment came one winter night when THAT DOG was a puppy. It was about 2am, and she needed to go out. I carried her down 8 flights of stairs (the elevator was broken) and out into the gusty, snowy wind. She did her thing, and as I bent to scoop it up into a bag, the wind blew the poop down the sidewalk. I had to CHASE it. That was the moment I realized that I have what it takes to put the needs of others ahead of my own desires if I have to. It was a good feeling, and it's stayed with me all these years.

Do you have a BRAVE IRENE moment? Or are you waiting for one? Who knows--it might be part of your summer curriculum :)

Day 36: Welcome to the 3rd Grade

2010-07-06T05:52:00.001-07:00

It's the final week of our 40 Days of Faith, and I feel like I owe you guys an apology. Nothing dire. But if each of our annual June/July faith adventures is a snapshot of where each of us is (are?) in a particular summer season, this year's picture is a rather relaxed (read: uninspiring, sloth-like) one for me, your heretofore intrepid leader. Where in past years, I've found inspiration in music lyrics, book quotes, and going through whole chunks of the Bible together, wrestling with what God means by tough passages and finding comfort in the ones that seem to offer hope... this year has been different.

As I told some friends last night, I feel like I'm operating at about a third grade level of emotional/spiritual perspective: there's not much point in looking too far down the road, because I want summer and all the fun and relaxation that goes with it to last as long as possible. I've had enough of deep thinking/learning/striving for awhile, and I feel like if I spend one more second worrying about my report card, my head might explode. I need some time to chill out. The result of this is that you've gotten third grade blog posts. We've talked about taking our boats out of the water, and worked some imagery about floating vs. sinking. I've thrown up random videos by Simon & Garfunkel (well, actually I posted them. I did not throw them up...) All in all I've kept us floating in some pretty shallow water.

But even there, I've found gems along the way.

For example, we could work the Simon & Garfunkel a bit more if pressed...my friend Dave once pointed out that part of why Paul Simon had a career on his own after S&G was that he didn't wander into his middle age playing nostalgia events, trading on who he used to be. Instead, he took some time and wandered off to Africa, experienced something entirely different, and allowed himself and his music to evolve. Intriguing, right?

In some clumsy way, I guess that's what I'm trying to do, too: experience my life in a different way, and look at my circumstances--both the limitations and the opportunities--through a new lens. I'm looking for a view that's less forced-optimism & relentless drive, more enjoy the small moments and see what it all adds up to.

And I flag this here because I want to say that if this isn't the season you're in...if you're gearing up to really GO AFTER big dreams, then that's awesome, too. Our lives can look different, and we can cheer each other on even as we veer in different directions. And if you're in a season of needing a little more "be" and a little less "do" too...let me know. I'll move over a bit and make room for you on the beach blanket. Grab a novel, put on some sunscreen, and let's see what little enjoyments today brings.

Thanks for reading :)

Day 35: Little Reminders

2010-07-05T06:00:00.000-07:00

What do you think about faith? Yours, others, what you see around you in terms of people trying to make the best of life?

Here in Cambridge, folks don't always like to talk about faith, but there's evidence of it everywhere. As I trek the two block walk between my apartment and the library, I see a smorgasbord of possibilities: my church, women and girls in all manner of Muslim head coverings, and several bumper stickers imploring us to COEXIST. There are rosaries hanging from rearview mirrors, necklaces with charms of crosses/Stars of David/astrological signs...the list goes on and on. I love living in a city like this, where people are so obviously looking for a way to connect with God. Again, we don't talk about it much, but it's revealed in our actions. That's interesting.

I was in Michael's Crafts the other day and bumped into a girl looking at charms along the bead wall. "What do you think of these?" she asked, showing me a set of three Hindu images. "I'm looking for something to put on a key chain," she explained, "something to help me be happy." I showed her my own key chain--a worn piece of canvas with "Maine" written out between two little embroidered moose--and said, "I know what you mean..." We talked about the risk of looking to trinkets to MAKE us happy, how that imbues them with an awful lot of unknown power. But how sometimes things remind us that we're capable of being happy (or focused, or accomplished). I don't know what she chose--I had to go--but it was fun to bump into a fellow searcher along the way, and to take a moment as I walked out to the parking lot to ask Jesus to take extra good care of her. She's on a faith journey. I think most of us are. In my experience, God is the best tour guide around.

How is faith going for you today? This weekend? What reminds you that you can be happy?

Day 33/34: Declaring Independence

2010-07-03T07:33:00.001-07:00

A few years back, when I was working for a bestselling author who traveled internationally giving lectures and workshops, I heard her make an interesting comment on the different temperaments she found visiting different countries. She wasn't valuing any one over the others, but rather expressing her surprise at how ready Americans are to jump ship and try something new, whereas European audiences seemed more likely to embrace some form of "bloom where you're planted." She acknowledged that these were huge generalizations. But it was interesting to be in conversation with her that night over wine and salad, thinking about how we're influenced by the choices of our ancestors. "If you're American," she said, "It means at some point, someone in your family risked everything to try and start over...or was forced against their will into a life they never wanted. It means that somewhere inside, you have a proven capacity to adapt."

I've thought of this at different times over the years. I don't know the full story of how my ancestors made it to New England from Ireland, England, and France. But some of their audacious hope flows through my veins, clearly, as I'm more willing than most to take a leap of faith. (Too willing, perhaps...who knows?) But I do know this: we have evidence all around us that walking/flying/boating/swimming/running away from something that isn't working can be a solid way to press "restart" on life.

Just to be clear: I'm not talking about abandoning a marriage because your husband doesn't read the books you think he should, or running out on a job you find a little dull. There are benefits to imperfect situations, too. What I'm talking about is when you've tried everything to make it work (my time as a lawyer comes to mind--wow, did I try hard to love that job) and it just doesn't. One definition of insanity is doing the same thing again and again, expecting the results to be different.

We're all a little bit insane in this way, I suspect. This weekend, no matter where you live, let's adopt Independence Day as a chance to break out of those patterns. Whether it's a daily thing like eating food without enjoying it, making excuses and not doing the things you love (my recent trip to the beach where I battled back the "I'm too fat to swim" thoughts and dove in comes to mind), or clothes that are "appropriate" but don't express your style...or big things like a dead end relationship or job, let's take a leap/make a change/believe things will be better if we set out for some new territory in our lives. If you're not sure what, or how, ask God. I've found he has surprising things to say--suggestions and encouragements we wouldn't come up with on our own--when we invite him into the conversation.

It's worth a try! Happy Independence Weekend :)

Day 32: A Stand in for the Soul?

2010-07-02T05:24:00.000-07:00

There's an article in this morning's New York Times about the upcoming sale of a hotel on the East End of Long Island. It caught my attention partly because I grew up in a coastal town that was (and is) transformed by tourists each summer, but also because of the article's tag line, which called the hotel, "a place that for many locals has become a stand-in for the soul of this rapidly gentrifying town."

The idea that something could be a stand in for the soul is poignant, and a little scary. I know what the journalist meant to convey--that this hotel represents a way of life that appears to be dying out. But maybe what gives me the shivers is the idea that if the old way dies, the town dies, too. Don't get me wrong: in an architectural sense, this can be true. Looking at my hometown, I doubt a couple like my parents could raise 4 kids on a teacher/lobsterman's salary today. And the giant hotel/restaurant that hosted my senior prom is now a single family home. Things change. But I wonder if maybe we all gravitate towards markers in our personal lives that become "a stand in for our souls," such that if they were lost, we'd feel lost, too?

THAT DOG and I have moved so many times (and had such wildly disparate lifestyles from place to place) that there's not much room for sentimental attachment. But there are other possibilities, things like identity or fashion choices or ways I define who I am. Defending them can feel like I'm fighting to save my soul (like the Jewel song). But maybe I'd do well to open up my imaginations to a broader sense of who I'm created to be?

One of the chapters that didn't survive the edits in my new book includes the story of my seeing a well-known pastor at a conference and thinking snarky thoughts about how he dressed--the Vans, the skinny jeans, the whole "I work at Google" look just seemed like a giant affectation. Then I sensed God saying to me, "Trish, your entire outfit is from Ann Taylor. How is that any different?" Busted. And I'll confess: Were Ann Taylor to disappear, I'd feel like I'd lost a piece of who I am. What's that about?

Are there things in your life that define you? In a good way? Or in a way that would leave you lost if they disappear? Today, let's ask God about them. Maybe there's a bigger version of each of us looking for room to emerge.

Day 31: Feelin' Groovy

2010-07-01T06:07:00.000-07:00

I was surprised how much yesterday's Defiant Enjoyment Project worked! Were you? I had several moments yesterday where I beat back negative, discouraging thoughts by focusing on green trees and happy tunes on the radio...and somehow that gave me extra momentum to jump into a few fun things I'd normally pass by. As I was driving along at one point, I heard this song, which captured the spirit of the day's adventure:

How did it go for you? We haven't done much checking in here, so I thought today might be good day for that. And also for us to do a repeat of sorts. Here's why: I don't want to remember having had an exceptionally un-discouraging day on June 30th, as if it was this once-a-year miracle and I have to drag myself through 364 more days before I can try again. I'm curious to see if this defiant enjoyment thing has any staying power, and if we might string, say, TWO not discouraging days together??? (I know, I'm a big dreamer...)

I've talked to so many people over the past few months about waiting. We don't like to feel that we're in a holding pattern until things align for us to "land": in the right job, a great relationship, a community where we feel like we're part of a team. But sometimes we are, and no matter what books and magazines tell us, there's nothing we can do that will change that...but plenty we can force that will make us crash. We don't want to crash.

Now, to be clear: I'm not suggesting that this "mind over matter/choose to be chipper" attitude is a long term solution and all we need in life. Eventually, we need a place to land. But if we're in a holding pattern, and it's temporary, why not make the best of it?

How did defiant enjoyment go for you? Are you willing to give it another day?

Here's to feelin' groovy :)

Day 30: Defiant Enjoyment

2010-06-30T04:44:00.000-07:00

I don't always know what to pray. Sometimes it feels like I've used up all my words about something (quite a feat for a writer, right?) and all I can do is look up at the ceiling and sigh. On mornings like that, it's tough to feel like I've connected with God--more like I've left a complaining message on his voicemail about how I've called 496 times and he still hasn't gotten back to me.

Lately when that's happened, I've flipped to the Psalms in the middle of the Bible, because they're prayers. Having those words to borrow as a starting place has proven mighty handy for generations of people trying to follow God. As I flip, I'll think, "Okay God, pick a number between 1-150..." This morning, I sensed "118." So I turned there and read this:

In my distress I prayed to the Lord, and the Lord answered me and rescued me.
The Lord is for me, so I will not be afraid. What can mere mortals do to me?
Yes, the Lord is for me; he will help me.
I will look in triumph at those who hate me.
It is better to trust the Lord than to put confidence in people.
It is better to trust the Lord than to put confidence in princes....
This is the day the Lord has made. We will rejoice and be glad in it.

I'm taking these as my marching orders for today:
1. Remember the times God has rescued me in the past, and that he's FOR me.
2. Trust in him, rather than other people or authority figures to make my life work out.
3. Enjoy today.

The third part of this really strikes me. What if enjoying every little bit of every little day has spiritual power? What if, in the spiritual realm, our joy fends off evils like doubt and fear and funk? What if seizing moments to enjoy is our job, spiritually speaking? That, I can focus on.

Want to join me? Let's start a "resistance movement" of people enjoying Wednesday, June 30, 2010. Leave me a comment below if you're in, and share something--big or small--you've enjoyed in a bigger, fuller, more determined way. Vive La Resistance! :)

Day 29: Teamwork makes the dream work

2010-06-28T20:56:00.000-07:00

As I mentioned on my other blog, I had a great podcast interview last week with the fabulous Christy Tennant of the International Arts Movement. It was one of those rare, wonderful times where I was so caught up in our conversation that I almost forgot we were recording. And when we were done, it took everything I had not to say, "But wait--can't we talk longer?" It's fun when we meet someone whose outlook on the world overlaps in some way with ours.

When I think of life in terms of creation--this idea that we're all created with unique talents and gifts (and temperaments and temptations) that we can leverage to make some sort of difference in the world--I realize how important these connections are. I'm loving the new season of the television show Leverage for exactly this reason, because so much of the storyline is based on this idea, as the different team members reunite and realize that together they're better/faster/stronger/smarter than the sum of their parts.

Today, let's think about our "team": both the people already in our lives and the role they each play, and our "dream team" of friends with gifts that might fill in our blanks in cool ways. And let's talk to God about what WE bring to our team. I don't know about you, but I tend to forget.

Who is on your team?

Day 28: The Importance of Taking a Walk

2010-06-28T05:35:00.000-07:00

If you've read my first book, you may remember that I spent a chunk of time at my best friend's house in Connecticut, hiding out from a not-so-nice first husband after I ran away. That was certainly one of the tougher times in my trek toward happily ever after, but as I look at it now (with the benefit of hindsight, knowing that I did not end up as I'd feared, living in Kristen's guest room forever) I see that as a stage in life, it had much to recommend it. Sometimes, we need space to spread out the pieces we have left and see what God can do with them.

Here's the thing about those times, though: they involve a lot of waiting. They're not productive in any demonstrable way, and so when people asked me what I was up to--expecting to hear about resumes sent out or apartments scouted--I was mortified. It just seemed too ridiculous to admit that my day was structured around a long walk, a long bath, a long drive, and pasta & pesto for dinner every night around 6:00pm. So mostly, I avoided people.

I'm re-reading C.S. Lewis' A GRIEF OBSERVED right now (the epigraph from my new memoir is from this collection of chapters mourning his wife and reflecting on his marriage) and am struck by Lewis' practicality in the midst of his pain. "I do all the walking I can," he says, "for I'd be a fool to go to bed not tired." During my time in Connecticut, insomnia was my greatest fear. I was a woman alone in a big house in the woods. If I screamed, no one would hear...in many ways it seemed the perfect set up for a horror film, and never more so than at 2:00am when my imagination would run wild. So I did all the walking I could.

Now, I live in the city. Were I to scream at 2am, plenty of people would hear (and the vile bird across the street would no doubt respond by screeching in a way that would strike terror into any would-be bad guys within a 30 mile radius). But now, if I let it, my brain goes to different sorts of night terrors: about a life wasted, dreams that never come true, becoming one of those people who could have done something with her life but didn't... You know the stuff, right? We all wrestle with it sometimes (I suspect this is why Ambien prescriptions are on the rise). The key is to fend it off.

What's my point in this? Perhaps that in the larger act of waiting--or mourning, or wondering what comes next--we each need a bunch of little strategies to help us cope with the specifics of any given day. I'm not sure what those are right now, in this particular season, but it seems worth asking. Because we're always waiting for something, and often mourning the loss of something else, even while celebrating unexpected blessings. Our life is rarely in a single season...instead the seasons overlap in a way that can make your head spin if it's not firmly attached.

Today, let's ask God for the skills we need to receive His love and the joy He promises us (and doesn't that seem like an audacious promise when we're struggling? Do you ever feel like saying, "Go ahead God, TRY to make me joyful!" ? But then He does, because we've given him permission...) Whether we have a bold day filled with forward progress toward tangible goals, or a day built carefully with shaking hands around a long walk, a long bath, and a long drive, let's ask for God's encouragement in the midst of it.

Tell me: What are your strategies for beating back bad thoughts?

Day 26/27: Finding the right mix

2010-06-26T05:46:00.000-07:00

It's Wimbledon time (yay summer!) and I'm watching this morning, caught in a mix of thoughts about strange fashion choices and the elusive blend of skill, determination, and luck it takes to hone your talent to "play" at the top levels, whatever that looks like in different settings of life.

I think I've blogged about this before, how captivated I am by the ups and downs of the world's top tennis players. Most are still in their 20s, but because they start so young, by the time they retire they've had--the ones who make it, anyway--something that can honestly be called a career. They've each had major setbacks--injuries, weird losses that sapped their confidence for months thereafter, coaching changes and/or personal drama that pulls focus. And yet somewhere inside, they pull something from deep inside to fight their way back into the game, back into the top.

What is that something?

This is worth asking, as we pray for the deepest desires of our heart. I don't think there's a one-size-fits-all answer to this, but maybe part of succeeding in our lives (and by succeeding, I mean really being the person God created us to be, in all the fullness of our unique set of talents and capacities) is paying attention to balance of three factors: How much is MOTIVATION? How much is PERSPIRATION (effort)? And how much is INSPIRATION, that incalculable, unpredictable extra that comes from God that we don't understand or control?

Right now, I'm watching a very fit Serena Williams annihilate her opponent. In years gone by, I've seen a flabby Serena struggle in frustrating games, an injured Serena play like a shell of herself, and a distracted Serena play unpredictably, her head clearly not in the game. Yet somehow after all those ups & downs, she's there today in top shape mentally and physically, doing her job (which is winning tennis tournaments, not just playing tennis). I love the idea that we can bounce back like that, don't you?

This weekend, as we talk to God about our dreams and how we hope to use our talents, let's ask for His help in achieving the best balance for our individual lives. Motivation. Perspiration. Inspiration. Only He knows the mix we'll need, and what that should look like today. So let's ask for the "recipe" for (as Oprah might say) our best life now.

Here's to a great weekend!

Day 25: Advice

2010-06-25T06:14:00.000-07:00

I was reading Job this morning. It's not my favorite book in the Bible...it's tough to reconcile my image of God as a loving father with some of the stuff that goes on in there. But as with other parts of the Bible, I've found the wrestling process valuable, even if it doesn't always lead to pat answers that allow me to say, "Ah yes, Job! Here's what it means..."

What caught my attention today is the role Job's friends play. They mean well, but they give him terrible advice. And his challenge there (among a whole host of considerable challenges) is to sort out the unwise counsel from the friends themselves. The people who love us enough to speak into our lives are both the best thing ever and a huge source of stress. We don't always know until afterward which is which, and in both cases we can end up in a ditch if we handle things unthoughtfully: we can deify friends to shed helpful light into our situations, making them "gods" in our lives; we can walk away from friends who tell us things we don't want to hear (or disagree with) hurling out the proverbial baby with the bathwater.

I spent the better part of yesterday with some friends who are also artistic/creative types. We're all in a season of feeling pulled toward some downtime, wondering what we might come up with if we dare take a little time to re-group. They're braver than I am, so they've already planned a sabbatical. Me? I'm chicken. Throughout our conversation, I kept blurting out lets-keep-going type things like "maybe THIS could happen!" or "what if God is saying XYZ-super-encouraging thing?" And they'd look at me with lots of kindness and say, "Well...maybe God is saying that to you..." (reminding me of a quote I once heard that said, “The best way to succeed in life is to act on the advice we give to others.”)

They were Job. I was Job's friends.

Here's the cool thing, though...(and it's important to have a cool thing to consider here, because we're all Job's blurty friends at one time or another)...this didn't crash out our friendship or negate our consideration of possible projects we might try together someday in the future. My blurts were, I think, contained in the space they were made rather than allowed to take hold of the entire conversation and strangle it. I'm grateful for that. Grace is a nice thing in friendships!

Here's my point in all of this: I think that in the big questions of life--the things we might pray about in a 40 Days of Faith, for example, about our hopes for live and love and happily ever after--we are so on the lookout for signs of hope that every bit of advice is given more weight than necessary. Someone says, "I think you'll meet someone soon" and we replay it over and over in our minds for days, while if someone else saying, "God wants you to be happy right where you are and not ask for more," we're despondent.

Today, let's ask God for help getting off of that roller coaster. Let's pray for wise counsel, both in terms of what we give and what we receive. And let's also ask for help giving the appropriate weight to whatever we hear, and prioritizing people over words.

And if you want to encourage me, fess up: Have you ever blurted out bad advice? Or am I the only one? :)

Day 23/24: After Night...Sun

2010-06-24T03:39:00.000-07:00

Thanks for your patience yesterday. Whatever "pearls of wisdom" might have sounded passable in the midst of the fun hecticness would have no doubt proven entirely embarrassing come morning. So I appreciated not having to redact an entire post :)

The launch party last night was astounding, all for reasons having nothing to do with me. My friends in the band Ryanhood flew into Cambridge to play (their most recent CD was the soundtrack for my writing process of the new book), and their songs inspired me all over again. Here's why: they're all about fighting to do the work you're created to do, and not giving up...and somehow involving God in that process so you don't get crushed under the burden of how things would/should/could be "if only..." I was having Oprah-worthy "a-ha" moments, right there on the stage for everyone to see. But that's so much better than not having them at all!

To end the evening, I asked them to play one of their newer songs. It's not on the CD, and they told the story of how writing it actually celebrated the end of the long, hard process of recording; how it's a song of celebration, reminding them (and us) that it's never night forever. Here's the video--check it out:

Today's plan: Let's take their advice, even if we can't yet see the light. Sing, for your light has come. After night, came sun...

(And yes, I mean that literally. Sign along with Ryanhood, the radio, or grab a friend for a few rounds of "row, row, row your boat..." You'll be surprised how much it helps!)

Hold, please

2010-06-23T06:37:00.001-07:00

Hi all,
Just a quick note to let you know I haven't forgotten you today...I'm in the weeds with book launch interviews and party prep this morning, and am lacking coherent inspiring thoughts. So rather than phoning it in, I thought I'd let you know what's up and that I'll be back with Day 23 thoughts as soon as I have some!!!

Thanks for the grace-

Love,
Trish

Day 22: Wisdom

2010-06-22T02:39:00.001-07:00

I was up at 4:00am this morning, head spinning. I'd love to say it was spinning in some productive way...but nope. Just general awakeness. I came downstairs and did one of those "Bible dip" things Barbara Kingsolver describes in one of her books, opening the Bible at random. I landed in the first chapter of Proverbs, reading an exhortation to "Get Wisdom." It was 4:00am. I wasn't sure the wisdom store was open yet.

We're all on a quest for wisdom in one way or another. Whether it's cookbooks teaching us how to caramelize onions without scalding them, or craft magazines leading us through 114 steps to the perfectly decorated July 4th celebration. I'm regularly astonished by how one local news station here runs 30 second spots about how their "BREAKING EXCLUSIVE STORY" will provide key information so their viewers will never again be duped by medical fraud, fast food caloric overload, or (in the most memorable of these strange segments) moldy cheese.

Confession: it's going to take more than crafts and cheese safety tips to get me through. Wisdom has got to mean more than that--Proverbs backs me up on this, saying it's the most important thing we can get, worth more than gold, silver, or rubies--but for the life of me I can't pin down what it is. What does it look like, and how do you know when you have it? (A Google image search turns up this picture of Clint Eastwood, along with some truly gross pictures of people in the midst of dental surgery...) Perhaps wisdom is inherently elusive, like the pornography famously described by Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart, who essentially gave up, saying "I shall not today attempt further to define [what] I understand to be embraced within that shorthand description; and perhaps I could never succeed in intelligibly doing so. But I know it when I see it." Is there any more hope to be had for us in ascertaining wisdom in some way that feels more certain? I'm not sure. I hope so. I guess I'm looking to the antidote to yesterday's tongue-in-cheek mediation on "The Suchness of Is" (a sentence that still makes me giggle, 48 hours later...)

Where do you see wisdom? Where do you look? Is there anyone in particular who inspires you particularly in this area?

Day 21: The Suchness of Is

2010-06-21T04:58:00.000-07:00

Last night I re-read a journal published by a new-agey philosopher whose work I'd wrestled with back in the days when I approached spirituality like a smorgasbord. I'd been surprised to see his name pop up in the footnotes of the books of a couple of Jesus-ey authors, so I wanted to see if maybe there was something there I'd missed. I found myself back in the haze of frustration and confusion I remembered from reading this guy's stuff before, the struggle to make sense of it. Then I reached a sentence where he talked--at great length and in tremendous detail--about "The Suchness of all that Is." I burst out laughing, and felt set free from my struggle.

Here's what I realized: I'd spent years trying to understand this guy and others like him, feeling like an un-evolved idiot because the harder I tried, the less I understood. There was such a sense of failure: I was an (over) educated woman with more than a decade of dogged spiritual pursuit under my belt--how could this stuff remain so impenetrable? Millions of spiritual seekers lapped up his books like they were sacred texts (I'll admit a certain pride having his name visible on my bookshelf back then, even if the pages felt like so many word jumbles)...and yet I could not for the life of me tell you what his central premise was, what he might be saying about life or how to live it, or why/how people sat for hours in his living room debating alleged dichotomies and fallacies with the passion of lovers.

Last night, it became hilariously clear: I couldn't make sense of it because it doesn't make any sense. The Suchness of all that Is? With random capitalization? It's the ultimate case of the Emperor parading naked through the streets: the people so want him to be properly dressed that they overlook his embarrassing nakedness.

Here's the thing: in the unlikely chance that any of you know who I'm talking about, I don't bring this up to discredit this particular author (I should probably Google "The Suchness of all that Is" and see if his name comes up...) He's made an interesting career for himself over the years, worked really hard and written thousands and thousands of pages (as a writer, I'm in awe of his work ethic) and contributed something to the larger conversation, even if I'm not sure what it is. I'm a HUGE fan of people who take the time and effort to contribute something tangible (rather than random thoughts) to the larger conversation...I've often lamented missing out on the Salons of 17 & 18th century Europe, for exactly this reason. So no slam intended for the author.

But I bring this up because I see "The Suchness of Is" all around us: We're surrounded by expert ideas that don't make sense. They're everywhere, filling the pages of books and magazines, suggesting ridiculous, dangerous, or non-existent paths from where we are to where we want to be. We can't conquer food addiction by focusing obsessively on our food. We don't get over a guy by forcing ourselves to be his best friend and cheer him on as he loves someone else. We don't solve our money issues by speaking incantations over our bills and expecting them to magically multiply. My "a-ha" moment came when I realized: it's not just that this stuff doesn't work for me. It doesn't work for anybody.

All that said, let me bring this around to a happier place: Part of the reason I still read the Bible--even when I'm tired, or a passage is boring, or I don't get it--is because it doesn't leave me in this place. Every single time I've wrestled with the Bible, God has been there with me in some way, helping me understand. Sometimes things click into place (like when a grown up comes along and helps a kid solve a jigsaw puzzle). Other times I get an impression, God saying something to me about how this passage applies to my life right now. And there have been times when I'll wrestle with something, then flip to an entirely different part of the book in frustration, only to find a sentence there that speaks to me about the one before. It's kind of wild. And while I'll admit that I don't always love what God reveals to me, it's always "good" in that larger-than-this-world-I-probably-should-have-capitalized-it sort of way.

(And yes, I tried the page flip with the philosophy journal last night. Went from "The Suchness of Is" to something about the "Eternal Nest of cosmic being in non-dual reality." I checked in with God to see if he had a next step in mind, and sensed him saying, Close the book, you're done here... So I did.)

Is there something you've tried and tried (and tried) to understand or make work? Today, let's pray about that. Maybe God wants to set you free?

Day 19/20: Plotters & Pansters

2010-06-19T08:05:00.000-07:00

Some of us are planners, others not so much...Have you noticed? I'm not sure when I gave up on planning, but I suspect that with a little effort, I could trace it back to the first time my life fell apart. Some of you know the story: I'd worked hard to become a lawyer, only to discover that I hated the job. I'd cultivated an independent-girl-in-the-city persona, but that was a hard front to keep up in the face of increasing evidence that living in the city terrified me and I'd date practically any guy who kept me from having to be alone. I walked away from it all, which might seem like a brave thing to do...but it was really just because I couldn't imagine living the lie I'd created (inadvertently, but it was still a lie) even one more day.

And since then, my life has been a highway billboard for the slogan, "We make plans, God laughs."

But all around me, friends and family members plan out their lives with great success. They set goals, break them into smaller, doable pieces (just like the magazines say you should) and throw parties when they cross whatever finish line they'd been aiming for. It's inspiring.

It makes me wonder if the plotter/panster (I'm borrowing language from the writing world here, where authors will ask each other if they're "plotters" who know ahead of time what arc their book will take, or "pantsters" who fly by the seat of their pants when they write, waiting to see how the story unfolds) dichotomy isn't similar to the personality differences between "satisficers" (who are satisfied when needs are met and aren't all that picky about the details) and "maximizers" (who want to make sure they get the very best option available)? What if we're all wired in different ways, and much of our unhappiness in life comes from trying to function against our wiring?

It strikes me that this plotter/panster division has implications for prayer. As a panster, it's often difficult for me to pray specifically (and, let's be honest...with one or two notable exceptions, God's responses are almost never what I prayed for). But my planner friends describe lists, and specifics, and a real sense from God that He's not only hearing their prayers, He's helping them make the list. Makes me wonder if our prayers all fit into some larger puzzle somehow, that we can't see here on earth? (And just to be clear: I have no theological basis for this wondering...it's just a random thought wandering through my mind this morning).

Today's question: Are you a plotter or a panster? How does that work for you?

Day 18: Checking In

2010-06-18T06:04:00.001-07:00

We're a little less than halfway through our 40 Days, and I wanted to pause for a moment to see how everybody is doing.

So...How are you doing?

I'd love to hear from you today. How are you doing on the encouraged/discouraged meter? How are your conversations with God? Are there specific quotes or songs (or other things) that have spoken to you recently...or simply made you happy as you went about your day?

To return to imagery from our first couple of posts, Where is your boat?

Day 17: Groping an Elephant

2010-06-17T08:05:00.000-07:00

One of the things that helps me when I'm in a time of disappointment (or fear that life won't work out the way I hope) is to scale back a bit and try to see a bigger picture than my fear or questions suggest. I don't do this in a guilt-ridden, "Well, I should just be happy with what I have, because people all over the world have it far worse than me..." kind of way. That's true, but I've never once seen it work helpfully to transform despair, or prompt positive action. Feeling bad about feeling bad just adds layers to the problem.

As you might have guessed from all the book references on my blogs and in my memoirs, reading is one of my primary strategies in searching for a larger picture. I consider the thoughts of folks who hold a variety of different outlooks. I'm not looking to adopt a new faith or philosophy, but (as suggested by the fabled elephant contemplated by three blind men) I find that looking at something through a different lens is often a helpful way to get a better picture of the whole.

As I wander through books, I find a ton of stuff I disagree with. (If the library let me annotate, I'd leave scrawls of outrage almost everywhere.) But usually I keep my pen to myself and keep reading, so long as the author seems to be heading toward a sincerely-held point rather than just callously tossing out annoying statements. And sometimes in the midst of that, I find hidden gems.

I spent last night with friends discussing one of these gems, the life slogan of Forrest Church: "Want what you have. Do what you can. Be who you are." We agreed that all three of these exhortations have the potential to derail a productive life if used selfishly, encouraging complacency, lack of ambition, and a defiant refusal to move away from bad habits and choices (the movie Reality Bites comes to mind). But we also saw the wisdom there, if approached from a different direction (or, as we put it, when considered with a Jesus overlay). When we added God to the mix, for us it seemed to line right up with much of what the Bible suggests: Enjoy today's gifts, whatever they might be...do something, don't just sit around lamenting your inability to fix this broken world...share the fullness of how and who God created you to be--unique, quirky, talented--rather than spending all your energy trying to conform by saying/wearing/doing the exact right thing. Because honestly? Nobody knows what the "right thing" is. (Even Oprah is really just guessing...)

As the conversation was winding down, we asked ourselves, How am I doing in these three areas? I'd love your answer, too, if you're game to share.

Here's to a day of hidden gems :)

Day 16: A Cool Question

2010-06-16T07:07:00.000-07:00

I was up late last night. I'd the early evening with girlfriends mourning the loss of our friend's husband, which was profound and powerful and good in that way that difficult, unthinkable things can sometimes be. When I got home, the Celtics were being annihilated by the Lakers, so I turned that off and reached for the book I'd started earlier in the day, a memoir with the improbable title, Evolving in Monkeytown.

The author shared some things about her spiritual search that gripped me--describing that feeling I've sensed lately of knowing the basics of what you believe, but losing your grip (which was probably too tight anyway) on the finer points, such as how those beliefs might apply to a particular Wednesday afternoon. It was like having coffee with a new friend who gets exactly where you are...and doesn't try to move or change you.

At the end of the book I was more awake than ever, so I went online to listen to a talk given by the friend who died last month, Andrew (I know that sounds morbid, but it was actually pretty wonderful). He asked this SPECTACULAR question: "What will prompt us to ask for more from our experience of God?"

I'd never heard it put like that before. I've certainly been subject to admonishments to give more to God, or be better for God, or pray harder/longer/louder in faith that God would come through. And perhaps it has been suggested (maybe even clearly--I'm not always so quick to catch on) that our relationship with God can change and grow over time. But for whatever reason, Andrew's wording just struck me. And I wondered: What would prompt me to ask for more from my experience of God? I shuffled up to bed mulling over this question.

Apparently, the answer is Andrew: his wise words, heard four weeks after his death. He's prompting me to ask for more of my experience of God--today, right now. (Which is a powerful thing to consider if you're someone who longs to leave a legacy).

I'll be honest: I'm not sure what I'm asking for, or how I'll know if my prayer is answered. Strangely, this feels good--like I'm diving into the mystery of God rather than wading in slowly, trusting God to outline the parameters of both my prayer (he knows what I mean, even if I don't) and his answer.

Want to join me? Ask. Let's jump into the sea of question marks and ask God for more from our experience of him....and see what that means.

If you're in, drop a comment below and say, "I asked!" :)

Day 15: When you see roses, smell them

2010-06-15T07:06:00.000-07:00

During the months immediately after I left my first marriage, when I was hiding out at my friend Kristen's summer house in the Connecticut woods and trying to pick up the pieces/decide what to do next, I had an unusual perspective on time. Suddenly, there was too much of it, all waiting to be filled. It felt like time was lurking everywhere. At least twice a week I'd have a day that simply wouldn't end, filled with thoughts of shame, regret, and that awful certainty that nothing would ever get better.

Those were happy, happy days!

But if I'm honest in my remembering, here's the other thing about time that was also true: on the other days of the week (the ones where I wasn't drowning in dread) I had time to think. A lot of it. Expansive time. Space for my imagination to stretch out a bit. That was a good thing. Right now, after more than a year of intense, multi-tasking busy-ness, I miss that.

I was finishing up Eugene Peterson's book REVERSED THUNDER this morning, and he had some helpful things to say about time. This isn't my first encounter with the dual concepts of time found in the Bible (Chronos, which means chronological, sequential time, and Kairos, which is more qualitative, and means something to the effect of the right or opportune moment) but it's the first time I've seen it laid out in these terms:

"If we are dominated by a sense of chronos," Peterson warns, "the future is a source of anxiety, leeching energy from the present, leaving us whiningly discontent with the present, like the child who can't wait for Christmas." So, so true for me! Both when I was hiding out in Connecticut, and right here this morning. When I think too much about chronos, time is a tyrant; I'm always, endlessly behind.

Peterson goes on: "But if we are dominated by a sense of kairos, the future is a source of expectation that pours energy into the present." I underlined that quote approximately 17 times, as something inside me screamed, "That's what I need! Where do I sign up?" And that's the question, right? Where do we sign up?

Don't get me wrong--I don't want to abandon chronos and let my mind drift off into some fairytale land. As someone who hates being late, I appreciate having some order to my days. I just don't want to be bludgeoned by it. And I long for mental space to move around, to look for the opportunities God might want to show me. To stop, spiritually speaking, and smell the roses.

I'm reminded of a scene from Jeremiah, one of the prophetic books in the Old Testament:

"While Jeremiah was still confined in the courtyard of the guard, the word of the Lord came to him a second time: This is what the Lord says...Call to me and I will answer you and tell you great and unsearchable things you do not know."

Then the Lord went on to describe quite candidly how things were going to get worse before they got better...but he gave Jeremiah a picture of how things would, eventually, get better. That's quite a gift in the midst of whatever captivity we find ourselves in, whether we're tangled in a multitude of demands from our daily lives, or drowning in a sea of unfilled time. I like the idea that if we create the space to check in--to look for the kairos in the middle of the chronos--God will give us a vision of things we can't know any other way, a vision that will help us live well in the present and anticipate the future, rather than letting the chronos choke us with fear of what will/won't happen.

Do you stop and smell the roses? Tell us how. Do you have it built into your week as a routine, like regular prayer/meditation time, or are you good at taking spontaneous moments throughout the day? Today, let's stop whenever we think of it, call on God, and see what he says.

Day 14: Little beads of time

2010-06-14T05:33:00.000-07:00

I've been slightly obsessed with beads lately. A couple of weeks back, the Sunday paper had a coupon to a craft store, and it dawned on me that if I found myself in dire need of a cobalt blue necklace, or earrings to match my new green T-shirt, I had it within my power to make it happen. (In my mind, I'm a jewelry superhero, in training to respond to sparkle-related problems around the globe...)

So it caught my attention recently when a friend used a bead-related metaphor to describe how she gets through tough days. "Sometimes," she said, "it's just about getting through these tiny chunks of time. You pray, you talk to God, you distract yourself, you focus...you push ahead and keep going. Because once you've strung together enough of these chunks, you find you've got a pretty good day..."

It's true, right? When I think back over a good day, usually it's a string of nice moments rather than one super-phenomenal thing that happened. It's a parking space in front of the post office, an encouraging email from a friend, a phone call with my sister, a sense that God is near... These are the beads that make up a day I'm grateful for, one that's fun to live. Conversely, it's not usually a big hurt or disappointment that ruins a day. More often than not, it's a series of small frustrations, or the overriding fear that nothing will ever get better and my hopes are futile. If I string those thoughts together, the beads will choke me. No thanks.

Today, I'm working this metaphor. I'm approaching life like an Add-A-Bead necklace. (As the website indicates, it's like, totally 80s...and the 80s are back, so check me out, making spirituality hip?!?) I'll pray, talk to God, distract myself, focus... I'll take on the ten minute chunks, rather than trying to micro-manage the whole 24 hours. And today just might be a pretty good day.

I'll start by reflecting on these two inspiring quotes from great artists of deep social influence:

"No matter how vacant and vain, how dead life may appear to be, the man of faith, of energy, of warmth, who knows something, will not be put off so easily." --Vincent Van Gogh

"Life is too short to blend in." --Paris Hilton

They're both right.

With these gems in mind, I need your help! Leave a comment with your suggestions for reclaiming the chunks of time where the bad thoughts seem to be winning. What do you focus on--and I love silly ideas best--to give you a little lift & life during the day?

Day 12 & 13: What's The Story?

2010-06-12T05:32:00.000-07:00

My friend Larramie sent me a wonderful email yesterday. It was about how I share my story. She remarked on my candor, asking how I felt about being so open in my writing. Her heartfelt encouragement made me want to hug her, right through the giant tangle of the world wide web.

But here's the funny thing: I haven't replied yet, because I'm not sure how to answer. As crazy as it sounds, I've never thought about how to feel about sharing this stuff. I think I've always been of the mindset that most of us have more going on inside--interesting ideas, provocative thoughts, perspectives and experiences--than the typical scope of our everyday lives creates space for. Maybe this is why I love reading blog posts and have found so many cool friends online...it's a venue for us to dig around and share our lives.

But sometimes what comes up is the realization that we don't like our lives. That's tough to reconcile.

In Donald Miller's most recent book, A Million Miles in a Thousand Years: What I Learned While Editing My Life, he makes the compelling argument that any one of us can, at any time, decide to live a better story. Having done this a time or two (and oh, how I wish I'd had this spiffy catch phrase to describe my flailing, floppy process!) I totally agree. But it takes more than a decision, right? As I blogged yesterday, we need some sort of help to recalibrate in a new, better direction. Otherwise we just spin.

Today, my story is in a sad spot with the recent death of a friend. It's a mourning kind of place, rather than a launching pad from which to conquer the world. But I like my story in the big-picture sense: the thru line, the direction, the hope. It hasn't always been this way, so I'm a extra grateful.

How do you feel about your story? Let's spend this weekend thinking that over. Ask yourself--write it down, create lists of like/don't like if that helps. Then ask God what HE thinks, and if he has any recommendations. Then (and this is the challenge) to the best of your ability, do what he suggests.

If you've read my first book, you may remember the chapter where I describe trying this for the first time. My friend Amy and I were praying for husbands. She checked in with God and received fun marching orders to girlify herself: Get a pedicure! Buy a purse! I asked God what my instructions were, and he essentially said, "Stand back! We're taking the whole structure down and starting over..."

Tough, but the better story is worth it.

Need encouragement? I love the song The Long Way Around by the Dixie Chicks, because it's just so true: when I look at friends who settled down the minute they became "adults," the ones whose stories have been clear, focused, and linear when compared to my crazy zigs and zags, this feeling of envy creeps in...until I realize that for whatever reason, I couldn't have pulled that off if I'd tried. I'm not a simple girl. I'm taking the long way around. And maybe that's part of the story :)

How do you feel about your story?

Day 11: Can we right the wrongs?

2010-06-11T04:42:00.001-07:00

The Books section of today's NYTimes has some entertaining headlines, even if you're not into books. One review is called "To Err is Human: And How! And Why!" about two books on the art and science of being wrong. (I can't help but wonder if my early dating years aren't mentioned in at least one of them, given how doggedly I pursued my own gift of being wrong...) The other review is entitled, "You Can't Run From The Past, But You Can Rewrite It." True again!

Most of us--if we have a sense of humor, or irony, or a career in the arts in which some understanding of angst and pathos is helpful--can mine some gold from the lower dips in the narrative timeline of our pasts. But lets be honest: just because we can use it for good in the present doesn't mean parts of it don't sting when we take a moment to really think about them....or that they can't leave us despondent on the couch for a whole weekend with a gallon of Rocky Road and a marathon of Julia Roberts movies on cable if a wayward memory catches us off guard. The past can be potent.

How do we defuse it? Especially in places where we see ourselves making the same mistakes over and over again, how do we break the cycle? I used to read helpful books. I'd identify my mistakes, and DECIDE TO BE DIFFERENT! The trouble was that when I was in the trenches of real life, away from my books and my firm decisions, I couldn't always figure out what "different" looked like, on a what-do-I-do-now? level. So back on the roller coaster I'd go.

I'll admit that I wish my grand solution to this dilemma was cooler. As I said in my first book, I'd love nothing more than to say that my life was changed my adding kale to my diet and finding the right lip gloss. If only... But what really happened was this: God spoke to me one day (weird, right?) and said, "I have a husband for you, and a family...everything you want. But you need to take Jesus seriously." It was just so ridiculously crazy, I decided to give it a try...even though I had no idea what "taking Jesus seriously" might entail.

Eight years (and a husband) later, I'm still figuring it out. I'm delighted to report that it didn't mean a lot of the things I feared it might...and that it helped in a whole host of unexpected ways. No the least of which was answering the question, "What do I do with my wrongs?"

Jesus says, "Give them to me." And if we do, he transforms them. And us. It's miraculous, and mysterious. But I've seen it too many times not to believe in it's power.

So today, if the headline about rewriting the past seems like a possibility too good to be true to you, try talking to Jesus. Ask him if it's true what that Blogger Trish said, about how he could help. And ask him for a vision of your future--free of baggage and cycles of mistakes--might look like.

An engineer named Charles Kettering once said, “My interest is in the future because I am going to spend the rest of my life there." Provocative point. I wonder if cleaning up our past, inviting in Jesus' spiritual help to sort things out (like an organizational expert who helps you decide what to hold onto and what to throw away), might be one of the most powerful things we can do to get out of our cycle of hurts and wrongs and invest in a better future?

Make me feel better: Am I the only one out here with wrongs that need transforming?

Day 10: Shake it up

2010-06-10T05:54:00.000-07:00

Sometimes when I check in with God for guidance about the day's post for our 40 Days of Faith adventures, I'll think of a song. And 9 out of 10 times when I look up the lyrics, that song will have some message in a line or two that I hadn't noticed before, that speaks with an eerie sort of precision to the topic of the day.

Today when I checked in, I heard Shake It Up by the Cars. I don't even like that song, so I figured it must be filled with some Divine meaning I'd overlooked...

Or not. Maybe I'm missing something, but from what I can tell it's just a song about dancing. All night. To the beat. There's encouragement to whirl your hair. But that's about it.

I'm laughing as I type, thinking about how absurd this sounds (and that if you'd told me back in law school that someday I'd be writing in a public forum about how God speaks to me through song lyrics, I'd have backed away slowly and stopped returning your calls). But I'm also thinking about communication--and miscommunication--in relationships generally. Have you ever heard a friend mention something and think it's a big deal, only to learn later that it was just a passing comment? I can easily think of 1,001 things guys said to me over the years that I accorded WAY more weight and meaning than intended. And anytime my parents said, "Maybe--we'll think about it..." I determinedly heard "Yes, Trish, of course you can go to that party!"

We have translators in our brain that filter what we hear, and a sorting system that prioritizes input in ways we're not always conscious of. (Let me pause here to say that I'm no scientist. I have no idea whether or not we actually have translators and a sorting system in our brains. But clearly some sort of process is going on in there, and it works in a way we don't entirely control.) Sometimes we get it right, other times not so much.

I don't always know what to do with this, but it's been helpful sometimes to back up and take things at face value, rather than plumbing them endlessly for deep meaning. For example, how do I know God's message to us today isn't to shake it up? Maybe we'll each have an opportunity today to dance--literally, metaphorically, on the inside, who knows?--that we'll be tempted to pass by so as not to rock the boat. What if God really is saying, as clearly as he can so I won't miss it, Shake It Up!

Today, I'll try to keep my eyes & ears open for chances to do just that. For all of us, why don't we take this as an opportunity to check in with God to ask if we've missed the point about anything--with him, with friends, with other relationships. Let's ask him to help us understand the real meaning behind things we've mis-filtered & mis-sorted, and how to respond. The Cars say not to worry about my two left feet...but God knows I can't not worry about anything without his help. :)

Share: what song is going through your head right now?

Day 9: Celebrating!?

2010-06-09T05:19:00.000-07:00

I just got an email from my friends Paul & Pascha labeled "Wahoo! Lookie what came this AM!" Inside was a picture of my new book, fresh out of the box. I was thrilled, teary-eyed...and a little torn.

I've been reading Lamentations--a sad section of the Old Testament, written by a man overlooking his desolate, ruined city. And with it, I've been reading books about mourning, and the death of people we love, and the death of dreams we've invested in. (Nothing but sunshine & flowers here!)

Before you start to worry, let me assure you that it's been helpful--and strangely encouraging--to have this time to think in a focused way about life and death and hope and, well...dashed hopes. And to ask God, "Where are you in the middle of this?" Because at the end of the day, I don't want other peoples' answers. I want to hear from God, so I can "get it" in a way that feels real, and deeper than seeing Footprints in the Sand written on a plaque somewhere.

And so in the middle of this angsty time of questions, the first real copy of A MAZE OF GRACE arrives at my friends' house! It's time to celebrate.

Confession: I'm not so great with transitions like this. And yet the Bible is pretty clear about the importance of stopping wherever we are to give God props when amazing things happen. And to hit this point home, the Bible defines "amazing" with everyday miracles like sunrise, breath, laughter, enjoying our work...On those terms, it would be downright obnoxious of me not to stop my mourning, crank up Kool & The Gang, and do a pajama-clad happy dance around the block like Princess Giselle from Enchanted (although I'll need either white shoes or flowey-er sleepwear...)

So today, I'm working on making this transition. I'm celebrating, trusting that the questions (and the answers) will still be there for me to explore when the party dies down. I'm learning that part of the benefits package of loving God is the ability to celebrate answered prayers in the midst of sadness, and to enjoy the joy.

Because really, NO ONE benefits from a grumpy Giselle... :)

How are you at showing up for the party in the midst of whatever else is going on? What can you celebrate today?

Day 8: Waiting out the Swirl

2010-06-08T07:00:00.000-07:00

My mind is circling a bunch of different directions this morning, and I'm not sure how they fit together. Perhaps they don't. But you know the sense you get when the mental multi-tasking feels different, somehow? That odd awareness that, If I just give all those thoughts enough time & space to zoom around, they'll land in an interesting way? That's me this morning. Waiting for the zooming to stop.

It's a challenge to leave room for this. Part of me likes defined time, where I start and end a project or a prayer, and then move on to whatever is next. But creativity (and by this I mean life) rarely works that way.

As I write this, I'm thinking about an author friend who flummoxed an interviewer recently by admitting that the bulk of her "writing" time is spent staring at the wall or out the window. I recently turned down a request to have a teen writer job shadow me for exactly this reason--I was terrified that after an afternoon with me, the girl would never do homework again!

As we grow up, it becomes less and less about getting the homework done. I've wasted too many days trying to force myself into productive mode (as if I had a camera crew following me, reporting back to headquarters) with little or nothing to show for my efforts. My best "stuff" comes after it's had time to percolate a bit, and then to sit. But that's tough to wait for in a world that constantly threatens to leave us behind.

I feel caught in the swirl of two truths: One, the artistic lament of the decades, that quality takes time. The other, the wise words of a law school friend who refused to let the stress get to him, that things tend to get done. Both are true. But it's a weird tension to hold.

Where are you in this tension? If our lives are part of God's creative act, is there time in your life to let things percolate, trusting that they (and you) will land where they're supposed to be? My guess is that I'm not alone in answering "no." Let's talk to God about that today. Let's ask for holy confidence in his plan, and for space--mental, physical, emotional--to let things settle down enough, inside and around us, so we can see the patterns emerge.

Day 7: Hope/Optimism

2010-06-07T05:57:00.001-07:00

I'm thinking about optimism. I've always considered myself an optimist, at least until I read a scathing indictment of optimism by Eugene Peterson in the second-to-last chapter of Reversed Thunder, where he makes a compelling point about how optimism can be a way to avoid God.

Optimism, he argues, is built on faith in ourselves and our ability to make the world around us work in a pleasing way, shaping it to our desired outcome. He describes how optimism can be moral--using goodwill to fend off injustice; or technological--applying scientific intelligence to solve world problems. And he wisely acknowledges, "It seems ungracious to be unenthusiastic over such an enormous expenditure of intelligence and good will. These people, after all, are at least doing something."

That's the rally cry of our world, right? "Things are falling apart, DO SOMETHING!" We receive 1,001 daily exhortations to do our part, each promising that if we all do our part, things will get better.

What if this is a false promise? I've seen too much to believe that things get better, in any long-term way, without God, and Peterson's words made me realize how much of my optimism is "a way of staying useful" while keeping God out of the picture so the pieces and factors which make up my life feel more manageable.

As I thought about this this morning, I realized that optimism is not the same as hope. I've used them interchangeably for most of my life, but I wonder if perhaps I've been missing a piece of the puzzle? Hope, as it's described in the Bible, has a huge element of mystery to it. You can't just "have" hope. It's a gift from God. We think we know what we're hopeful towards, but the Bible suggests that our imaginations are limited, that what God has for us is bigger, better, faster stronger...entirely other than anything we can dream up to staple onto a vision board or write down in a prayer request. That's what I want.

So this morning, I'm trading in my optimism--my belief that through careful stewarding of my gifts and talents (along with dogged recycling and a determined effort to reduce my carbon footprint) I'll make the world a better place. In its place, I'm asking for hope. Hope is scary and mysterious and entirely out of my control. But so is life. And in that way, hope seems an entirely more suitable tool for this journey than the small control of optimism.

I'm brought back to two oft-cited quotes, one a reminder, the other a warning:

From the New Testament letter to the Hebrews: "Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen." I'm going to focus on the first word--NOW. This is what faith is, and I'm asking God for more of it, in this moment. I want that unexplainable certainty that my hope has substance.

And from the venerable C.S. Lewis: "We are half-hearted creatures...like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased."
It's tough for me to imagine that what I've asked God for is somehow less than he has for me. But today, I'll allow for the possibility, asking God to make me a whole-hearted creature, excited about the offer of a holiday at sea.

Because really, who couldn't use a vacation? :)

Checking in: On a scale of 1 ("what's hope?") to 10 ("I'm walking on sunshine") where is your hope-o-meter today?

Day 6: Conversations with God

2010-06-06T06:59:00.000-07:00

It's Sunday, which seems like a good day to change up our prayer approach, and try conversing with God. Let's go for dialogue, rather than monologue.

My friend Dave does this often. He takes long walks to chat with God, and he usually starts out with something simple, like: "Hi God, how are you?" (he's happy to report that God is usually doing quite well). This seems as good a place to begin as any.

After the small talk, listen. Give God some room to speak. Not just for three or four minutes, as I tried this morning. But for the whole day. Let's try to stay "tuned in" to the God channel and see what happens.

And if you hear something? Hold it lightly. Use it as a starting point for future prayers. As someone told me recently, hearing from God is the easy part; it's interpreting what God means that's complicated. Acknowledging this tension, let's tune in.

Day 5: No More Chains

2010-06-05T07:25:00.000-07:00

I woke up thinking about forgiveness. We've moved twice in the past year, so I'm very acquainted with my belongings, and the sense you sometimes get about certain things that tells you, "This is not important enough to me to haul up and down even one more flight of stairs..."

Pain can be like that, especially when it's caused by other people. Broken hearts and disappointments come in all shapes and sizes, and sometimes it's not even the big stuff that weighs us down--it's little stuff, unattended.

Nichole Nordeman sings a song called No More Chains that I think is about this feeling, about the pressure and stress of hauling a heavy weight up and down a mountain. No one made her, she says. She just did it without thinking, believing it was part of being her. We don't have to pull those chains around, though. We can just forgive.

This is one of the coolest things about Jesus, the way he helps with forgiveness. We don't even have to mean it, I've learned. We just have to be willing to say it (the power of our words again), and invite him into the process. So today, I've been saying, "I choose to forgive ____, in Jesus' name." With each sentence, I feel lighter. It's good.

The last lines of this song say, "I should let you give me wings...I should let you set me free..."

A captivating possibility.

Day 4: Sunshine Day

2010-06-04T04:52:00.000-07:00

I was at a gathering last night with friends, looking at a letter the Apostle Paul wrote to friends of his at Philippi. It was not an especially cheery letter--Paul was in prison, the Philippians were feeling the heat from folks who weren't all that excited about their devotion to Jesus. Paul was trying to help them keep their emotional/spiritual boat afloat.

One line in particular caught my attention: "Do everything without complaining or arguing," he says. He had his reasons, but I didn't quite get that far. I was captivated by the concept of even going one day (let alone a lifetime) without complaining. Now, I'm a pretty positive person, and I left a career as a civil litigation attorney because I realized I hate conflict. So it's not like I head out each morning looking for battles. But somehow, they find me. If I decide I'm in the mood to complain, I can usually find plenty of material to work with. Do you ever feel that way?

As I thought about what this no complain/no argue idea might look like for me, I sensed that in this, God isn't asking me to go all Polly-positive, or ignore reality. If it rains, I think it's okay to say, "Wow...I really wish I'd thought to grab my umbrella..." And if something terrible happens--a breakup, a disappointment, something you hoped would work out didn't--I think it's okay to acknowledge that disappointment, and to mourn. What we want to avoid is complaining about the way things are in a broader sense--giving individual situations that hurt or frustrate us roots and vines that shoot through the rest of our lives.

Today, I'm going to try this. As we discussed yesterday, silence can be a powerful weapon in our spiritual arsenal. So for the next few h0urs, if I don't have something nice to say, I won't say anything at all. If nothing else, it should be interesting to see how that goes :)

Anyone want to join me?

Day 3: The perfect is on the way

2010-06-03T04:47:00.001-07:00

We have to be careful what we say. Our words have creative power, and all too often I find myself talking about how all the things I'm most afraid of are true, while the things I want will never happen in a million years. Not smart.

I'd love to offer some grand plan for choosing our words wisely, but I'm no expert. One discovery I've made, though: silence works. Sometimes, it's all I can do to keep myself from playing along when someone declares definitively that "We're all going to get the flu this winter," or "There are no more good guys around." But what I CAN do in those moments is shut my mouth. I don't have to agree.

In my better moments, I'm able to say what I want (and believe) to be true: that my immune system works quite well and I'm not afraid of winter, for example; that God knows how many good guys are needed and has made enough.... But in areas where my belief-o-meter is running low, the least I can do is not add to the avalanche of fear and doubt swirling around in the world.

There aren't many things I "know for sure" (as Oprah might say). But I know that God has a plan, and things will work out well in the end. I have no idea how, or when. But that's okay. This is where today's quote comes in: "The walk of faith is to live according to the revelation we have received, in the midst of the mysteries we can't explain." (Bill Johnson). That pretty well sums it up.

The Apostle Paul wrote to the people of Corinth about the challenge of walking this line, being caught between prophecies--things we hear from God about what the present might mean or the future might hold--and the challenge to love in the midst of all the questions we still have. "Love never fails..." He says. "For we know in part and we prophesy in part, but when perfection comes, the imperfect disappears." I don't pretend to know exactly what that means (Paul was a complicated guy) but here's one thing I take comfort in: God is love, and he won't fail. The perfect is on the way.

Day 2: Maintenance

2010-06-02T06:11:00.000-07:00

I'm still thinking about this boat imagery. When I was growing up, my Dad was a lobsterman. Every year around this time, just as the weather was warming up, Dad would pull his boat out of the water for a week to repair it. I never told him (I was a boy & makeup crazy pre-teen, so we didn't talk much about lobstering in those days) but that time out of the water always scared me.

Here's the thing: I've never been great at conceptualizing large numbers of anything, so I was a little fuzzy on how many lobsters he had to catch to keep a family of our size in back-to-school shoes. But it seemed clear that the number was HUGE, and that there were a finite number of crustaceans out there on the ocean floor for the catching. So taking his boat out of the water seemed absurd to me. Why risk a week of no lobsters? "So what if the paint on the hull is chipped and the engine needs tuning?" I thought. "The most important thing is being out there!"

Now though, I get it. (Dad has been retired for years, and I'm sure he'll be happy to hear that I've finally come to terms with the finer points of his profession...) If you don't take care of your boat, your whole operation is at risk. Wood rots, engines die...the cost of replacing things you haven't taken care of is far higher than a week out of the water. (BTW, I tried to get a picture of a boat in dry dock to illustrate this post, but mostly what I found was pics of boats run aground, which is an entirely different thing...)

Today, let's ask God if we need to pull our boats out for repairs. This might be literal--stepping back from our busy schedules for a few days to tend to our physical/mental/emotional/spiritual upkeep. Or it might be more of an internal thing, where we tweak some area of our lives that's showing signs of wear. Or--who knows?--some of us might be in great shape, ready to head out onto the seas and pull in a big catch. As we pray today, let's give God a chance to weigh in on that, and let us know what's going on under the water, so to speak, in the places we can't see.

(And out of the kindness of my heart, I'll spare you the Southern Cross video I'm watching right now, because I can't possibly keep up 40 Days of Boating Songs...and because I don't understand why Graham Nash, one of my favorite singers ever, is wearing that weird striped shirt?)

Here's the link to yesterday's prayer outline (scroll down to the bottom).

And today's quote is my all-time favorite, Jesus' reminder that "What is impossible with man is possible with God." Nice to know that if we need to take time out for repairs, it won't throw off God's plan.

Day 1: Where is your boat?

2010-06-01T04:44:00.000-07:00

Happy 40 Days of Faith 2010! This is always an exciting time for me--it feels a little like back-to-school, a chance to start fresh and see what the new year brings. Never so more than this year.

For the past two years, I've flown into our June 1st start with wind in my sails, ready for adventure. This year is a little different. My sails aren't even up yet. In terms of faith (and to continue the sailing metaphor) I've seen a few storms, and my boat is a little banged up and in need of repair. So this year, for me, our 40 Days together feels less like charting a new course for lands unseen, and more like a safe cove were I can spend some time with God and ask him to patch my boat & sails back together.

It makes me think of the lyrics to The Wood Song by the Indigo Girls, describing the "boat" they find themselves in:

The wood is tired, and the wood is old...but we'll make it fine, if the weather holds.
But if the weather holds, we'll have missed the point.
That's where I need to go.

If you listen to the song, it's so powerful: it describes a certainty that our lives are unfolding according to a greater plan that we can understand, acknowledging that it takes a ton of courage to keep going. More than we think we have on some days. For this 40 Days of Faith, I'm asking Jesus for that courage. I'm asking for specific things, too...but it seems like the courage to get my boat back out into the water is necessary for all the rest.

I'd mentioned that I had an idea of how we might approach prayer, and I'll share it now. I discovered this a few years ago when I was new to the Bible, and was reading Psalm 40 in a panic, knowing I was supposed to teach on praying from the Psalms the next day and having no idea what I might say. As I read, a pattern emerged and I thought, "Oh...I can do that..." It's pretty straightforward.

First, read over Psalm 40.

Second, let's pray, using the same 7 steps as David:

1. Begin by recalling specific things God has already done to bless you.
2. Thank and praise God for these things, noting how His plans have exceeded your expectations.
3. Submit to God's will for your life.
4. Commit to glorify God publicly--in other words, to giving Him credit when He comes through.
5. Ask God to bless you with His mercy, and the protection of His love and truth.
6. NOW outline the troubles/hopes you need God's help with, and the specifics of what you are asking Him to do. (In our 40 Days terms, this is where we tell Jesus what we'd like him to do for us)
7. Acknowledge your lowly status before God (that He's God, and we're not), and that we are obeying His word by asking anyway. Ask that He act QUICKLY!

Amen!

I'll try to close each of our 40 days with a quote that inspires me. Today's is from Eugene Peterson:

"Prayer is the realization of personal powerlessness and, at the same moment, participation in God's power: I can do nothing, God can do anything."

That about sums it up. Here's to an amazing, awe-inspiring, surprising 40 Days of Faith! If you're in, drop a comment below. I think that helps with courage, knowing we're not in the boat alone :)

40 Days of Faith 2010!

2010-05-27T07:11:00.000-07:00

It's that time of year again! A new chance to cheer each other on as we talk to God about our hopes and dreams.

I'll start off with a confession: It's been quite a year since last we gathered. There have been huge ups and terrifying downs, and as I told some friends on Monday night, I'm feeling very in touch with the tension King Solomon describes in Proverb 13, about how dreams deferred can make our heart sick, while dreams coming true bring us new life. It's weird how the two can coexist.

If I had any doubt that I could use a faith infusion, it was pushed away definitively this morning, when I woke up with an undeniable need to watch George Michael remind me that I've gotta have faith. (Who wakes up thinking that???) I guess this comes under the heading of, The Lord works in mysterious ways, because I've felt better ever since. Somehow when I ask for faith (even via George Michael), I get enough faith to keep asking...so that's where I am this year. Ready to dive in and keep asking, in need of one of those moments where God so exceeds anything I could ask or imagine that I truly understand why He's in charge and I'm not. How about you?

We'll start off this year's spiritual adventure on Tuesday, June 1st.

Our big question: What would you like Jesus to do for you? We'll pray for that thing, whatever that is, every day for 40 days. This year we'll try out a format I've found helpful from Psalm 40 (more on that next week) that will help us pray even in those moments when we're not quite sure what to say. I think this will be fun...and fruitful...and encouraging. All good things! I hope you'll join in.

If you're new to the blog, here's a link to the original description from our first 40 Days of Faith two years ago, along with some tips for starting out. And I'll re-post a quick note of solace/encouragement for those of you who prayed for something big last year (or the year before) and haven't seen it happen yet: Me, neither. That doesn't mean we have to give up, or that God's answer is "no." I'm not sure what it means. But I guess my best response is to give God 40 more days to revisit the conversation :)

Want to join in? Leave a comment below!

I'll meet you back here on Tuesday :)

Day 40: On our way...

2009-07-09T19:29:00.000-07:00

Yay!!! We made it!!!

Today is the final day of our season of praying and fasting, and that's a cause for celebration. Some of us might not FEEL like celebrating at all: perhaps we're discouraged, or haven't seen any real movement in the area we've been praying about. But here's an important spiritual principle: Our emotions are not the truth. They don't get to decide what has and hasn't happened as the result of our prayers...unless we let them. They are not the governing force--God is. That, I think, is worth celebrating.

Here's how God's answers to prayers have mostly looked for me in the past: I pray and pray and pray and pray. Then I get distracted by life, maybe direct my attentions and prayers elsewhere for a season or two, then maybe circle back to pray for that first thing a few times more. And then a day comes, one that started out like any other day, when everything changes. And then it just seems so obvious that of course God heard my prayers, and of course He had a good plan all along. But still, even though I've seen this happen time and time again, it's tough to feel like I'm on a journey toward His answers when it feels like I'm standing still.

The last chapter of Ecclesiastes looks like a grim one if you read it quickly, with lots of talk of aging and the meaningless of life. But as I prayed about it last night, asking God "How can we end on that note?" and wondering if you'd notice if we just skipped it, He showed me another side to the story, to our story. Yes, it's true: most of the things we run around doing in life are meaningless: changing the oil in the car, washing laundry that will only get dirty again, deciding what to have for dinner. Who cares? But there's a bigger picture here, if we choose to play at a bigger level.

God reminded me of some observations my friend Jeff, a pastor in Minneapolis, shared on our friend Dave's website, about the things he sees in our reaction to the deaths of Michael Jackson and Farrah Fawcett. He grew up in a conservative home and so has the interesting perspective of looking at both of these lives from the end back, rather than as people he’d “known” all his life. What struck him was how we loved both Farrah and Michael, even as their lives were complicated and textured:

“Perhaps there is something important about faith in all this,” he says. “We look at Jackson and Fawcett and we see ourselves- yes, we are flawed. Yes, there are things about us that are deeply embarrassing. There are responses in us, sexual or otherwise, that at times we'd rather not admit to. And yet we are capable of courage, beauty, love, and compassion, even in the midst of our flaws. And, perhaps, this insistence is something of the reflection of the Divine within us. We will not be owned by our flaws, by our mistakes, or our personal demons. We are made for something larger, something better, something infinite. There is an almost messianic streak in some of Jackson's music- heal the world, we are the world, we don't want to be alone. I wonder if some of that resonates in everyone.”

I think Jeff is onto something. We don't have to be owned by our flaws, mistakes, or personal demons. And we don't have to overcome them before God will bless and use us. As we finish this season of investing in God's plan with our prayers and fasting, let's not be limited by what we can see in front of us right (or inside of us) now. Let's not be limited by what we feel. Let's look to God and ask him to connect us with the courage, beauty, love, and compassion he created us to live out...and for the ability to see it while it's happening!

I couldn't sleep last night, so I grabbed this book off the shelf to quiet my churning mind. I thought I'd read it before but I hadn't, because it's not at all what I thought. It's essentially a field guide to a happy life, where every single day is filled with joy. I can't imagine that quite yet, but if Brother Lawrence pulled it off back in the 1600s, hobbling around his monastery doing dishes, than it must be possible. I'm going to reach for it, starting today. So if you're looking for next steps now that the 40 days are over, grab a copy of this book and join me.

THANK YOU for being part of this season with me, for joining in and cheering each other on, and for believing God's big promises. Here's to keeping our arms and our hearts open in the days to come, ready to receive everything He has for us.

Amen :)

Day 39: Ready to go (really, this time!)

2009-07-09T05:27:00.000-07:00

Two things from Ecclesiastes caught my eye today--practical suggestions I'm trying to figure out how to implement.

First, from chapter 10:
"If the ax is dull and its edge unsharpened, more strength is needed but skill will bring success."

Second, from chapter 11:
"Cast your bread upon the waters, for after many days you will find it again.... Sow your seed in the morning, and at evening let not your hands be idle, for you do not know which will succeed, whether this or that, or whether both will do equally well."

The first passage seems like an invitation to sharpen our ax, so to speak (because a skilled woodcutter starts there, before he ever approaches a hunk of wood). And this makes sense--I'm a better writer, here as I finish my book and it's crunch time, than I was a year ago when I was just drifting back into writing. I'd gotten out of the habit, my ax was dull, so it took a ridiculous amount of fortitude for me to tap out a blog post, let alone a chapter. Now, even as I look longingly toward next week's vacation, I'm hoping I'll remember this when I get back, sharpen my ax, and sit right back down to work on my next project, so I can rely on skill instead of just strength. I wonder if we don't all have areas in our lives (different ones, at different times) that need sharpening before they can work optimally?

Where are you working with a dull ax, relying on strength instead of skill to get the job done?

The second passage invites us to diversify, rather than putting all our eggs in one basket. Social media experts are abuzz with this advice these days, suggesting that anyone with a message should shout it from as many online rooftops as time allows, because none of us know which ones will catch on. Entrepreneurial advisors suggest the same thing, touting the benefits of having multiple streams of income, so if one fails, we can pick up with another.

I like this idea--it seems like a more interesting approach to life. But I get caught up in the concern that I'll diversify my way right past what I'm supposed to be focusing on--that I'll never succeed because my efforts are too divided. I even feel this with prayer sometimes, like praying for many things dilutes the impact of the prayers that matter the most. I'm not saying that God works that way, but inside, that's how it sometimes feels.

Are you too focused? Too spread out? Or just right? (Sounds like Goldilocks!)

I think the answer to this for those of us who are off balance is to ask Jesus for help. One of the benefits he offers, when we invite him over for coffee and ask him to direct our lives, is that the Holy Spirit will live inside of us, helping us make good decisions. So we can ask, "God, where does my ax need sharpening?" and expect to receive an answer. We can ask, "God, how should I spend my time/how should I diversify?" and He will tell us.

The tough part, sometimes, is to act on the answers we receive. Especially if they're counterintuitive (or not what we wanted to hear). Life is about choices. We can make a choice to follow Jesus, which is great. But the greatness of it is, I think, directly related to how we handle the what comes after that, how freely we choose to follow when he says, "Here we go..."

This is why Around The Sun is my favorite song. It captures that sense of excitement and fear, as God takes us somewhere we can't get to on our own. But (and how seldom do we think about this part?) for Him to take us, we have to be willing to go.

Day 38: Better than Nothing?

2009-07-08T06:21:00.000-07:00

"Go, eat your food with gladness, and drink your wine with a joyful heart, for it is now that God favors what you do." -Ecclesiastes 9

Sounds good, right? But am I the only one who finds it tough to make an entire life out of eat, drink & be merry? Does anyone else ever get frustrated or disappointed or heartbroken? What do we do then?

This has been my dilemma for the past week as I write. I'm wrestling with a chapter about how I've dodged and avoided this question for the past three years as certain areas of my life didn't work out the way I'd hoped, and certain prayers remained unanswered. I've tried various approaches--believing without question the idea that "God is always good;" or trying to accept that even if He's something beyond just "good" (because that seems a little simplistic to me, like a bigger term is probably necessary) that He has some sort of plan going on that I'll be glad about someday, even if that someday isn't until after I die.

I've failed at these attempts. Miserably. And that has left me scrambling for a way to end this chapter with something other than the idea that maybe we can't count on God. That's not the book my publisher expects me to write...but more importantly, it's not what I believe. It's just what I'm experiencing right now, which is--let's be frank--a bummer.

I mentioned yesterday that I'm reading a book that's helping me wade through some of the messier aspects of real-life faith. It's called Is God to Blame? In it, theologian Greg Boyd suggests that there are two ways of looking at how God's will plays out on earth:

The first, the one he is writing to dispel, is called The Blueprint Model. According to The Blueprint Model, God chooses everything that does and does not happen here on earth according to his divine plan. So even when our lives take a sad or tragic turn, we're to take comfort in the notion that it's part of this big plan. Boyd is not a fan of this, arguing (and I won't go into all of it here, but will recommend that you read the book) that it's inconsistent with what God tells us about himself in the Bible, particularly in terms of what we see revealed in Jesus.

In place of The Blueprint Model, Boyd suggests The Warfare Model: the idea that in addition to God, there are human and evil factors that go into how life on earth plays out; that for every plan God has, Satan wants to thwart that plan and will do everything in his power to do so (including tempting us into making choices that lead us away from God).

So say, for example, you're praying for a husband. The Bible seems clear that this is God's will for most of us (see Genesis, or the the Apostle Paul's concession that every man should have his own wife, and every woman her own husband). Satan hates marriage, because it is, the Bible suggests, a foretaste of heaven. So he schemes. He brings men who are okay, but not great. He brings guys who seem great, but aren't into God. He points to the fact that we haven't had a date in 15 years and suggests, "You're so old now...God must want you to be single forever..." And in this, we make choices. Some of them (at least if you're me) bad choices, choices that take me away from my belief in God's best: to date the guy I'm not that into because he's better than nothing, or the guy who's not into God because, hey! maybe I'm the key to his spiritual development! Or to give up, lose hope, try to move on with my life and pretend I'm not angry, confused, and heartbroken.

We live in a spiritual battle zone, Boyd argues. And if we don't know and acknowledge this, it's awfully tough to fight. How do we fight?

We pray. We believe. We line our words up with what God says, instead of what we see. And we make smart, prayerful choices, even when they're hard.

That's our job, one day at a time, one hour at a time, one minute at a time. Today, do these three things, in whatever segment of time you can pull off. I'm told it has cumulative power :)

(And fasting counts, too! We'll be fasting through to the end of Friday, then breaking our fast on Saturday morning. Yay!)

Day 37: Words to live by

2009-07-07T04:36:00.001-07:00

Hi All! How was your weekend? Mine was largely spent in front of the laptop, but at least my office has windows. The sun was shining, fluffy clouds rolled by...it could have been much worse :)

I woke up this morning thinking about our personal commandments idea from last week. Here's what I've come up with so far. They're not rules exactly...just things I've noticed that make my life work better when I remember them:

1. Smile
2. Pray first, argue later
3. Eat, drink & be glad...don't go through my days in a frantic, numb rush. Notice when something tastes good or quenches my thirst, and be happy even when it doesn't make sense.
4. Don't fret, it leads only to evil
5. Guard my heart...be careful what I listen to, watch, believe.
6. Guard my tongue...keep things positive, lined up with what God says about my circumstances (rather than what my circumstances might indicate about God)
7. Live by the Spirit...without God guiding me, I'm sunk
8. Believe (as singer Brooke Fraser says, "To believe is to begin...")
9. Remember Luke 18:27 "What is impossible with men is possible with God."
10. Floss

We're a little behind in our Ecclesiastes reading, but I'm going to apply #4 here and decide that that's okay :) Here's a link to three chapters to catch us up.

"When times are good, be happy; but when times are bad, consider: God has made the one as well as the other. Therefore, a man cannot discover anything about his future."

Interesting, right? I just started a book a friend recommended called Is God to Blame? that deals with questions around making sense of bad times in light of our faith in a loving God. More on that tomorrow.

For now--what are your commandments? Anything you can share?

Day 33: Field Trip!

2009-07-03T05:14:00.000-07:00

Happy Independence Day weekend everyone! In honor of summer, and the very brilliant idea that is the long weekend, I thought we'd take a little field trip beyond our 40 Days blog world, and check out how someone else is shepherding her ducks into a row. (I feel like Mr. Rodgers, right before he boards the little train that takes us into the Neighborhood of Make-Believe...)

Today, we're going to visit my friend Gretchen Rubin. Gretchen runs one of my favorite blogs, called The Happiness Project. On THP, she has gathered the most interesting, diverse, and unexpected collection of information on the subject of happiness that I've ever seen. I love her approach: not everything will be for everyone, but she casts her net far and wide and then lets us step up to this buffet of options to choose what we'd like to try.

One thing I'd like to try is her idea of creating your own commandments. These aren't meant to be an alternative to the ten God provided, but rather a personal supplement, sort of like the little kid bumpers at the bowling alley or training wheels on a bike--reminders of who we are and what matters to us that keep us from falling over. The point of commandments is that you don't violate them--or when you find that happening, you do a gut check, figure out why, and recalibrate. That intrigues me. I suspect that I already have personal commandments that I live by, but it seems worthwhile to think for a bit about what they are.

This weekend, check out Gretchen's site. Take note of what catches your attention and come back and tell us about it. Tell Gretchen, too--introduce yourself and say hello. You can even congratulate her on her book, which comes out at the end of this year.

Our field trip dovetails interestingly with today's chapter from Ecclesiastes, which tells us how when God enables us to enjoy our lives, it's a gift. One of the hallmarks of this gift is that we "seldom reflect on the days of [our lives] because God keeps us occupied with gladness of heart."

Gladness of heart sounds an awful lot like happiness. So I wonder if perhaps our ultimate Happiness Project might be to ask God to give us what King Solomon calls "satisfaction with our lot in life"? I don't mean that we force ourselves to settle--just the opposite, actually. I mean that we ask for the supernatural peace that allows us to enjoy where we are on the way to wherever God is taking us. That's my prayer for today :)

Have a wonderful weekend!!!

Day 32: Envy = Motivation?

2009-07-02T06:27:00.000-07:00

"And I saw that all labor and all achievement spring from man's envy of his neighbor. This too is meaningless, a chasing after the wind."

Today, I charged into our chapter of King Solomon's wise musings ready to hop up on my favorite soap box, chant my "life is not meant to be lived alone!" refrain, and encourage all of you who are praying for a husband to keep on keeping on, because I think God is with us in this particular dream. I even had a nice little illustrative story I was going to trot out, about the benefits of determination, perseverance, and not giving up (tennis player Venus Williams and all the times she's been on the brink of defeat with the whole world watching, and somehow she digs deep inside herself and fights back, usually winning the tournament, in case you're wondering. I was going to tie it into the fact that she's never really alone out there--that unlike most players, her sister and the rest of her family are on the court with her. I think that sort of teamwork is exactly what God intends).

But before I reached my favorite line, the one about how "two are better than one" and "a cord of three strands is not easily broken," I was stopped in my tracks by the line at the top of the page. Envy as our primary motivating force? That sounds so grim! And yet so true...

Right now, I'm busting my hump to finish revising/editing my manuscript for my second book. It's been an absolute bear to write, truth be told. It's due in to my editor, in final form, a week from tomorrow. I'd stop to throw up because I'm so panicked, but that would only waste time. Yesterday, I typed so long, my fingers got an odd tingling at the tips that sort of freaked me out.

But why?

Don't get me wrong--I'm not against hard work, or going above and beyond to honor our obligations. Part of me enjoys cruch time, because it's when my most creative juices flow. But if I take a nanosecond to consider WHY I'm working so hard, King Solomon's point really resonates. I love it when an author I admire has a whole array of books for me to read. I love when someone pushes themselves to think about a variety of life's slices (and then pushes even harder to capture those thoughts on paper). I look at writers from the past like Madeleine L'Engle and C.S. Lewis and see how much they wrote, in so many different genres, and I want to do the same. I want to push myself, to take up some room on the shelf. But wanting it isn't enough. Bookstores and libraries don't just give you that space--you have to earn it. So that's what I'm trying to do. But is envy mixed in there as a primary motivating force? Absolutely. I'm not sure what to do with that, but it's worth thinking over.

We typically think about envy as inherently bad. I think it's even one of the Seven Deadly Sins. But can it ever be good? Can it spur us on to greater things than we might otherwise attempt? (Granted, this falls apart if our envy includes NOT wanting the other person to have the thing in question--that gets pretty ugly. But what if their having it simply stirs up in us the desire to have or accomplish something similar ourselves?)

When I first started coming to church, I openly envied some of the couples I saw there. (And yes, I could ditch the word "envy" and replace it with something more socially acceptable, like "admire," but that would be a total lie.) At a certain point, I made the connection that to get where they were, perhaps I should do what they were doing. This lead to a pretty radical restructuring of my life. Tough, but worth it.

Think for a moment about the thing you're working hardest on right now--mentally, physically, spiritually. It might be a project a work, a friendship you're trying to save, getting into shape...
What's your motivation? Don't judge it, just think it over, maybe talk it over with God.

Let me know how it goes :)

Day 31: Big Eyes & God's Timing: It's Alright

2009-07-01T05:33:00.000-07:00

"Me and Ryan G. can make the best of things, almost anywhere, and it seems to me a metaphor for life: We go from town to town and make the best of what's around. And it's alright..."

Today's part of Ecclesiastes is about timing. God's, not ours. (It's a good one, and encouraging in a unique sort of way--if you don't usually read the passages, this is worth the extra click to check out). King Solomon talks about pulling back to see the big picture, and how even with our best human effort, we can't possibly see how God is fitting pieces together over the broad span of time and space. During our lifetimes here on earth, he suggests, we'll never understand. But we'll keep trying. Why? Because God has "set eternity in the hearts of men." That line captivates me. It describes how and why we're caught in this tension of seeing the beauty around us and yet still always longing for something more.

C.S. Lewis put it well when he said, "“If I discover within myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world." But for now, we're in this world, longing for things. What do we do about that?

I think Ryanhood has a great starting place. It sounds glib, but it's not, not really. We could do worse than to go from town to town and make the best of what's around. This looks different for each of us, of course. During some seasons of life we go from office cube to office cube, or grocery store to post office running errands, or doctor's visit to treatment center. But with God, we can make the best of what's around. We can ask Him to give us eyes to see, to expand our awareness of His big picture.

Doing this, for me at least, is like flossing or working out. Every single time I've tried it, it's been a spectacular improvement, making me wonder, "Why did I ever stop?" (the question that has no answer). The truth is, it doesn't matter why we stop, just that we start up again.

Today, let's go from town to town and make the best of what's around. And when you see part of that "best," drop a comment so we can notice, too.

My first "best" this morning? Opening Ecclesiastes (with a little bit of dread, expecting another meditation on meaninglessness) and seeing this encouragment about how God's got a time for everything. Nice surprise :)

Day 30: A New Way to Roll

2009-06-30T05:28:00.000-07:00

I spend a good part of my life chasing down little things I think will bring me some sort of satisfaction. This morning, for example, I'm already thinking about the book I ordered from the library: when I'll have time to pick it up, when I'll have time to read it. Little stuff like that can occupy my mind for a bizarre amount of time, sort of like a hamster running on a wheel to get its exercise. The effort isn't necessary, but it feels like it is. It feels like it takes me somewhere, even if that feeling is a total lie.

Which makes me think of this:

What if the fine people at Kia Motors are right? What if there's a new way to roll?

King Solomon describes his experience with the old way in today's chapter. His take is pretty much, "I thought these things would make my life worthwhile. Not so much..."

Reading one commentary on this chapter, I found some wise words on how to apply it to our lives (because I had no idea--I mean, spiritually speaking, how do we get off the wheel to nowhere and into the sporty red car?) One of my favorite speakers suggests that perhaps it's about the peace God gives us in certain things, and letting that guide us as we take inventory of the things we spend our time on:

"Realizing you cannot do everything, then deciding with God's help what you can and cannot do, will make you more effective at the things you are supposed to do and will greatly increase the level of peace in your life. Peace equals power; without it you will stay frustrated and weak. As you evaluate how you are spending your time and what you are doing with your life, use this simple rule: if you have peace about it, keep doing it. If you do not have peace about it, stop. Hearing yourself complain about [something] on a regular basis indicates that you need to make an adjustment."

Interesting to think about. Solomon's point, I think, is that we chase endlessly after the things we think HAVE to do to succeed, to survive, to be satisfied. Mostly, we're wrong, and we don't end up where we think we will. Today, let's give God some room to prune things out of our lives and to adjust our perspective. Let's ask him for the keys to the car He created us to drive, and His map for where to go :)

What's one thing in your life that you have peace about?

Day 29: Everything is Meaningless?

2009-06-29T06:58:00.000-07:00

I'm supposed to be taking a sabbath today, but so far I've blown it completely (both bathrooms cleaned, 3 loads of laundry & counting...) What's funny about this (when you ignore the whole disregarding God thing, which isn't funny at all) is that when I prayed this morning about where we should go next in the Bible, God led me to Ecclesiastes. Which is essentially a book about how we spend our lives flitting about doing this and that (cleaning sinks, washing towels), thinking it will make a difference, never pausing to realized that in the big picture, it really doesn't.

In my Bible, there's a note I wrote at the front of Ecclesiastes that says, "A response to the general messiness of human experience." That sounds like a good thing to explore, given where most of us are now in this spiritual adventure.

Read Ecclesiastes 1. Consider: What do you spend time doing that's meaningless? (And by meaningless, I don't mean fun, or how you relax, or guilty pleasures like Top Chef marathons on Sunday afternoons...I mean stuff that you don't like doing that you make yourself do before you can relax and spend time with God).

What do you think?

Day 27: Selah and...

2009-06-27T07:04:00.001-07:00

I'm thinking of two things this morning, as we get ready to take Steve's parents on a tour of wine country (well, three things, actually...I'm also praying for sun!)

The first is the word "Selah." It pops up in the Psalms quite often. It's a tough word to translate from the Hebrew, but it means something to the effect of "stop and listen," or "let those with eyes see and with ears hear." It indicates a pause, a time of reflection. And perhaps an openness to something God might want to impart to us from the words we've just read or heard.

Psalm 111 isn't one that specifically suggests a Selah moment, but I took one this morning. It seemed called for. The words about all God has done and all He's doing, along with this pithy maxim: "The fear of the LORD is the beginning of wisdom; all who follow his precepts have good understanding." That seemed worth thinking about. My concept of fearing the Lord is different than some, perhaps. I've never worried that God was going to strike me down if I disobeyed, but rather that I'd miss out--on His guidance, His plan for my life, the things He created me for. So I try to begin my decisions with Him, allowing that my "understanding" of a situation might need some adjusting :)

As I was selah-ing, I thought of this from the prophet Habakkuk:
"Write down the revelation and make it plain on tablets so that a herald may run with it. For the revelation awaits an appointed time; it speaks of the end and will not prove false. Though it linger, wait for it; it will certainly come and will not delay."

If God gives you a vision, write it down. I was surprised recently, as I read through an old journal trying to figure out a chronology of something for my book, to see how many things I'd forgotten, things I'd prayed for that have happened since then. Now granted, several things I wrote down worked out in ENTIRELY different ways than what I expected. But every single time, God's way has been better.

Stop. Listen. Write down the vision. (Then pray for a sunny afternoon for my vistiting in-laws!!!) :)

Need music to write to? Here you go.

Day 26: Good News

2009-06-26T06:54:00.000-07:00

Good stuff happens today as we finish Luke's account of the Jesus adventure. Just when all hope was lost...Hope shows up on the road and walks a few miles with two guys, then pops into a dinner party to see if anyone will recognize Him. Jesus, recently killed, is now alive.

Jesus=Hope.

Here's what amazes me about this: These guys--the apostles--witness this miracle. Spiritually, everything has changed. Because of Jesus' death, now anyone can approach God freely, without an intermediary, without fear. That's rather astounding.

But yet on some level, it wasn't like the circumstances of the daily lives of these guys looked all that different. They'd witnessed something supernatural, but not everyone saw it, or would believe them. What do you do with that?

I think this is a tension many of us live with, this sense that something big is going on, that God is working in our lives, but we don't have any outward evidence to point to, and often our best guess at how things will play out ends up being totally off-base. We search for signs, for proof, for evidence we can point to to prove that Jesus is working, changing us and how things will go from this point on. But proof is elusive.

It seems important that the main thing Jesus told his followers at this juncture was WAIT: "I am going to send you what my Father has promised; but stay in the city until you have been clothed with power from on high." His resurrection was the beginning of the story, Jesus suggested, not the end. God had more in store for His people, power they'd need to take the journey God had planned for them.

This power, you might recall from our look at Acts last year, was God's Holy Spirit. Not only could we now communicate directly with God, but God would come and live inside of us, guiding us, interceding for us, and being with us every day.

At the beginning of our 40 Days, I shared about how I've been singing Ryanhood's AROUND THE SUN all spring. I have this sense that God is taking me somewhere I can't get on my own. But I'll need to stay closely in touch with Him, I'll need all the help I can get. And I'll need to remember that Jesus is alive, and that Jesus=hope.

Anyone else get that same feeling?

"Ready to go? Honey let's begin...we'll try to see by the light of the sun and tell it like it is."

Day 25: Trade-in

2009-06-25T03:54:00.000-07:00

Today's reading is grim. Betrayal, lies, torture, death. Imagine watching your hope die, right there in front of you. The people following Jesus had expected things to go very differently if he was going to save them. This was the day that hope died.

But it's not the end of the story. We're on chapter 23. There's still one more chapter.

I wonder if that might be worth reflecting on today, in areas where our hope has died? Just because our plan for how things should work out fails--a relationship falls apart, we lose the job, something we were sure would happen never does--that doesn't mean God doesn't have another plan in progress.

There are two places in my life right now where I was quite sure I knew what would happen next, what the trip from A to B would look like. Neither are at all on track to work out they way I'd hoped. When I'm honest, that really bums me out. I have a choice: I can watch those dreams die, believing that God has a "chapter 24" for me. Or I can watch those dreams die and wait to die myself. Neither, perhaps, is how I would have ordered things. But maybe--as we'll see tomorrow--God has something altogether bigger, better, and more powerful in mind than what I'd settle for.

It seems worth considering.

Day 24: The All Day Pray

2009-06-24T04:22:00.000-07:00

"I'm living by will--tapping the well--claiming the miracle--asking for help..." (Ryanhood, STOPLESS)

Nice job not giving up, everybody! And kudos to Abby for sharing the cool ways God is answering her prayers--I'm so encouraged! These sort of "praise reports" are, in my experience, vital to sustaining a life of prayer. They help us focus on what God is doing, rather than on what he He hasn't yet done.

So here's another: Steve's parents are coming out to visit us this week. We're excited, both because they're cool and because it's our first time hosting guests in our new place. Weeks ago, we went out one Saturday to buy a futon to put down in the basement for us to sleep on while they're here, thinking it would be $200-250. It was almost TRIPLE that price (when did futons become fine furniture???), which sent us staggering out of the store. We gave up, not knowing what else to do, and were a little discouraged by the prospect of long cold nights on our leaky air mattress. Then, like one of those "Duh! I could have had a V-8!" moments, it occurred to me: I could pray. "God," I asked, "could you bring us a futon for $100?" Because truthfully, that was all I wanted to spend. I felt ridiculous praying for cheap bedding, but I had nothing to lose. In the days that followed, we scouted Craig's List, we asked around: nothing. Then our friend Moses said, "I know someone with a futon they might sell...for $100." Yay God :)

This prompted me to say to Steve last night (for approximately the 9,000th time) "Wow, we should ask God when we need things--even little things. I think He likes to answer." (Yes, these are the sorts of deep theological conversations we have at our house.) I don't think God is a vending machine. But I do think He's a good father. He likes to be included in our lives, and He knows that our lives are filled with needs and wants and hopes, both big and small.

Today, I'm going to practice asking God for everything and anything--parking spaces, writing help, a good hair day, protection for the cute bunny hopping around in our yard (I'm a little worried about the passing turkey vultures...) Again, not to try to manipulate Him, or to get stuff, but to include Him in my thoughts in a more all-inclusive way. In the past, I've fallen into the trap of thinking that to "Practice the Presence of God" I had to banish my practical, mundane thoughts. Now I wonder if it's just the opposite, if that's where God wants most to be invited? The Apostle Paul talked about how we're to take every thought captive to Christ...I don't think he meant just the holy & pious ones. For me, a major "stronghold" is the lie that I have to figure things out on my own, or make them work myself. Historically, that hasn't worked so well.

Today's All Day Pray doesn't tie in directly to today's chapter from Luke, except for this: Jesus, right before his betrayal, warns his disciples repeatedly, "Pray that you will not be tempted." This is wise advice for us. Let's apply it.

And chime in to let us know how it goes for you, inviting God into every thought!

Day 23: Back into Blue

2009-06-23T04:19:00.001-07:00

Have you noticed that things don't tend to go the way we think they will? Even good things, as they play out in real time, take twists and turns we don't see coming. I'm thinking about that this morning, the word "mystery" echoing over and over in my mind. The reality of our relationship with God is that much of it is a mystery. We're not entirely sure how things work, but we do our best. And I think this is mirrored in our human relationships (despite our odd conviction that with enough psychoanalysis/contemplation of our inner child/comparison of our Myers-Briggs types and sun signs we can figure out what makes things tick). Mystery is everywhere, and we're never sure what's coming next.

One of my favorite songs ever is Ryanhood's BACK INTO BLUE. When I emailed the guys, asking about the behind the scenes stuff on their album, this was one of the songs I was most curious about, because if you know them at all, the song is a little curious. When I first heard it, I was pretty sure this was a love song by Ryan, for his wife Abby. But it's sung by...Cameron.

Here's what Ryan told me about what went into getting that song on the album:

"This is a love song for Abby. Three weeks after getting married, Cameron and I went away on what was then our longest tour. It was really hard for our fledgling relationship. So lyrically, it's about having to be apart from someone you love, and longing to be together. A prominent radio music director heard a demo of this song, and LOVED it. He couldn't wait to for us to record a proper version of it so he could start spinning it. However, when we began the recording process, our record producer felt differently, and he clearly did not care for the song. At some point along the way he learned it was written for my wife, so he felt like he had to record it so as not to offend me. We had the strange hurdle of recording a song with someone who made it fairly clear that he wasn't into it. Ultimately, this led to the song being re-written about 15 times in an effort to gain his approval. We changed the melody about a dozen times. We wrote a bridge. We changed the key. And then changed it back. We even went back and forth on which one of us should sing the lead on it. At one point during this re-writing process, I felt so frustrated that I requested we scrap the song altogether. It was frustrating that a simple, beautiful little love song to my wife would be made into such an ordeal. Like coming home with flowers, but getting into a fight at the front door before you could even hand them over. But eventually, the flowers did reach their intended recipient, which is you, and everyone else who hears it. And amazingly, when I hear it, it sounds like the essence and fragrance is still there."

Intense stuff. How often does that happen in life--the road that looks so straight & easy turns out be riddled with potholes and roadblocks we never saw coming, tempting us to give up? (While meanwhile, something we spent hours stressing and fretting about goes off without a hitch...)

Today's chapter in Luke is filled with these potholes. Jesus' followers thought he was going to be a reigning king to save them, and instead he starts spouting off all this weird stuff about the coming end of the world. I would have been a disaster if I'd been with Jesus when this happened. I like my spiritual leaders upbeat & optimistic. But now, thousands of years later, we have the benefit of knowing the whole story: that this road has quite a few twists & turns left, but where it ends up is well worth hanging in there to ride it out.

Today, let's not give up. On our song, our prayers, our hope. A special note for those of you praying for husbands: listen to BACK INTO BLUE, and ask God to help you recognize when the man he sends loves you like that (and not to settle for anything less!)

And as a spiritual exercise, drop a note in the comments section, writing "I'm not giving up!"
I have a friend who always says, "Maybe tomorrow I'll give up. I leave myself that option. But not today..."

Day 22: And We're Back!

2009-06-22T06:04:00.001-07:00

Hello! I am so sorry to have disappeared over the weekend...I was back in Cambridge for a good friend's wedding and I thought I'd be able to post from my phone. But it was not to be. The ironic thing was that the post I had in mind was about skipping a day on our fast. Here's why:

Saturday marked the halfway point of our 40 Day spiritual adventure, and I know for myself--especially in seasons where fasting is going well--I can get caught up in my own "power" and lose sight of God. I lose focus on the actual spiritual transaction here, the mystery of it all, and grow oddly convinced that it's my willpower forcing God's hand. In those moments, I actually believe that if I keep doing/not doing X, then God HAS to give me what I'm praying for. That's not how it works. In our fasting and prayers, we're partnering with God, not making Him do something. It's kind of important to keep that straight. So I'd planned to suggest that on Saturday, we purposely blow it, just to break any sense we might have that our perfection is the key to the connection we seek from God.

One might say I lead by example then, completely failing to post! :)

Here's what I've learned to do when I blow it (which is often, so this is a handy tip to have): I ask, "Will you forgive me?" So, my wonderful blog friends, I'm asking: Will you forgive me?

Okay, on to today! Our Luke chapter is a complicated one. Here's the "big question," I think: What is our cornerstone? What are we building on?

When we build, the cornerstone is the first block we lay down, the one that sets the entire foundation. I heard a sermon on this that talked about how carefully builders of old chose the cornerstone. Today, now that construction tends to be more automated and haphazard (and he was describing both literal houses and spiritual ones) we don't think so much about what we build on, and we pay the price for that down the road. Hearing this made me think of a neighborhood I once lived in where new houses were tipping over and sinking into the ground because the builder hadn't made sure they were properly sited.

Some of us might say that our cornerstone is Jesus (especially if we were raised in a church where we learned that this was a good thing to say). But our lives suggest otherwise. Let's be honest: there is huge pressure to build our life on our career aspirations, pleasing our parents, assuaging our low-self esteem, keeping up a pretty facade...the list goes on and on. Right now, I'm hugely tempted to make my cornerstone my writing, and this manuscript I'm wrestling with, trying to finish it by the deadline. And my house is tipping and sinking...

It doesn't do any good to feel bad about this, because feeling bad typically leads to guilt, not change. Jesus wants to be the cornerstone of our lives, the one we build on. Which means that most of us have some demolition to do so that we can start over and get things set up in a way that will work...and last.

Talk to God today. Ask Him, "What is my cornerstone?" and "What should I do about that?" Then do what He suggests!

I'm always amazed by His answers to these questions :)

Day 19: All In

2009-06-18T20:34:00.000-07:00

Today is Steve and my five-year anniversary. As many of you know, this 40 Days of Faith blog traces back to a season where I prayed and fasted, asking Jesus to send me a husband. I was new to faith then, so when my pastor asked, "What do you want Jesus to do for you?" I went for broke. I hadn't been around long enough to have my hope beaten back by delayed answers (or people who say we should all just give up). And while Jesus didn't bring Steve to my front door within the proscribed time period (wouldn't that be incredible if that was how He worked?) eventually, He came through.

I'm always amazed at how easily I remember the smallest nice thing another person does for me--a compliment, opening a door, help finding my car in a big parking lot--and how quickly I forget God's answers to my prayers. In my life, God is the only relationship where I demand he reestablish His trustworthiness on a daily basis. That's embarrassing (not to mention way off track from what He calls me to) because no one--and no One--has proven their care, concern, and power for me more than God. Jesus said that he came to seek and save that which was lost, and I all but had LOST! tattooed across my forehead. Found, I've discovered, is a lot better, but I have to make a point to remember that :)

Today's passage may sound familiar, as Jesus revisits a theme: to those who have, more will be given. I have some faith for the things I'm praying for right now, but let's be honest: it's more of a mustard seed than a giant oak. But I want to invest that seed today to see how it grows. Like the first servant, I'm going to take a risk and bet everything on God coming through. I'm going "all in" as my friend Dominic would say, acting as if God will come through rather than planning a life where he won't. Today, I won't have a contingency plan.

Anyone want to join me?

(After I wrote this post, I found myself reading Psalm 105 and 106, realizing that they're great blueprints for remembering all God has done for us. I wonder how much each of our faiths might be strengthened by writing our own version of these prayers, laying out the myriad ways God has come through in our lives? If you like projects, this is a great one--and something you can look back on for years to come. Let me know how it goes!)

Day 18: Fast Fail

2009-06-18T05:37:00.001-07:00

If you follow Twitter, you know that there's a way to categorize posts to connect them to a larger theme. One of those themes is called "FAIL," when you post about something you've seen or done that failed to meet it's objective. For example, you might tweet, "Gulped down three shots of expresso then fell sound asleep at my desk. #CoffeeFAIL"

This week, I could Twitter about my #FastFAIL over and over again. This is the absolute worst I've ever done on a fast. Part of my problem is that this fast is different than what I'm used to, in that I'm not giving up something so much as reorienting my time. In a nutshell, I'm fasting from laziness and wasting time by committing to an hour of prayer every day. When I'm faithful to this, it's astounding, even on days when I start out slow and the first twenty minutes feel like they're dragging on forever as I wonder what to say and how to drag my mind back from the million and one places it wants to wander. By the end, I'm always feeling like this was the best time investment imaginable.

But some days (like yesterday, and the day before) there just isn't an hour. Which is a complete cop-out, because there's always an hour. But I have to choose to find it, to put my commitment to God above something else I have to/want to do. #FastFAIL

Here's what I forget: I'm on this type of fast because time management is a struggle for me. I'm doing this because I need help with it--God's help. I'm failing in large part because I feel so bad about not doing it that I don't God for the help I need. Spiritually speaking, this is a fast track down a dead end road.

In Luke 18, Jesus talks about this--how we need to be persistent in our prayers, we need to ask for the help we need. I'm always struck by the conversation he has with the blind beggar. You'd think, seeing that the man was blind, Jesus would just heal him as he passed by and be on his way. But he stopped and asked the man, "What do you want me to do for you?" which tells me that there's an interactive component to receiving from God. It brings me back to that Ryanhood lyric we looked at a couple days ago: It's me on my knees with my face to the floor, learning how it feels to be rich when I feel poor... When we ask for his help, Jesus reorients us, showing us the tiny path from where we are to where we want to be. We feel like we don't have what it takes because we don't. But that's not the end of the story.

What do you want Jesus to do for you? He's asking. Let's tell him.

Day 17: Nitty Gritty

2009-06-17T06:03:00.000-07:00

It's Day 17! I always feel happy when I see that number, but I'm not sure why. So I'm oddly optimistic as I type here today, even though we're going to talk about one of the hardest spiritual demands Jesus places on us. (I guess it's because I know that as hard as this can be, it's also one of the things that has brought the most miraculous results in my life.)

Today's reading jumps right in and talks about forgiveness.

If your brother sins, rebuke him, and if he repents, forgive him. If he sins against you seven times in a day, and seven times comes back to you and says, 'I repent,' forgive him."

The apostles said to the Lord, "Increase our faith!"

That's usually what I need to say, when face-to-face with the need to forgive. I love forgiveness in theory, when no one has hurt me recently and I'm in some conversation tossing about spiritual maxims like so many bits of lettuce in a salad. But when I've been wronged (or I remember something from the past that I thought I'd forgotten) I don't want to forgive. I want to seethe. I want to wallow in my righteous indignation. I want to tell other people what has happened to me so they can add their seething and righteous indignation to my growing puddle of Whoa Is Me. I want revenge.

Jesus is not into this at all. He says:
1. Forgive.
2. Repeat as necessary.

Don't worry: he doesn't call us to be doormats--as a friend of mine once pointed out, there's nothing in this passage that says we have to do lunch with people who've hurt us (which means it's okay to hit "ignore" when some awful guy from the past tries to friend you on Facebook). But we have to forgive, all the time. Not for them, but for us.

Have you ever met someone who hasn't forgiven, and lives in that seething, damaged place? Someone who, before telling you their full name or what they do for a living, regales you with the full story of their awful breakup, terrible childhood, and/or chronic struggle not to give up on life? These are all cries for help. I've been there. The radical thing about Jesus is that he doesn't perpetuate the lie that more talking is what will help us in this state. He brings the spiritual truth: that forgiveness will set us free, AND the spiritual power to help us forgive.

Spiritual Truth + Spiritual Power. That's quite an offer.

Here's what Jesus told his disciples:
If you have faith as small as a mustard seed, you can say to this mulberry tree, 'Be uprooted and planted in the sea,' and it will obey you.

In other words, we don't need huge confidence in our ability to forgive (because when you're in that moment, such confidence is nearly impossible). We just need a tiny seed of faith: that Jesus' promise is true, his power is real, and that he'll help us if we ask. We plant that seed when we say, "I choose to forgive X for Y. Jesus, please help me. I release them... Jesus please release me..." This is how we say to our unforgiveness, "You can't stay here. I'm uprooting you and throwing you into the sea..."

That sets us free.

Try it today. Take a few quiet moments (and I'm using the word "take" deliberately here...the time won't present itself; we have to take it) and ask God to show you anyplace where you're holding on to unforgiveness. Then pray the prayer above, choosing to forgive, whether you "feel" it or not (The great news is that our emotions are not the barometer of whether or not this is a good idea, or whether or not it's working.) Then if bad thoughts come up afterwards, or tomorrow, or next week, simply say, "I've forgiven X for Y, in Jesus' name. That's the end of it..." and move on.

Bless you guys as we dig into this tough work. It's challenging, but worth it.
Let me know how it goes!

Here's to a great Day 17 :)

Day 16: Tending A Piece of Our Dream

2009-06-16T04:32:00.000-07:00

Today's chapter of Luke is complicated, covering a pretty big swath of life situations. I thought I'd pull out one section and see if we can't unpack it a bit.

Jesus offers these provocative words about how we should (as The Sopranos might say) "handle our business": "Whoever can be trusted with very little can also be trusted with much, and whoever is dishonest with very little will also be dishonest with much. So if you have not been trustworthy in handling worldly wealth, who will trust you with true riches? And if you have not been trustworthy with someone else's property, who will give you property of your own?"

Interesting, right? This suggests that whatever our big dreams are, we've been given small facets of them already where we can build the skills we need and learn to make smart choices. I think of this as God's way of keeping me from getting in over my head.

My favorite example of this is my dog (known in the blogsphere as THAT DOG, due to a certain incident with the bathroom trashcan right around the time I started blogging). When I got her thirteen years ago, I was the least likely candidate for pet ownership on the planet. I was totally self-involved, and not doing a particularly good job at that. I could barely keep myself fed, walked & watered. But she was cute (and I was impulsive) and just like that, I had a dog. (Members of my family immediately started discussions about who would take her when I failed). But what do you know--I rose to the occaision. And I learned something HUGE: that I had what it took to put her interests and needs ahead of mine. That's come in pretty handy in almost every relationship, job or friendship I've had since.

Where in your life have you been trusted with a piece of your dream?

An important note for anyone who tends towards seeing passages like the one above as an opportunity to feel horrendously bad about yourself, assume your prayers haven't been answered because you're a miserable failure of a human being, and vow to do better (and as I read the comments, I suspect this might be more than a few of us): DON'T.

There are some areas, for all of us, where we're doing a great job. Find them. Think about them. Thank God for them. And there will always be areas where we wish we could do better. For those, we can skip the thinking about them part, because let's face it: if we knew how to fix ourselves, we'd have done it already. Let's take these things straight to God and say, "Help!?!" Then do our best to follow his suggestions. I often pray to be trustworthy with what I have, be it clothes that need to be washed or a book that needs to be written. We can't do it on our own. But the good news is, we don't have to :)

Need a laugh today? Check out Ryanhood singing this song for Ellen DeGeneres, asking her to teach them to dance. I love the line, "I don't know how to get to where I want to be, I don't know what we're missing but I'm starting to think, that you could teach us, maybe you could teach us..." Then they promise to wear sweater vests, which I'd definitely tune in for :)

Day 15: Pulling back, taking in the big picture

2009-06-15T07:02:00.000-07:00

"I forget who I am. Would you lend me a hand? I'm not myself..." -Ryanhood

I'm thinking about perspective this morning, and how easy it is to spend our lives focused in on tiny details. I get obsessed with how certain pieces of my little puzzle are/aren't fitting together, because that seems like the responsible thing to do. Isn't it my job to do everything I can to get it all to fit, to make my life work?

Yesterday, out of the blue, it occurred to me that it's been a long time--days, maybe even weeks--since I pulled back to look at the whole puzzle. Because of this, I've lost track of how much progress I've made in certain areas because I'm so honed in on one or two pieces that aren't fitting.

A few months ago I was talking to a friend who was afraid her big career dreams would never come true. She was new to the promises in the Bible, and ran headlong into that wall that says (insistently and with great authority): Those aren't for you. Don't get your hopes up. It will never happen...

I HATE that wall. Just because a prayer's not answered now does not mean the answer is no. It might be no. It might be not yet. Or it might be, hold on--something better is on the way.

God's timing makes sense...in hindsight. Looking back, I'm usually glad things worked out His way, rather than mine. The tough part is remembering that feeling and applying it forward, to the prayers I'm still praying (when I'm wondering where God is and when He'll be back from vacation.)

"Give God 5 years," I told my friend. "See what He does..." I don't think it reassured her, and I wasn't suggesting we give God firm time lines and demand He adhere to them. But giving Him time and space to work in our lives is helpful: not to God, but to us. I can't tell you how many times I've said, "Well, I guess I can't give up...it hasn't been 5 years yet." John Wimber, one of the founders of the church I'm a part of, used to say, "Don't talk to me about how God doesn't use your prayers to heal people until you've been at it awhile. Pray for 500 people, then we'll talk..."

Not all of my prayers have been answered within a 5 year time frame (the statute of limitations just ran on one of them) I see God working in so many places, bringing answers and miracles and joy...I'd be nuts not to sign on for another 5 year extension. But I can only see that when I take a minute (or a week) to focus on the big picture, how life is different, and how I'm different than I used to be.

Today's reading is three stories of celebration over lost things that are found. Jesus talks about a sheep that wandered off, a coin that got misplaced, and a son that takes off for fun and adventure only to fall on his face. There are many points here, but the one that might help us most today is this: Jesus is on a rescue mission. We're lost. We might have wandered off course without knowing it (the sheep), we might have no idea (the coin), or we might have told God we've had enough of His boring plan and stormed out to take on the world on our own (the son). Or we might be the older brother who stayed home and did everything right and now feels furious that someone less deserving gets the party. No matter what our personal story, Jesus says, "Here I've come to save the day!!!" (like Mighty Mouse, only better, because he's real. ) Let's let him.

In the meantime, today, let's practice taking in the big picture. When we see how far God has brought us, it's a lot easier to imagine that we're going somewhere :)

Day 13 & 14: Sit by the kitchen & Sow seeds

2009-06-13T08:02:00.000-07:00

Today's reading starts out on a grim note: the first section is called "Repent or Perish," which is then followed by the story of a low-producing fig tree that's in danger of being chopped up into firewood. Not very Up With People, I have to say.

What do we do with passages like this, the ones that don't have Jesus smiling benevolently while patting a small child's head? Me, I tend to skip them, or pretend those passages are for other folks...you know, the less spiritual ones, the ones who just don't get it. Then I go smugly about my day feeling proud of myself, quite sure I'm on the narrow path with a fig tree in full bloom.

I think this is part of the reason Jesus includes so many parables, all seemingly pointing in the same direction: we don't understand them all. So he makes a point one way, and then another, waiting for us to catch on. It's like he's saying, "Yo, Trish: YOU don't get it. Pay attention!" (Okay, Jesus probably never said "Yo," but you get my point...)

Here's where I caught on: in Chapter 14 (tomorrow's reading) Jesus gives some practical advice about etiquette and avoiding embarrassment: “When you are invited by anyone to a wedding feast, do not sit down in the best place, lest one more honorable than you be invited by him; and he who invited you and him come and say to you, ‘Give place to this man,’ and then you begin with shame to take the lowest place. But when you are invited, go and sit down in the lowest place, so that when he who invited you comes he may say to you, ‘Friend, go up higher.’ Then you will have glory in the presence of those who sit at the table with you. For whoever exalts himself will be humbled, and he who humbles himself will be exalted.”

That makes sense to me. When I sit at a table, I'm always thinking: "Who do I want to be next to/across from? Who will be fun to talk to? How do I make sure I don't end up next to the guy who's always trying to get people to join his multi-level marketing scheme?" Jesus says, essentially, "Just sit down. Take the spot no one else will want--the one by the bathroom, on the table corner, in the little kid's chair with the wobbly leg." When we do this, he says, God will invite us to a higher place. Just another piece of counter-intuitive advice on life in the Kingdom of God. But after a few years of trying it out, I can say (in the words of 12 Step Programs everywhere): It works if you work it.

Here's an idea on how to work it. I just read this book. It ends on a really charming note, suggesting that we sow seeds like farmers: not knowing exactly what will happen or when, but trusting God to make something of it. The author named six seeds each of us can sow daily in this spirit:

1. Silence
2. Prayer
3. Love
4. Friendship
5. Fasting
6. Hospitality

I'm going to give that a try. It feels counter-intuitive, as left to my own devices, lean in the opposite direction of almost every one of these. I close my eyes and draw the blinds on the outside world. So today, I'll sow some seeds.

Want to join in? How about this: a 3-for-1 deal! Drop a note in the comments this weekend, letting us know you're here, and say something encouraging to the rest of us. It can be long or short, unique or straightforward. That will count as 3 seeds (love, friendship, hospitality) for a just few short seconds of effort.

Then we wait to see what God does with them :)

In the harmonica-infused words of my favorite band, We could be what we want to see...

Day 12: Third Watch

2009-06-12T05:41:00.000-07:00

The hardest time for me when I'm hoping and praying for something new is the part of the day between the end of work and bedtime. There's this weird collision of heartbreak and hope that happens between 4pm and lights-out, and I go from gut-wrenching exhaustion (4-7pm) to enervated fear of ending yet another day without seeing more progress (7:01-midnight). During this time, not surprisingly, I rarely think about God. I'm too caught up in my own drama, convinced that if I just focus more or work more or (and this makes no sense at all) distract myself with some random TV show more, I'll turn around and POOF! there my answer will be! I'm like a little kid trying to make her way to Christmas morning.

Not surprisingly, the Bible suggests that it doesn't have to be this hard. Yes, there are huge times of waiting (the whole system of farmers planting seeds in the spring and not knowing what they'll harvest until fall teaches us that) but God is with us in those times. If we tune in, He'll tell us things and show us what He's doing. That's pretty cool, if you think about it.

The second type of silent prayer I mentioned earlier this week is Watching--asking God, "What are you doing in the world around me?" and then waiting to hear what He says. Yesterday in Luke we read Jesus' encouragement that we ask, seek, and knock on the door of what God has for us. The Amplified translation of this passage hits the point home that this is a process rather than a one time thing, saying: "everyone who asks and keeps on asking receives, and he who seeks and keeps on seeking finds, and to him who knocks and keeps on knocking, the door will be opened." I think that part of this ask/seek/knock process is pausing between rounds to ask God to open our eyes to what He's doing.

In my book I shared the story of what this looked like for my friend Amy when she and I were praying for husbands: how she suddenly had the urge to dress more like a girl, get her toenails painted, and swap out her backpack for a purse. She also felt like God told her, "Clean your room." On the outside, this didn't seem directly related to Mr. Right appearing on bended knee with a diamond, but God told her that these things were connected. So she got a cute purse, a mani/pedi, and spent one long weekend sorting through the belongings strewn around her apartment. She felt like she was part of what God was doing in her life, even though on the surface it made absolutely no sense at all. There's a peace to that feeling--a sense of connection with God--that is entirely worth the effort of calming down/turning off the TV for five minutes to see what God might want to say to us.

Today's reading in Luke 12 contains some warnings about how we live, and an encouragment that this sort of connection with God is important: "Do not set your heart on what you will eat or drink; do not worry about it. For the pagan world runs after all such things, and your Father knows that you need them. But seek his kingdom, and these things will be given you as well. Do not be afraid, little flock, for your Father has been pleased to give you the kingdom."

We can't always see the kingdom we've been given. I think it's okay to ask for help. When we do, God picks us up and points our eyes in the right direction...kind of like a parent lifting a toddler at the aquarium, pointing to the place the penguin will pop up out of the water so she doesn't miss it. With God's help, we won't miss our penguin :)

Day 11: The New Normal

2009-06-10T17:25:00.000-07:00

I've been thinking this week about how easy it is for us to change. We might not like it, but we do it all the time. Most of us are remarkably adaptable when we have to be. So even though we talk about fearing and/or hating change, we somehow manage: we switch from MySpace to Facebook to Twitter. We watch Conan O'Brien instead of Jay Leno, or Desperate Housewives when Friends goes off the air. We sip Cabernet at an art installation while dating Mr. Creative, then toss down a beer and Cracker Jacks watching the Mets with Mr. Athlete. Flexibility allows us to experience life, and keeps us from getting stuck. My ballet teacher used to say that strength protects you when you fall, while flexibility protects you when you move. I think there's something to that.

How can we be flexible in creating more room in our lives for God? I think the silence thing I mentioned earlier this week might be a great place to start. This book I'm reading talks about three types of prayerful silence: waiting, watching, and listening. One of the quotes in the chapter about waiting caught my attention: "The one fact we forget is that the saints of old were capable of spiritual silence simply because they had not contracted our modern habit of ceaseless talk in their ordinary life. Their days were days of silence, relieved by periods of conversation, while ours are a wilderness of talk with a rare oasis of silence." The source of this quote? D.L. Moody...who died in 1899. Imagine what he'd say about our "wilderness of talk" today?

I don't know about you, but I like the occasional oasis. Today, let's create one. Let's read Luke 11, where Jesus teaches his apostles how to pray, with what's come to be known as The Lord's Prayer. Then 5 minutes of silence: focus on Jesus, and just hang out. No need to talk, just be and see how it goes. Afterward, if you need inspiration, revisit this video. It makes me cry, every single time...In a good way!

This is the stuff that helps me dream of a new normal :)

Day 10: The Buddy System

2009-06-10T07:18:00.001-07:00

I'd planned on blogging about being silent today. I had it all shaped out in my mind, with pithy quotes and deep truisms about the value of shutting our mouths and focusing on God. Then my friend Pascha called and reminded me that what I need isn't always what I've got planned.

Here's the thing: My attempts at silence had not worked so well for me today. My mind woke up churning through this, that, and the other thing: fears, worries, to-do lists...not to mention Facebook, Twitter, and the pile of emails I haven't responded to yet because I'm waiting for that elusive moment where I have both endless time AND brilliant responsive words. UGH. I tried silence. I failed. Then I felt bad about myself and thought, "Who am I to tell anyone how to relate to God???" It was quite gross, the little mud pile I'd dug myself into.

Then Pascha called. "How are you?" she asked, and we were off to the races... Talking to her reminded me of the value of having a few people in our lives we can blurt to. People who understand that when you do this sort of gut-spill, only about 15% of it is real stuff to be addresssed, the rest is just mud that needs to be hosed off. I blurted, she blurted...then we talked and prayed about what was really going on. Fifty seven minutes later, we both felt like new, happier, more hopeful girls, equipped to handle the little patches of life God has given us to look after. Now, I feel like I can do the silence thing, focusing on God. I'm out of the puddle.

Yay for the buddy system :)

Based on this, I thought I'd throw out a challenge: Do you have a buddy? Someone you can be candid with about how you're doing, where you're struggling, and what God is talking to you about?

If yes, CALL THEM today. If no, PRAY and ask God to put someone who fits this description into your life, then keep your eyes open. Leave a comment below, saying either "Calling!" or "Praying!" so we can cheer each other on.

Luke 10 is all about the buddy system...be sure to check it out.

And here's a video of SOMETHING MORE that fits the theme perfectly, especially the intro conversation. (It's not on the album but it's so fantastic.)

Happy Wednesday :)

Day 9: We will all run out of sugar

2009-06-09T07:18:00.000-07:00

"We will all run out of bread. And we will all run out of sugar. And we will all run out of wine, that's fine. Cause it will all come back in time... and it will all be alright."

Okay, I'm pretty sure the Ryanhood guys mean something deep and metaphorical with this line, but for me it's literal. I run out of everything food related (my inexplicable aversion to grocery shopping may be part of the problem) and now that we live a million miles from the nearest store, nourishment is more about cobbling a few odd things together three times a day than partaking of genius gourmet feasts.

I like to think that it's like camping :)

If I'm not paying attention, I run out of stuff spiritually, too. As with food, I can coast along feeling and looking okay for quite awhile between meals, surviving on accumulated great moments with God (the ones that inspire me to believe that I can jump high and run fast and have an impossibly super-great life). But then, suddenly, the "alright" is gone, and I'm a wreck. It's like the moment when you realize your blood sugar is way too low and someone needs to roll you a donut NOW...there are times when my spirit crashes and immediate attention is required.

Not that this is happening today--this morning, I'm just (literally) out of bread and sugar--but it's a good to think about ahead of time, because in those low moments, I tend to mistake my spiritual dips for spiritual crises. It's important to know the difference between "I'm hungry" and "I'm wasting away."

I mentioned a few days ago that I'm really liking this book on prayer. In it, I've found three ways of praying that I've never thought of before in quite this way: waiting, watching, and listening. It's mortifying to admit this, but it's been a giant relief to be able to shut up during prayer time, and see what God has to say. And it's helping me stay stocked up. I've come to think of these times as "What to do in a spiritual emergency," a slogan, sort of like the fire safety warning we learned in kindergarten. But instead of Stop, Drop & Roll, it's Wait, Watch & Listen. (I guess you could do both together, which would make for a rather unique afternoon...)

We'll talk about these more over the next few days.

Have you ever noticed how much of trying to follow Jesus is negotiating the tension between things that seem, on the surface, contradictory? We see that today. We're talking about staying stocked up, and yet we see Jesus, in today's Luke chapter, sending out his disciples to try "doing the stuff" on their own. He tells them NOT to stock up, not to take any extra supplies with them, but to trust they'll be provided for along the way. Kind of interesting to think about places in our lives where we can do this, places where God says, "Trust me...I've got it covered" and we have to make a conscious choice rather or not we believe Him.

I'm not sure there's a universal answer to when to stock up and when to travel light and trust; I think the answers are unique, situational, and personal. Wait, Watch & Listen seems like a fun way to tap in.

Day 8: Yay Team

2009-06-08T06:42:00.000-07:00

Good Morning! I am glad to be awake, as I had crazy funky nightmares last night--a girl chasing me around trying to choke me with a rope, and then a middle-aged insurance salesman guy who was stalking me as I played mini-golf with my sister. UGH.

The 8th chapter of Luke talks about crazy funky evil things, and how Jesus got rid of them in a rather decisive manner (and now that I'm living in the country, it seems like I should be able to find a herd of pigs somewhere close by...)

This whole good vs. evil thing was new to me when I first opened the Bible. Before then, I'd read and believed various spiritual teachings that claimed "Only the love is real." Which sounds nice...until you have a nightmare, or scream at someone you love without meaning to, or watch the evening news. Then all those movies about good guys vs. bad guys seem to be onto something important.

I was watching the video of AROUND THE SUN this morning because it helps me recalibrate to happy and hopeful. And I started thinking about how, when we ask God to change our lives, to take us someplace we can't get to on our own, we (okay, maybe just I) forget that there will be a JOURNEY involved from here to there. Chances are we won't just teleport. And journeys have rough spots: flat tires, creepy creatures in the road, tolls we're not sure we can pay. I should confess that I usually HATE the endless "it's a journey" language that tends to accompany spiritual talk, but sometimes, it's just TRUE...

My point? There will be nightmares, and obstacles, and crazy funky evil things that tempt us to think nothing will ever work out. But in this 40 Days, we're asking GOD to move us...because we can't do it on our own. So as part of that, we have to ask, "Jesus, can you help me here?" and stand back to see what happens. This is a partnership we've entered into, not a solo venture. There are benefits to partnership.

If you haven't clicked on the video link yet, go back and do so. Watch how, in the beginning of the song, Ryan walks over and adjusts the tuning on Cameron's guitar. It's a great picture of how teamwork can work when we're playing out of tune. Sometimes it's big and dramatic with pigs flying into the sea; other times it's a friend taking a small step our way to help us recalibrate. As some corporate guru once said, "Teamwork Makes the Dream Work!"

Here's to sweet dreams this week :)

Day 6: Zonked

2009-06-06T09:49:00.000-07:00

Sorry for the late post today...both my flights back from Maine last night were delayed, and I landed back here in Ithaca waaaaay past my usual bedtime. I'm off to a slow start this morning!

As I was lying in bed earlier feeling completely guilty for not having this post up already (and yet knowing full well I had not a single coherent thought to share and wouldn't for quite some time) it occurred to me, for a brief moment, that I could just blow the whole thing off. It was a fleeting thought, but an interesting one. Because as much as we tell ourselves as adults we can't quit things, we can't give up, we do so all the time. We abandon hobbies and fitness programs and self-help books (by the caseload). Sometimes with good reason. I'm not against quitting, but I think it's interesting how we make these sorts of decisions. Even more so when the thing we're quitting is a relationship--with a friend, a love interest, the blogsphere....

I'm not so good at this second kind of quitting, which means I have to be honest about who I am and what's going on with me, even if it reveals that I'm not the fabu, totally together superhero that I'd like you to think I am. Even if it means I sign on and say, "I'm zonked..."

Ryanhood's NOTHIN' BUT THE REAL THING hits right at the heart of this. I LOVE this video: the guys are warming up the crowd for the headliners--I think this was the Kelly Clarkson/Jay-Z concert--and winning them over. Which takes an incredible blend of skill, humor, and humility I hope someday to acquire. It's HARD to stand up in front of a bunch of people and convince them you're worth listening to. And yet if you have something to say, you don't have a choice (except, of course, to quit, and who wants that?) THIS, my friends, is what it looks like in real time to fight for a dream:

So I try to be see-through, let you see me through
The armor that I wear and the way that I wear my hair
See what's waiting underneath...
It's me on my knees with my face to the floor
learning what it means to be rich when I feel poor

That's me today. Often, actually. But what I'm learning as I grow up is that this is a good thing, not a bad one. The facade of perfect Trish I mentioned yesterday was a debacle: not much fun, a mediocre friend, always terrified someone would realize the truth...that I had no idea on earth what I was doing or what my next step would be. I was the embodiment of a quote I once heard about how The world is full of people vying for the spotlight who have no idea what they'd say if they had our attention.

What would you say if you had the world's attention?

Not many of us think of admiting, "it's me on my knees with my face to the floor..." but there's a beautiful truth in that. People who see this, and then share the wisdom they find down there? Those are the folks I want to know. Because if you're in the public eye for more than a nano-second, the truth comes out (as we see on the cover of tabloids every week). The Ryanhood guys are right: Nothing but the real thing will do.

Luke 6 offers us some pictures of what it looks like to be rich when we feel poor: abundance, healing, and a "it's so crazy it just might work" new outlook on what matters and how we should re-order our lives. I'll also post the link to Luke 7 for tomorrow (like last year, I'll only be posting once on the weekends to make sure I'm synched up with God's rule that we take a day of rest...if something is in the 10 Commandments, I try to make it a priority!) which continues these same themes.

Thanks for letting me be real. It's not easy, but it's so much better than quitting!

Day 5: What's Your Story?

2009-06-03T17:51:00.000-07:00

My sister and I tag-teamed bedtime with my 5 year old niece last night, each of us imagining a chunk of a story, round-robin style. My sister and I are pretty creative, but my niece ran circles around us, creating a walrus named Alberforth who ate only salad. I won't bog you down with the full story of Alberforth's sad tale, except to say he exploded somewhere over South Dakota. (Neither Meg nor I saw that coming...)

This got me thinking about the stories we tell when we're older than five, when we reach that age where we're aware of our self image and start taking steps to mold it. Suddenly, every day is fraught with decisions: how much to reveal about ourselves, what light to shine on where we've been, how to "spin" where we're going (or our lack of progress in any discernible direction). For me, this sort of story telling has always led to bad things, my facade blowing up in my face like Alberforth. And yet even though I know this, it's hard not to repeat.

Before we started the 40 Days, I asked the Ryanhood guys for some "behind the music" information about their songs. One of the ones that seems really honest and brave to me is MATURE, which starts out, "Sometimes mature just means over my head and I don't really know what I'm saying..." Ryan emailed that this came to him one night as he was listing to some music, thinking about life on tour:

"Pretty soon I had a song about my desperate need to impress people," he said, "and how over time, especially on long tours, this desperation starts to change Cameron and me. We place our "worth" in the number of people who clap, and the number of CDs we sell at the end of the show. We begin to morph our personalities on stage into whatever gets the biggest reaction. "Sometimes I lie a consecutive time while I stare in the eyes of a stranger". We lose ourselves. And the problem is, at the end of show, while people may seem to really like us, it might not really be 'us' they were watching."

I've done that. I do that. It's so hard, when you think people expect something of you, to resist the urge to figure out what that is and try to become it. We all have this desperate need to impress people, and an equally desperate conviction that who we are isn't enough to get the job done. It's sad, and astonishing, and right at the heart of what Jesus can help us change.

In Luke 5, we see Him do this for a bunch of different people: a leper, a paralytic...people with legitimate public image challenges. And then Jesus comes along and changes everything. Imagine what He can do for the rest of us? Imagine what He can do for you? What would it look like for us to be ourselves--only "Jesus enhanced" (as my husband calls it)--instead of the version of "us" we cook up trying to impress everyone?

Day 4: Doing the Math

2009-06-02T16:49:00.000-07:00

Another lyric that captivated me in the middle of the STOPLESS video yesterday:

"I'm doing the math, counting the cost...Working the sums and coming up lost. Claiming the promise, I’m grinding the crush. I’m strong and I’m stopless and weak and in love."

That's what it feels like, right? The things we're praying for don't make sense mathematically. On paper, it would be entirely reasonable to give up, to get on with the life we have, to settle. And yet God calls us out of this thinking, suggesting that ask, have faith, believe...even when it hurts to do so. That's grinding the crush. It makes us all sorts of contradictory things: strong, stopless, weak, in love... (If they weren't constrained by rhyming, I suspect the Ryanhood guys could add a few more contradictions to that list. I think most of us could.)

So what do we do?

Jesus' experience in Luke 4 inspires me. He felt the crush. But as he beat back the devil's lies with the truth--what the Word of God actually says--Satan relented. That's encouraging. If you have a Bible, you have the same stuff Jesus used to grind out the crush and stay hopeful. Interestingly, it's not like Jesus' life was easy after that; the very next thing to happen was that his hometown rejected him and tried to throw him off a cliff. Not exactly rock star status! But the story didn't end there for Him, and it doesn't for us, either.

Do you have people telling you that what you're praying for will never happen? That's fine. When you hear those things, simply remind yourself what God says in the Bible about your situation. (And if you need help finding that, email me and I'll do my best to help).

Happy day 4 :)

Day 3: Curious?

2009-06-02T16:06:00.000-07:00

I'm flying to Maine today to visit my sister (!!!) a bag of books in tow for the plane.

One of my favorite things about being a reader is that when I feel like I'm failing at something in life (or, to use less melodramatic language, when I'm not as good at something as I'd like to be) I'm not left to wallow in my cluelessness--I can seek out the wisdom of others and try a new approach.

Yesterday, I started a book on prayer. It's author doesn't claim that his suggestions are "the way" to pray. He simply offers a structure folks might not have tried before. He suggests building up to an hour of prayer, in five minute blocks. So you pray about one thing for five minutes, then you move to the next thing. He even has a handy wheel to use as a visual prompt. For me, as I attempt to add some architecture to my free-form prayer style, this is an awesome find. I tried it today and was surprised by how much I enjoyed praying, and how connected to God I felt all day as a result. And it all started because I was curious--I sense that there must be more to prayer than what I was experiencing.

I love this lyric from Ryanhood's STOPLESS: "How pointless is my point of view, until I reach the point of You?" I think that's the heart of what we're looking for here...God's point for each of our lives, the reason He placed these dreams and longings inside us, and His answers for how to pursue them.

We get hints of this in Luke, chapter 3. John the Baptist...kind of a weird dude, but definitely the kind of guy who piques your curiosity as he points to someone beyond himself, someone coming to challenge everything we think we know about life.

As Dorothy Parker wisely said, "The cure for boredom is curiosity. There is no cure for curiosity."

What are your spiritual questions? Where are you looking for answers?

Day 2: Choices

2009-06-02T05:19:00.000-07:00

Yesterday was a bit of a train wreck for me, in terms of the fabulous start I'd envisioned for my 40 Days of Faith. I had all these big dreams about sailing out over the starting line into an entirely new way of ordering my day, prioritizing God, believing for miracles large and small...it was like I expected to instantly morph into some superstar blend of Mother Teresa's faith and Kathy Griffin's work ethic. Not so much...

I found this quote that got the wheels in my mind turning a bit about how today might be different:

"One's philosophy is not best expressed in words; it is expressed in the choices one makes. In the long run, we shape our lives and we shape ourselves. The process never ends until we die. And, the choices we make are ultimately our own responsibility." --Eleanor Roosevelt

Provocative, right? It made me think of the Apostle Paul's lament that time after time, he wanted to choose what he knew was right, but found himself doing just the opposite. And yet there's hope, he says, because Jesus has the power to change this aspect of how we operate. If we invite Jesus in and ask for his help (and we have to ask; he's too polite to barge in and take over) he will give us the power through his Holy Spirit to make better choices. Today, I'm taking him up on that offer.

For obvious reasons, Ryanhood's song, HELPLESS, HOPELESS jumped out at me this morning. "Today is a day for letting go...of promises I've broken, and words that I have spoken..." That's me, right now. You too, perhaps. But then they go on to ask: "I wonder, could this be the end...or is this where everything begins?" That's worth thinking about. I'm going with option #2, believing that today can be a day of better choices--that shape our lives and ourselves, just like Eleanor said.

Speaking of choices, there were some questions in the comments about fasting, and how it fits into our 40 Days. The Bible suggests that fasting goes hand-in-hand with prayer. During my first 40 Days of Faith seven years ago, I fasted from coffee. In subsequent years I've fasted from reading (which made trips to the hairdresser long as I stared out the window while my highlights foiled...), baked goods, or television. The idea here is that when we're craving coffee or sweets, or passing up the latest issue of People Magazine at the salon, we can offer this up to God. It creates space for prayer, and a reminder to do so. I find myself saying, "Lord, I want (whatever I'm praying for) more than I want caffeine/pop culture updates/dessert right now." Somehow this connects me to my real desires, because I can't escape into the lesser things I use to comfort or distract me. Fasting is a form of spiritual investment, I guess...putting God ahead of our immediate desires to create space to focus on what we really long for.

Important Note: if an eating disorder has ever been a struggle for you, PLEASE don't fast from food. Ask God what your fast should be; he has lots of good ideas!

In the Bible today we're in the second chapter of Luke's Gospel. If you find yourself humming "It's Beginning to Look A Lot Like Christmas" or "Hark the Herald Angels Sing," rock on...

Here's to a day of good choices!

Day One: Ready to Go?

2009-06-01T05:51:00.000-07:00

I woke up this morning to find the war of the worlds going on in my mind. On one side, I could hear the hopeful opening lines of Ryanhood's song, AROUND THE SUN ("Ready to go? Honey let's begin...we'll try to see by the light of the sun and tell it like it is...") playing on my mental soundtrack, while at the same time I felt this deep need to consider giving up on everything I planned on praying for during this 40 Days of Faith. You know that rational-sounding voice that says (so persuasively), "You'd be fine without that, now, wouldn't you? Maybe you should just move on..."

Not exactly the headspace I expected on Day One! But kind of typical, I'd guess. I bet if you could read the minds of runners at the start of any marathon, you'd find a fair number of them thinking, "What am I doing here? This is a terrible idea..." But then the gun fires and off they go.

So here we go :)

One of the people I follow on Twitter is Michael Hyatt, the CEO of Thomas Nelson Publishers. He's been "tweeting" quotes from a new book on reaching for your dreams by John Maxwell, and if his stragegy is to get me to consider buying the book, it's working...I'm intrigued. Especially something he posted this morning:

"Every journey toward a dream is personal...so is the price that must be paid for it."

More and more lately, I'm struck by the failure of our socital insistance on lumping people together into catagories (diagnosis, personality types, etc...) I think God made us with an astonishing level of variation. So it makes sense that the roads we take to realize our dreams will be unique. So to whatever extent I'm comparing my progress to someone else (or EVERYONE else) I'd do well to cut that out and focus on my own stuff.

So today, as we start out, let's cut out the comparisons, and focus on our own stuff. And on God, to see what information he has for us about this journey.

To help with this, I thought it would be fun to read the Gospel of Luke together. It's the third book in the New Testament, an account of Jesus' life written by a doctor. If you were part of last year's 40 Days of Faith, you may remember Luke as the author of the book Acts (the story of the adventures of Jesus' apostles after His resurrection). Luke's Gospel is the prequel to Acts...which means we're going at this kind of like Star Wars :)

Here's a link to the first chapter...it's like reality TV, with miracles!

If you click on the video below to hear Ryanhood singing, you'll hear that the next lines to come along after the call to start out are exactly on point for me today:

"I wanna overcome pain, without feeling pain. Yeah, I guess I want what I want when I want it, yeah I want it both ways..."

Today, whether we feel ready or not, we're starting out. The gun has fired, it's time to pray. This is (most likely) gonna hurt. Let's do it anyway. Let's ask God for the things we want most in our lives, whether they seem reasonable or not. And then let's listen, to see what He has to say. Let's ask him to move us to someplace we can't get to on our own.

Tug of War

2009-05-27T07:39:00.001-07:00

Check out these wise words from author Kristin Armstrong about watching her daughters compete (fiercely, with total commitment and determination) in a tug of war competition at their school field day:

"We can learn a lot from watching children play and compete. They have no inhibitions about what they look like when they try hard; they lay it all on the line without fear. They don't really know their limits so they have no awareness or anxiety about approaching them. If they know someone believes they can do it, they are certain they can. Watching them work together towards a common goal reminds me of everything that is pure and good and redemptive about humankind....

When was the last time you gave something special your 'all'? When did you pull so hard for a dream that you got red-faced and your hands hurt from your simple and adamant refusal to let go? When did your effort simultaneously exhaust and invigorate you? For what (or whom) are you willing to dig in your heels, get rope burns on your palms, and slide across the dirt on your behind? When did you last pursue something with the optimistic abandon of a child?

Great questions, huh? Something to think about this week, as we head into Monday. I hadn't thought about prayer in terms of tug-of-war before, but I think it's an apt image: we grab hold of the rope, knowing that our doubts will try to drag us down. But we pull anyway. We don't give up. Here's to digging in our heels :)

Pre-adventure prep talk

2009-05-26T07:48:00.000-07:00

The countdown to June 1st is on! I thought I'd jump in ahead of time and give some thoughts on how to gear up for this season of...well, what to call it? Spiritual adventure? That sounds kind of cool (and fits well with our goal of learning to negotiate the tension between praying big and breathing easy) so we'll make that our new slogan:

Welcome to Spiritual Adventure 2009--just like Outward Bound, but with showers! (and no bugs...)

If you're new to the blog, here's a link to last year's description, along with some tips for starting out.

For me, this year feels slightly different than last, in that most of my thoughts about life, faith, adventure, and dreaming big have taken place during a huge transition, as Steve and I moved from Cambridge, MA to Ithaca, NY. So this idea of Spiritual Adventure has been at the forefront of my mind for a few months now. And as I've processed it all, one CD has been in almost constant rotation on my iPod--almost like my Spiritual Adventure soundtrack. It's called THE WORLD AWAITS by Ryanhood.

The lyrics on the CD hit on every theme I've pondered during this season of hoping, wondering, being terrified I might make the biggest mistake (or miss the best opportunity) of my life. So I thought I'd share them with you, each day, here as part of the posts. They'll give us a great frame of reference.

As an addend bonus, when I emailed the guys in the band to ask permission and for some background on their creative process, I hit a goldmine of great stuff to share! (They recently opened for Kelly Clarkson & Jay-Z, so I was psyched they had the chance to answer). In a nutshell, their words confirmed what I've seen: building the life we long for is work! But it's worth it, and miracles show up in the middle of it all when we leave a little room for God.

So--If you'd like to jump in a few days early, you can order THE WORLD AWAITS here from their website (or at iTunes, Amazon, or wherever you like to buy your music).

And a quick note of solace/encouragement for those of you who prayed for something big last year during our 40 Days together and haven't seen it happen yet: Me, neither. That doesn't mean we have to give up, though, or that God's answer is "no." I'm not sure what it means. But I guess my best response is to give God 40 more days to revisit the conversation :)

See you Monday!

40 Days of Faith 2009

2009-04-01T07:13:00.000-07:00

Hi All! Wow, it's fun to be back on this blog...I've missed it, and you, and praying together for big things. If you're game, I'd love to do this again this year, starting on June 1st, 2009. Our theme this time will be something I've been working on since last summer, an idea I've come to call PRAY BIG/BREATHE EASY.

There's an unavoidable tension between being brave enough to hope (and ask) for great things in life while living in the midst of a life that sometimes feels less than great. I'm hoping that together, we can find the grace and skill to find our way across that high wire between where we are and where we want to be.

At the very least, we'll spend the beginning of summer reminding each other, "Don't look down!!!"

See you then :)

Day Forty: Can You Believe It?

2008-07-11T06:00:00.000-07:00

Astonishing, right? Didn't the finish line of our 40 Days seem a million miles away? And yet here we are.

Do you know what this means? It means that we've accomplished something. We may have done it gracefully on some days and grudgingly on others, but that doesn't matter. Every prayer we offered or tossed or flung violently up to God, he heard. And he loves us. And he's working our lives for good, according to his plan. Which is better than our plan...by definition. This is no small matter. Come tomorrow, my friends, it's time to celebrate :)

I want to offer you two scenarios for how tomorrow could go, so that we can make some choices ahead of time.

Scenario #1: You wake up, realize that the 40 Days are over, and see no evidence that God was even paying attention. You feel a knot of despair wrap around your insides. You check this website repeatedly, hoping for some extension plan or caveat, then decide that you hate us all because we've abandoned you (and gone off to live our perfect, every-prayer-answered-as-if-by-special-delivery, lives). You decide to extend your fast...maybe if you give up more, for longer, God might listen? You fall into bed tomorrow night feeling sad and alone.

You might guess that I'm not a fan of this one! That's why I'm bringing it up in advance. There will be temptation to go this route, to doubt whether this little experiment was anything other than a new way to see our hopes dashed. The Apostle Peter warned us that Evil roams about like a roaring lion, looking to destroy us. Scenario #1 is an example of what that could look like. But Paul makes the fine point that if we resist the devil, he must flee from us. That's the true meaning behind all those "Jesus is my homeboy" t-shirts: if we're down with Jesus, Evil can't hijack our thoughts. But he can try.

What to do? It helps to have a plan. I present this for your consideration:

Scenario #2: You wake up tomorrow, and think, "This is the first day of the rest of my life! I wonder what God's gonna do?" Alongside your breakfast, you have a giant serving of whatever you were fasting from (presuming it was a food item) because hey--it's a celebration! All day long, as the thing you've been praying for comes to mind, you think, "Thank you God, that that's taken care of. You've heard my prayers and thank you in advance for the awesome ways you're answering. Thank you that you are working in places I cannot see, doing things beyond all I can ask or imagine. And thank you for all you're doing in me to make me ready. In Jesus' name, Amen..."

And you repeat as needed :)

Today's reading, the final two chapters in Acts, presents a vivid picture of what it can be like to walk in the newness God offers after a season of intense prayer. The scene where Paul is bitten by the poisonous viper is what I'm referring to. Everyone around him sees this deadly snake latch onto him and assumes it's divine retribution because Paul is a prisoner; they figure he must be a murderer who has it coming. And they're not wrong: Paul is a murderer. And yet he shakes the snake off like it's nothing. What's that about?

When we align our lives with Jesus, he makes us a new creation. The old things of our lives--our mistakes, our bad choices, the pain we've suffered from others--goes away. He takes those things, and leaves us clean and new. But it's not that the old stuff never comes back to bug us--sometimes it shows up like a slithery snake, trying to attach itself to us, poison us, and take us down. There may even be people around who think, "Well, she had it coming..." But we can shake it off like it's nothing. Because that's all it is.

Pretty cool, right? Good to remember :)

Do me a favor? ENJOY this last day of our 40 Days. And enjoy tomorrow even more. Make sure to break your fast in some way to officially close this season. And keep us posted about what God does! I'm expecting fabulous things, because we're praying to a fabulous God.

Many of you have asked about next steps for this blog, and I'll post something about that soon. I have some ideas, I just need to check in with God before announcing anything official. And I'll also have suggestions for reading, websites, etc. that I'll post once I'm back from vacation. But for now, let's finish strong today, and celebrate tomorrow. And the day after that...and the day after that.

Thank you for doing this with me. I love you guys, and everything God is doing in our lives. This has been an amazing experience....I suspect it's just the beginning.

Today's Song: Smellin' Coffee by Chris Rice. So funny, so good, so true.

Last thing I remember: sayin' bye to yesterday
Glad to see it over, pulling covers over my head
What were you doing, while I dreamt the night away?
Cause I can tell that some thing's different and my eyes ain't even open yet...

Day Thirty Nine: Running, but not on empty.

2008-07-10T05:49:00.000-07:00

When I got online this morning, the first thing I did was Google the lyrics to the Jackson Brown song, "Running on Empty." That was the phrase running through my head as I thought about today's post--I had nothing. I quickly discovered, though, that that particular tune is not "Today's Song" material: despite the peppy tune, it's pretty grim. Each verse describes some different facet of a life spent chasing, but never finding. And the worst part is the feeling it encapsulates, of not even knowing what that thing is that you're chasing after.

This was a perspective-changer for me. Because as challenging as it is for us in this 40 Days of Faith to be so aware of what we want God to do in our lives, those empty spaces we're hoping he'll fill, our running (and waiting) has its up side. At the very least, it's not empty.

First, we know we're running after the living God, the one who has the power to answer our prayers. We're not running in vain. And wherever we're at on that road, at least we're on the right road. That's no small matter.

And beyond that, we know what we're running after, because we've been praying, asking God to clarify our desires. They're tangible, now: husbands, babies, book deals, healing for ourselves or people we love....as much as it hurts to want specific things and see no evidence that they're coming, when God answers these prayers, we'll know. That's helpful, right?

I was struck by one of the comments yesterday that drew out the difference between wanting something, and wanting it now. I think that's an important part of this. When we've prayed for awhile about a specific desire, it's really easy to fall into the trap of thinking, "Maybe this isn't God's will for me if it hasn't happened yet..." But have you noticed that these sorts of thoughts rarely leave us feeling encouraged, but rather bereft and empty?

I won't pull punches: when it comes to big life issues like marriage and children, this might be the worst advice I've ever heard. And it comes up A LOT. Here's the thing: as I read the Bible, it's God's will for 99% of us to be married. He set life up to work that way, and when that doesn't happen, it means something has gone wrong. (Note: this doesn't mean necessarily that we've done something wrong, although it could. We live in a world with real evil, trying to keep us from God's best. I think that's important to acknowledge here). The same goes for having children, and for healing, and a whole host of other things the Bible talks about as part of the benefits package for those of us who choose to follow Jesus.

BUT, where we might be out of God's will is the timing. We want now, but he's thinking long-term. I've noticed that so far in my life, there's about a seven year differential between my plan and God's plan. That's not my favorite thing in the world! And yet it's an opportunity for me to live in that in-between place, between the now and the not-yet. Just because God doesn't have THAT answer today--the one I'm looking for so diligently--doesn't mean he doesn't have other answers and blessings and great things in store for the next twenty-four hours. But it's my choice whether or not I notice them.

Today, let's notice.

Today's reading: Acts 25-26. We're still in court. Ugh. I promise, things get VERY cool tomorrow!

Today's song: Walk by Faith by Jeremy Camp. It's rather the opposite of "Running on Empty":

Would I believe you when you say
Your hand will guide my every way?
Will I receive the words you say
Every moment of every day?
Well, I will walk by faith
Even when I cannot see...

Day Thirty Eight: Small changes, big results?

2008-07-09T05:37:00.001-07:00

I have to confess: the courtroom scenes in today's reading bore me. They probably won't bore you; I think this is a holdover from my days as a litigation attorney, when I discovered that watching people argue all day is not nearly as fascinating as I thought it would be. And it's discouraging to see people in positions of authority screw things up.

What shook me out of this unhappy zone, though, was when Paul's nephew overheard the plot to kill Paul and essentially saved his life by reporting it. It made me wonder: where was the rest of Paul's family, spiritually-speaking? And what did they think about his change of perspective? I mean, at the beginning of Acts, Paul was the most legalistic type of Jew imaginable, arranging to have Jesus' followers killed. Then he gets a little attitude adjustment from God on the road to Damascus, and suddenly he's traveling the world singing "Jesus loves me, this I know..." ? It's not hard to imagine that his family might have been a little, well, surprised.

It's weird to be into Jesus. No other spiritual path I've walked freaks people out in quite this way. I wonder if maybe this is proof of what my friend Dave says, that God created the universe to be RELATIONAL. The only way to not be freaked out by my spiritual choices (0r anyone's, for that matter) is to get to know me. Then you can sort it out, and decide if the path I'm on is worthy of concern. Or, in the alternative, if it's a good thing bringing much-needed improvements.

Perhaps Paul's family LIKED that he was no longer a marauding legalist. I'm guessing his earlier persona made him a tough guy to be around during family dinners. They might not have known what to do with his new Jesus-ey lifestyle, but if the bottom line was that he was an easier guy to be in relationship with, that sounds like something God would set up as part of his plan.

What's my point here? Today might be a great time to check in with God about what he's doing in each of our lives as we pursue Jesus with our deepest dreams. Are we different? Better? Have any of our attitudes been supernaturally adjusted? We might not see the results we're praying for yet (as I mentioned Monday, I had no date for the celebration after my first 40 Days), but often we can see God moving in unexpected ways, changing things that we never would have thought of. We don't know what we'll need to receive the God's answer to our prayers, but he does. Ask him today to reveal how he's preparing the way inside you, and take note of the answer. Be encouraged :)

Today's song: Gone Are The Days by Nichole Nordeman. It's just so brilliant:

I had found it was easier to dance around
the edges of who I could be.
If I chose to expose what grows deep down,
would you still desire what you see?
No more self-rejection
No longer paralyzed
This holy perfection
Is me inside Your eyes...

What stuns me about this verse is that the kind of acceptance she's describing comes from God. But the promise I see in the Bible is that the husband God sends for us will see us this way, too: through Jesus' eyes, rather than his own. I think that's a mighty fine thing to pray for, actually. Trust me, it comes in handy when you put on thirty pounds right after the wedding, or when you face breaks out, or you say something impossibly hurtful to the man you love. Only God can make him see you as perfect, despite the things that happen in life. But the thing is--God can make him see you as perfect, despite the things that happen in life!

It's never to early to pray for that :)

Day Thirty Seven: In the Game

2008-07-08T05:45:00.000-07:00

I like that God does miracles. It seems like a huge upside to following Jesus, this possibility that through his power, circumstances can change in ways that make no natural sense whatsoever. That strikes me as rather spectacular.

And yet even as I think about that word, spectacular, I can feel something in me (I suspect it's God) urging me to correct my assessment. I'm no etymologist, but this word looks an awful lot like two others: spectacle, and spectator. I'd guess that they're related. And this inner prompting seems to be the Holy Spirit reminding me that watching from the sidelines isn't how God designed this miracle thing to operate. If we're following Jesus, the Bible says, we'll do miracles through his power at work within us--we get to play, not just watch. That's kind of wild to think about, especially for a girl like me who has always dreamed of being a superhero.

I suspect that many of us have this inner longing to be more powerful--to make more of a positive impact on the world--than our natural abilities allow. But I've looked far and wide for a superhero training school, to no avail. So the question becomes, how do we connect with that something BEYOND our own most actualized selves? Jesus is the only one I've found who delivers on these kind of promises. But the catch is: we don't get to go to school and train for six years; there's no Jesus equivalent to Hogwarts. Instead, as my friend Dave points out, Jesus jumps into our lives like we're in a game of Cranium and declares, "All Play!"

All Play, for those of you not familiar with this game, means that no one gets to watch while the others try to figure out the answer; everyone plays, all at the same time. It's the most fun part of the game, like getting called off the bench in sports. When it comes to doing what Jesus did--the miracles, the lives transformed in a single conversation, the multiplication of fixed assets into abundant provision--we're all meant to play. Imagine what that might mean for the world?

No, seriously: Stop reading, right now, and imagine what that might mean for YOUR world, and for the greater world around you. Amazing, right?

Let's pray:
God, show me what this looks like for my life.
Open the eyes of my heart that I might be enlightened and know the hope to which you've called me; the riches of your inheritance, Jesus; and your incomparably great power for us who believe.
Show me what you're calling me to, and give me the courage to step into it confident that it's not me at work, but you.
Let me see your miracles, God--in my life and in the world around me.
Thanks in advance!
In Jesus' name, Amen.

Sometimes you've just gotta dive in :)

If you'd like some help in thinking about this miracles thing, you might check out this talk given by Dave Schmelzer. It's part of the same series as the talks on prayer and guidance I've given over the past few weeks.

Our theme of diving in continues as we look to today's reading, in that we need to double up and do two chapters a day if we want to get to the cool finale of Acts by Friday. So here are today's chapters. Our friend Paul is in a bit of trouble. But oddly enough, the closer he gets to prison, the broader the audience for his message. Interesting strategy. I'll confess that I'd much rather post something on YouTube than go to prison as a way to get the word out, but we all have our preferred ways of operating!

Today's song: All That I Can Do by Bethany Dillon.
I ran around the room again
I ran outside and I ran back in
And I just couldn't get away from myself.
I don't care what tomorrow brings
I won't back down for anything
I want to think that I was made for something else...
All that I can do is hold onto You
And follow where you lead, where You're leading me...

Day Thirty Six: Instead of a reality check, how about a sovereignty check?

2008-07-07T06:32:00.000-07:00

I received a heartfelt email last night from one of our participants. She's concerned about how we'll end these 40 Days--about the panic that can jump on us as the days wind down and the answers to our prayers still seem miles (or even lifetimes) away. I'd planned on posting on how to fend off this onslaught anyway, but her email reminded me to clarify a few things, lest you guys feel abandoned in such a vulnerable time.

First, let's take a minute to look at what this 40 Days is (and isn't). We're in the home stretch of an intensely focused season of faith. The way we've lived for these days is not meant to be the new "normal." Rather, it's a season where we've put other things aside to seek God in a certain way. Now, understandably, we can think that if we haven't seen our prayers answered yet (and I'm in this category myself--as excited as I am about the answer to my "where do I keep my costume jewelry?" prayer, that's not what I came into this 40 Days looking for!) we need to re-up and do 40 more. Thankfully (says the girl who will be VERY excited to see sugar in her coffee again come Saturday) I don't think that's how it works. Just because we haven't seen his answer yet doesn't mean God hasn't heard our prayers, or that his answer is no.

If you've read my book, you know that I ended my first 40 Days of Faith experience--where I prayed DILIGENTLY for a husband--with nary a man on the horizon. Nothing. Nada. Zilch. And then a complete Mr. Wrong came along, and I assumed he must be from God because he showed up and asked me out. ACK! Major detour. But miraculously, through all of this, Jesus kept me sorted out. I made mistakes, but he always got me back on course--because I gave him permission to work in my life. And when he finally answered my prayer for an awesome husband, trust me--I didn't quibble about the timing!

The truth is, I'm not sure I've EVER seen an answer to one of my big prayers during the actual 40 Days of Faith. It may happen yet, so I'm not discounting the possibility. But I want to make crystal clear that if your answer isn't here by midnight Friday, that doesn't mean you've done something wrong, or that God said no. This isn't Cinderella.

Timing is something that's up to God--it's in his authority to make those calls, not ours. That's part of what makes him God.

This brings me to what my role has been in this 40 Days. Last night's email asked me to become more involved in the comments this week if I had the time. I'm so sorry if my silence has come across as not caring or having time for how this is going for you guys--in fact, just the opposite is true. I check the comments several times each day. I pray for you, asking Jesus for the help only he can give. I've often started to respond to a comment, only to feel God telling me, "Stop..." Because the truth is, there's no advice I have to offer anyone, other than, "Try Jesus--he can help." That's been the whole point of these 40 Days...not my great advice, but actual spiritual power from the living God.

If we let him, Jesus can get (and keep) each of us on track to God's best for our lives. He's the link between us and the answers we're looking for; I'm just the girl standing by the side of the road with one of those "Scenic Attractions" signs: Jesus does Miracles--Turn Here! Anything else I'd offer would be merely my opinion, which is an entirely different thing (and not, in my experience at least, particularly helpful when the deepest desires of our hearts are hanging in the balance.) That's why I've kept quiet. But please know that I'm there, reading, praying, and asking God for his miracles, right along with you.

So here's the take home for today: we're in the home stretch of our marathon--let's enjoy it and finish well. The crowd is cheering; random strangers hand us cups of water when we need it most; we see the finish line off in the distance and can't quite believe we've made it this far. The truth is, none of us will know what these 40 Days "mean" in terms of our lives for quite awhile. Stuff takes time. (How's that for a profound theological truth?)

Here's what we can know, though: God is alive, working, active in each of our prayers, in ways that are bigger than what we see in front of us. That's what the Apostle Paul meant when he said that God is able to do "exceedingly, abundantly above all we can ask or imagine, according to the power that is at work within us... " That power is Jesus, and we can't imagine what he's up to. This is a good thing :)

Today's reading: Acts 20. Paul literally bores someone to death, and then brings him back to life. That always makes me laugh. And I think this warning from Paul is important:
"I know that after I leave, savage wolves will come in among you and will not spare the flock. Even from your own number, people will arise and distort the truth in order to draw away disciples after them. So be on your guard!"

We all need to be on guard, and know the truth so we'll recognize counterfeit offers to answer our prayers. There is real truth, and we can know it. I've heard that that's what sets us free :)

Today's song: Check out Romans by Jennifer Knapp.

P.S. If you want to email me about finding relevant Bible verses to pray into or questions along those lines, that offer still stands! I just wanted to clarify here why I haven't been posting in the comments.

Day Thirty Four: Action, Reminders, and Grace

2008-07-05T08:19:00.000-07:00

Today's reading is rather amazing--it's one of my favorites in the whole Bible.

The Seven Sons of Sceva remind us that we need our own connection to Jesus--we can't piggyback on someone else's--or we'll get our butts whumped as we fight off the things that try to bring us down.

The folks burning their sorcery books suggest that perhaps getting rid of the random Buddha figurine or books on manifesting our destiny we have scattered around the house might be a good way to confirm our allegiance to Jesus and his plan for our life.

And the way Paul walks away from folks who aren't interested in what he has to offer is super-helpful to me: we don't need to convince anyone of anything, spiritually speaking. If they're curious, we've got some good stuff to share. If not, it's okay to drop it.

I think the take home today is that God leads us where we need to go. Sometimes it's baptism, sometimes it's tossing some chatchkes, sometimes it's turning and walking away. It's pretty cool, when you think about it--the wisdom we need is right there for the asking.

Today's song: Amazing Grace by Avalon. This is my favorite remake of this classic hymn--the harmonies are so beautiful. The whole thing gives me goosebumps, especially this part in the middle:

Through many dangers, toils, and snares
I have already gone.
Tis grace that's brought me safe this far
And grace will lead me on.

Day Thirty Three: Everlasting signs

2008-07-04T08:31:00.000-07:00

I came across this this morning, Isaiah 55. I think it pretty much says it all, in an astonishingly clear picture of what Jesus offers us as we recalibrate towards him:

"Come, all you who are thirsty, come to the waters;
and you who have no money, come, buy and eat!
Come, buy wine and milk without money and without cost.

Why spend money on what is not bread, and your labor on what does not satisfy?
Listen, listen to me, and eat what is good, and your soul will delight in the richest of fare.

Give ear and come to me; hear me, that your soul may live.
I will make an everlasting covenant with you, my faithful love promised to [King] David.
See, I have made him a witness to the peoples, a leader and commander of the peoples.

Surely you will summon nations you know not, and nations that do not know you will hasten to you because of the Lord your God, the holy one of Israel, for he has endowed you with splendor."

Seek the Lord while he may be found; call on him while he is near.

Let the wicked forsake his way and the evil man his thoughts.
Let him turn to the Lord, and he will have mercy on him,
and to our God, for he will freely pardon.

"For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways," declares the Lord.
"As the heavens are higher than the earth,
so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts.

As the rain and the snow come down from heaven, and do not return to it without watering the earth and making it bud and flourish, so that it yields seed for the sower and bread for the eater, so is my word that goes out from my mouth: It will not return to me empty, but will accomplish what I desire and achieve the purpose for which I sent it.

You will go out in joy and be led forth in peace;
the mountains and hills will burst into song before you,
and all the trees of the field will clap their hands.

Instead of the thornbush will grow the pine tree, and and instead of briers the myrtle will grow.
This will be for the Lord's renown, for an everlasting sign, which will not be destroyed."

This is KEY: understanding that God answers our prayers not just to make our lives better because he loves us, but because every answered prayer is an everlasting sign of his power, his love, and his goodness. Part of why he wants to answer our prayers so others might give him a chance in their own moments of hurt, fear, and need. So if you're someone who feels awkward praying for your own husband, family, job situation, book deal, etc., consider the possibility that your answered prayer might inspire someone else to pray. It's a pretty cool system, when you think about it :)

Today's reading: Acts 18

Today's song: Great Expectations by Steven Curtis Chapman

Speaking of great...SARAKASTIC: send me your address so I can send you a copy of yesterday's book!!! :)

Day Thirty Two: Breakfast of Champions

2008-07-03T07:00:00.001-07:00

I've been reading an interesting book this week that's re-igniting my prayers. It's not that I haven't been praying all this time--I have. But they've been mostly "wandering through my day mumbling to God when I think of it" prayers, rather than "sit down and have a real conversation" prayers. For some strange reason, I was finding God difficult to talk to, as if he were a complete stranger I knew nothing about and didn't have the energy to engage. I hadn't realized how disconnected I was until I started flipping through these pages. Now, I'm starting to feel like me again.

The book, Principles of Prayer by Billy Joe Daugherty, is pretty "churchy." It's filled with Christian lingo that sounds strange to my New England ears. But the substance is SO inspiring, it's been worth the effort to translate. I thought I'd share a bit of it here.

One chapter that made me laugh (and then made me think) is called "Prayer: Breakfast of Champions." It offers nine reasons why we should make time first thing in the morning to talk to God:

1. Jesus did it. This is a powerful argument in favor of getting up a little earlier, given that he healed the sick and raised the dead. Who wouldn't exchange a half-hour of sleep each day to see those kinds of answers to prayer???

2. The way you start something has great effect on the way it ends up. This got me thinking. Looking back, I can see that the relationships I started under shady circumstances--one or both of us dating other people, or feeling like I needed to sneak around to see someone--ended badly, disasterously, or (in one unfortunate instance) in a divorce where I lived in hiding for three years. But when we start something well--with prayer, integrity, honesty, hope--it sets a direction for how things will go. What if this is true for every day of our lives? Again, worth the sacrifice of sleep.

3. When you pray early in your day, you'll get an attitude adjustment. This is a take on the adage, "your attitude determines your altitude." If reason #2 is about setting ourselves on a straight course for the life we want, #3 is about getting the God's attitude about what is possible and what we're facing so that we can fly above the bumps and pitfalls in front of us.

4. If we pray in the morning, we don't have to worry about the many interruptions that come every day. Have you noticed that days rarely go exactly as planned? Things come up, appointments change, we get phone calls from friends we've been missing for months...if we pray in the morning, asking God to direct our steps and order our priorities, we don't have to worry about leaving him out of our day--he's already been invited in.

5. When we are hungry for fellowship with God, we will take time for early morning prayer. I wasn't sure how this was a reason, but as I read on, Daugherty makes a good point: we make time for the people who are important to us. Imagine a husband saying to his wife: "Honey, I love you, and I think about you all day long. But I don't have time to sit down and talk with you--I'm really busy. You understand, right?" Not exactly the stuff happily ever after is made of. If we want a relationship with God, and all the benefits that entails, then he has to be more important to us than the things we'd have to move aside to spend real time with him (and I am SO busted on this, given that I thought God would be fine if I blogged first thing in the morning--talking to you guys about him--instead of talking to him...ACK!)

6. Just as you would fill your gas tank before you start out on a trip, you need to fill your mind with God's Word and prayer before you start your day. Life demands a lot of us. When we start out with God in the morning, it accomplishes two things: it fills us up and gives us something to invest in the challenges ahead (as Daugherty points out, we can only go so long with our exports exceeding our imports), and it wins spiritual battles that are to come. This seems worth the half hour.

7. In Exodus 16, the Lord told the children of Israel to get their manna before the sun got hot on the ground. Manna is living bread--Jesus. For us, this exhortation is to get a fresh word from God every day before we set out. When we do, it feeds us in a way that provides supernatural nourishment all day long. I'm not aware of exactly how or when my body uses the vitamins, minerals, fiber, etc. that are listed on my box of cereal, but that doesn't mean I'm not drawing on them as I go about my day. I think morning talks with God work much the same way, sustaining us for the hours to come.

8. When we start our time of prayer with praise to the Lord, we will receive revelation, instruction, inspiration, strength, peace, deliverance from temptation, refreshing, and restoration. Who wouldn't want that? My new plan is to start every day with, "God, you rock!"

9. Giving God the first part of our day is a spiritual law of giving the firstfruits. There are promises in the Bible that when we give God the best part of something--our time, attention, money, talents--he multiplies it back to us. I've seen this happen with both time (when I was WAY to busy to spend time reading the Bible or to go to my small group, but sucked it up and went anyway) and money (where things felt super-tight, budget wise, but we stuck to our commitment to tithe). I've never once regretted it, and I've been amazed at how when I put God first, suddenly I have plenty of time to get everything done, and more money that I would have had if we hadn't tithed. It's bizarre, in a rather wonderful way. Sort of a supernatural reminder that when we align ourselves with Jesus, we're tapping into a life that operates on different principles. New things are possible.

Interesting stuff, huh? Let me know what you think.
I have an extra copy of this book, which I'd love to pass along. Leave a comment today and I'll draw one name and mail it out.

Today's reading: Acts 17. The adventure continues.

Today's song: Voice of Truth by Casting Crowns.
The waves are calling out my name and they laugh at me
Reminding me of all the times I've tried before and failed
The waves the keep on telling me, time and time again, "Boy, you'll never win"
But the Voice of truth tells me a different story...

God has amazing things to say to each of us. Let's take time to ask what they are :)

Day Thirty One: Encouragement, Guidance, Adventure

2008-07-02T07:40:00.000-07:00

I had an answer to prayer yesterday. It's a funny one, utterly silly. But exactly what I needed to remind me that God hears ALL our prayers and cares about every teeny aspect of our lives.

Here's the background: When I was getting ready to go on the tour for my book, I looked around and realized that most people weren't spending their days in jeans and a t-shirt. I needed to raise my game from the "slovenly writer at home" look I'd been sporting for the past two years. So I did a bit of shopping, and Steve expressed great delight at seeing his wife in fabrics other than cotton. Along with the new outfits, I got some cute jewelry. Costume pieces--nothing fancy--but totally fun. So fun, in fact, that I can't bring myself to tuck them away. I'm afraid I'll forget about them and return to my frumpy past. So, to remind me that bling is back, I've had that jewelry strewn out across my dresser and closet for the past three months. But now that I'm back home and not darting off to the airport every three days, it seems silly to have all my bedazzled items sitting around in piles. So I prayed: God, please show me where and how to store these things. Absurd, right? But then again, why NOT pray for jewelry storage solutions???

That was a couple of weeks ago. Yesterday, I went on a major cleaning binge. I'd purchased a black leather box in the office accessories section of Marshalls for Steve to put his various papers, etc. in. As I pulled it from the bag, I discovered that inside were two divided trays that would be PERFECT to hold my faux jewelry. PRAYER ANSWERED!

And as bizarre as this sounds, this discovery gave a much-needed jump-start to my flagging faith for bigger prayers. I feel like I'm back in the game. Let's pray for all kinds of stuff... God has all kinds of answers!

On a related note, I heard the cry out for thoughts about how God guides us. Fabulous, important question. I have three things to offer on these lines this morning:

First, I gave a talk on exactly this topic Sunday. Here is the link. (I sound a bit deranged with the first "Thank yooooou..." but after that, things pick up!)

Second, today's passage in Acts shows Paul & Co. receiving guidance: "Don't go there. Go here instead." It's kind of wild to see the different ways the Holy Spirit directs them.

Third, something I read today totally busted me: It asked, "What are you praying for?" and asked me to write it down, so I did. Then it said, "What Bible passages are you standing on as you pray?" Hmmm. Interesting. Embarrassing, too. I knew vaguely that the Bible says some stuff about the items on my prayer list, but in that moment, I couldn't tell you what they were. So I pulled out my Bible and looked them up.

So I'll ask you: What Bible passages are you standing on as you pray?
God makes us some great promises in the Bible, but if we don't know them, we're missing out on a chance to line our prayers up directly with his will.

A tip, if you want to try this. My FAVORITE Bible for finding stuff is Zondervan's NIV Study Bible. It has the best concordance (index) in the back that I've ever seen. That's where I was this morning, flipping through trying to find the places where God's will aligns with my dreams.

If you're new to this, or would like some help, email me (trishryanonline AT gmail DOT com) If you give me a sense of what you're praying for, I'll do my best to find you some Bible passages to stand on :)

Today's song: Wide, Wide World by Erin O'Donnell. The line "Don't let me miss my chance" is a regular on my prayer list.

It's adventure that we want
And it's what we finally get
There's nothing safe about You
But sometimes I forget
So lead me into the wide world
Don't let me miss my chance
Cause I'll blink and it will be over
And I won't pass here again.

Day Thirty: The Rules, circa 73 A.D.

2008-07-01T04:51:00.001-07:00

What does it take to follow Jesus? Are there membership requirements--hoops one can jump through to earn the embossed leatherette Bible, WWJD wristlet, and JC is my Homeboy t-shirt we all crave?

Wait, you don't crave these things? (And yes, I'm joking)

If you've lived anywhere in the United States during the past hundred years or so, you've likely heard some sort of answer to this question. It may have been the odd suggestion that you invite Jesus to come live in your heart, or some complex secret code about how one can't swear, dance, wear fashionable jeans, watch reruns of Sex and the City, or wish someone "good luck" and maintain good standing on the Jesus Team. It's a strange world out there, when we start exploring what God ACTUALLY requires of us.

In my moments of confusion (I often feel that I'm just one stubbed toe/expletive moment away from having my Jesus bobblehead doll ordered back from headquarters) it's comforting to know that this sort of disagreement has been going on since the very first people tried to recalibrate their lives towards Jesus' suggestions. In today's section of our Bible adventure, Paul and Barnabas are caught right in the middle of this debate: the Jesus-ey folks who used to be devout Jews (and had therefore mastered the myriad laws attendant to that culture) thought that ALL new Jesus followers should be bound by those rules, also. But for the non-Jews, this seemed daunting (especially the part about circumcision...as odd as some Christian rules are today, most seem tame compared to the idea of a guy standing there with a giant knife, right?)

I love their response. Essentially, after meeting with the other apostles and praying about this, they concluded, "Let's keep this simple." They wanted it to be easy to follow Jesus, presumably so that we don't get so bogged down in rules and requirements that we miss the awesome new life Jesus offers. So they boiled it down to three things that seemed most essential:

1. Avoid food sacrificed to idols. From what I can tell, this means avoid participating in activities that promote or worship other gods. Idolatry still competes for our attention today, and it's worth considering how we might be tempted to "play along" with other things that we think might help us get from where we are to where we want to be, whether it's kissing up to people we don't like but think can help us (in which case the idol is our own capacity to manipulate people or situations), or using our money (and who DOESN'T idolize money to some extent?) or status or stuff to try and make others respect us in some way. This is something we all struggle with. Keeping it under control pays big dividends in terms of feeling a vibrant, real connection with God and where he's leading us. Totally worth the effort.

2. Avoid sexual immorality. Not much clouds our brains and muddles our thinking like sexual connection with someone. God made sex to be this awesome glue that holds husbands and wives together. But when we start connecting in this way with people outside of marriage, it's more like we get stuck in glue: it limits our ability to get away when relationships are over; the fumes fog our minds...if you've ever felt "stuck" in a relationship you wanted to end, this is part of what's going on.

3. Avoid blood and the meat of strangled animals. This is the community-relations rule. It's not so much about the meat, but about the huge rift between the eating habits of Jews and Gentiles at the time. If they were going to live together as fellow Jesus-followers, it would be helpful if the Gentiles weren't doing things that grossed out their new Jewish friends. In today's world, this is the equivalent of Emily Post saying, "If your new friend is a vegetarian, don't serve leg of lamb when you invite them to dinner..."

What strikes me about these rules is that they're hugely challenging on a personal level, but not complicated. Each one is for our good, rather than some arbitrary ordinance that makes no sense. It takes effort to follow Jesus, but the effort takes us someplace worthwhile. I like that.

Today's song describes life my before I decided that this effort was worth it. It's Stevie Nick's classic, Landslide, which still strikes me as sad, painful, and cautionary. The line, "I climbed a mountain and I turned around," is haunting; it's how I felt for the first ten years of adulthood as I struggled to find some spiritual path that would take me somewhere, rather than just on a long, winding road to the top of another hill. Opting for Jesus, with his simple rules, led me out of this song to someplace better. The right mountain, so to speak. (And I'm going to show huge restraint right now and not suggest that we all listen to John Denver's Rocky Mountain High as an alternative picture...feel free to thank me :) )

What do the rules look like for you?

Day Twenty Nine: Craziness

2008-06-30T06:43:00.001-07:00

I am astounded, and more than a bit humbled by our little chunk of reading from Acts today. Paul and Barnabas, two new-ish followers of Jesus, are traveling around telling people of all they've seen and heard, essentially saying, "If you want your life to be different, this guy Jesus is the real deal..." Their message had power (miracles make for GREAT public speaking devices) and people believed them. Then five minutes later, those same people heard someone say something different and decided they believed THEM instead, and tried to murder Paul and Barnabas.

(Can you imagine how perilous it would be for self-help/spirituality authors today if every time one of their devoted fans moved on to the next big idea, they tried to kill them??? The Oprah show would be a bloodbath...)

Anyway...this happens again in the next city they visit: one minute, the crowd is so certain that Paul and Barnabas are gods, they're preparing to sacrifice animals in their honor. Then a few moments later, they hear some other persuasive speaker, and pull out the rocks to stone our intrepid traveling pair.

What's up with that? Why are we so prone to believe one thing, and then five minutes later be utterly convinced that something else is "the truth"? And more importantly, how can we get off this crazy ride and land somewhere steady and solid?

I didn't really have an answer for that question when I typed it a few minutes ago, but then I heard Ayiesha Woods' song, The Remedy and thought, "Well, there it is..." Download it, listen to the lyrics, and let me know what you think. The reminder (and reassurance) is well worth the 99 cents. Who knows? It might be the first time you've ever paid to get off a ride :)

Day Twenty Seven: Friends

2008-06-28T09:29:00.000-07:00

Hi All,
I'm in Connecticut right now, hanging out with Kristen and engaging in some quality girl time. She and I have been friends since college. We've seen each other through weddings, divorces, dog dilemmas, fashion crises, and everything in between. And we've each, at times, been so mad at the other that we were ready to throw the whole thing out.

Wow, are we glad we didn't. The only reason that's possible, and the only reason we're still sane after all of our collective drama, is that God helps us forgive--each other, the people who've hurt us, the guy who cut us off in traffic last night on the way home from dinner--everybody. Because the truth is, if we're close to people, we're going to annoy them from time to time. We'll forget to call, or we'll remember to call and end up lecturing the other on what she ABSOLUTELY HAS TO DO (that last one is me...trying to fix that!), or we'll screw up in some other way for the ninety seventh time.

Sometimes you forgive and move on, and that's totally the appropriate choice. But sometimes you forgive and hold on, realizing you've got something worth sticking around for. With Kristen, I'm super-glad we opted for the second option.

No take home point for today's post, I guess...just what's on my mind :)

See you Monday!

Day Twenty Six: Get up, keep moving

2008-06-27T04:02:00.000-07:00

Sometimes, we fall off the wagon. It might be on a diet or exercise plan, it might be some new habit we're trying to cultivate or break, it might be something we're fasting from in hopes that God will move mountains in our lives. It happens. Here's the thing though: it's rarely as big a deal as we make it out to be--it doesn't have to short-circuit our hopes or dreams or prayers.

I've messed up on almost every fast I've tried. When I fasted from dating for six months, I met a guy in the middle of month four. (I didn't fall off the wagon so much as fling myself from it. You can imagine how spectacularly that went...) But afterwards, when I picked my face up out of the mud and ascertained that no bones had been broken in the crash, a wise friend pointed out that the best thing to do was to ask God to forgive me (because this was a choice I made, not an inadvertent slip up), and finish out my fast. No need to start over, or double my time as some sort of self-inflicted penance; that's not what this is about. Just get back ON the wagon, he said, and you'll be fine.

I flashed back to this at the beginning of our 40 Days. I think it was day three or five--not to long into things--when I was sitting on an airplane from somewhere to someplace else, realizing, "Oh $#%&! I had sugar in my coffee this morning!!!"

As some of you might recall, I'm fasting from sugar in my coffee, and yet just a few days after we started, there I was, ripping open those Dominoes packets in my hotel room like God and I had never had that chat. For about a nanosecond, I felt horrible. But then I realized that my guilt didn't add anything to my prayers. I'd been sitting too close to the edge of the wagon, not paying attention, and I fell off. No big deal. So I said, "God, please forgive me...and help me remember my fast!" and that was that. Sometimes, things can be simple.

On an entirely different note, today's chapter of Acts shows things getting decidedly complicated for the Disciples, who encounter some serious resistance to their message. Believers in other spiritual paths, religious folks who were all about rules rather than transformative spiritual power...it seems that suggesting Jesus as the reason for the season wasn't always a big hit back then, either. Still, as Dr. Phil points out, you can't argue with results...

Today's song: Brooke Fraser's Faithful. I saw her in concert last night, and this song just amazed me. It's lyrics talk about that frustrating feeling when God seems far away, unreachable... If you're feeling this way, I'll be giving a talk on Sunday about different ways we might realize God is guiding us...I'll post it as soon as it's online. Until then, let's reach anyway...

Day Twenty Five: Are we there yet?

2008-06-26T06:11:00.000-07:00

The awesome answer to Kim's prayers (see yesterdays comments for the scoop) did MUCH to bolster my spirits yesterday--how about you? It's so easy to look at the heading on these posts and think, "How is it possible that it's only day twenty five when we've been doing this FOREVER???" And then God answers, and somehow we're given the strength to hope and pray for one more day. Yay God :)

I took a much needed hour off last night. It was around dinner time, and I went out on the deck with a giant glass of cold water and my iPod, to slouch in a chair and listen to Natalie Imbruglia's White Lilies Island. And that's all I did for a whole hour. No multitasking, no jotting down quick notes about things to do when I went back inside, no wondering when things would change or besieging God to make things different. Now I know the whole "we're spiritual BEINGS, not spiritual DOINGS" bit has gotten a lot of press in recent years, but to be honest, I don't really ascribe to it as a long-term life solution. For the most part, God has stuff for us to do with our lives, and that's a good thing. But every once in awhile, it's nice to dial down and recharge for a bit.

What recharges you? Specifically, that is--most of us generally like the beach, music, sunsets, etc. Is there a specific place outside you visit to wind down? A certain artist you listen to?

Our reading today is the opposite of dialed down: there's a prison break, a murder, two different angelic visitations. I'm going to try and grab a few minutes today to head back outside and think about what this passage reminds me: that God has all kinds of tricks up his sleeve to change circumstances in our lives. He's not limited by our imaginations, so the more freedom we give him to work, the more miracles we'll see. That seems to be the deal. (And, as Peter discovered, when God does cool things, it may take a bit of patience to explain it to everyone else...)

Have an amazing day, all! And if you're looking for a good song, check out Sunlight :)

Day Twenty Four: Not what we expected

2008-06-25T05:35:00.003-07:00

Sometimes things don't go quite the way we plan--have you noticed?

My brother takes this idea so seriously that he and my sister-in-law have made a special effort to teach their kids to roll with change. After all, life goes a lot more smoothly when you're not stopped in your tracks every time you don't get the job, the girl, etc. Wise parents, huh?

Not much of anything in my life has gone the way I thought it would. For a long time I was the poster child for that song, "Pick yourself up, dust yourself off, start all over again..." After a few wipe-outs, you either get really scared of what's gonna happen next, or you develop some skills in assessing new circumstances and moving forward with what you've got. I've done this both with God's help and without, and I highly recommend the former. It wasn't until I took a few minutes, down there in my pile of dust, to ask Jesus his thoughts on my circumstances--what to take forward, what to leave behind--that I gained any sort of momentum toward where I wanted to be in life. And a LOT of what he suggested surprised me. It's as if I thought my problem was apples, and he said, "No, your apples are fine...but your oranges, on the other hand..."

In Acts 10, pretty much everybody's expectations get blown out of the water. Cornelius is visited by an angel, Peter is told by God to eat food formerly forbidden to Jews, the Holy Spirit falls on Gentiles for the first time and it's clear God intends the good news of Jesus for everybody. This is, I think, a great representation of what life with God looks like: it's usually not at all what we expect or plan. It's BETTER somehow, when we look back on what has happened. We can't always see it when we're in it, but hindsight reveals a track record of God bringing things together for our good that's second-to-none. In the meantime, though, we just have to trust his promises and follow his lead. And if he says our oranges could uses some attention, it's probably worthwhile to listen, and do as he suggests.

Today's song: Change by Tracy Chapman. Her lyrics made my eyes go wide when I first heard them, they're so direct and to the point:

How bad, how good does it need to get?
How many losses, how much regret?
What chain reaction will cause an effect?
Makes you turn around, makes you try to explain,
Makes you forgive and forget,
Makes you change...makes you change?

I think they opened my heart a bit, too.

Day Twenty Three: Name Change

2008-06-24T05:05:00.000-07:00

I had ugly nightmares last night. The violent, grisly kind that left me unwilling to go back to sleep but so exhausted I couldn't really fight it. Not fun.

So this morning, I'm rather foggy, reading about this violent murderer Saul and how Jesus stopped him on the road to his latest slaughter, knocked him down and said, "What the #$%$! are you doing?" (Okay, maybe he didn't put it quite like that, but you get the picture.) Now, Jesus didn't just knock Saul down. He picked him up again and gave him an entirely new identity: from that point on, he'd be Paul, and his job was to tell others what he'd seen--that Jesus was real and had the power to transform our lives. He went on to write two-thirds of the New Testament. Kind of a big deal.

In the six years I've been into Jesus, I've wrestled with Paul's take on life more than anything else in the Bible. From the moment I first encountered him, I thought, "Man, this Paul guy has issues..." Suffice to say, Paul and I don't always share the same perspective. But my friend Dave says that when you hit these rough patches, it's helpful to assume that everything that is in the Bible is supposed to be there--God knows about it. So then our job is to ask God, "What's the deal with this?" and he'll help us reconcile what we read with how we see the world. And he really does this--it's rather amazing.

So I thought that today, as we see Saul become Paul and an entirely new chapter in the Jesus Chronicles begins, this might be a handy tool for us to have: when we read something in the Bible that bothers us, let's take it to God. We can ask him to explain himself, and what this might mean for us. If we leave a little bit of space for him to answer us, he will. And I guarantee it will be different--more encouraging, filled with hope and possibility--than we might expect.

Any suggestions for today's song? Leave them in the comments :)

Day Twenty Two: Signs and Wonders

2008-06-23T05:44:00.000-07:00

We're reading Acts 9 today. I dig this chapter, I guess because it's action-packed, and because when I first read it, it helped make sense of what was going on for me. I felt a bit like Simon the Sorcerer, then--I'd keep people amused and amazed by my own little collection of magic powers: knowing things about them through astrology; explaining how if they'd just move the couch to the other side of their living room, everything in life would go better; repeating words of authors I'd seen on Oprah that seemed wise and profound... And yet underneath my sparkling fun facade, my life was pretty disappointing. Whatever "it" was I'd been searching for, it was pretty clear to me I hadn't found it.

But when I read what Jesus claimed in the Bible, and then saw it playing out among real, live people who were trying to follow his lead, the difference between that and what I was hawking was like night and day. It's not that what Jesus says is altogether different than the other spiritual systems I was working (although I'm fairly certain Jesus never rearranged anyone's tent furniture to fix their love life...) It's that he offers real power through the Holy Spirit to get us from where we are to where we want to be. Other systems might tell us how important it is to overcome our fear, or our ego, or our past...in my experience, only Jesus has the power to pull that off; without him, it's just a bunch of wasted effort.

When you're in the middle of a long trip (as we are, here in this 40 Days of Faith), it's easy to wonder where you are, and if you're even headed in the right direction. I've been on many a highway in my various travels, longing for a sign to tell me I was actually headed north on Route 301. I guess this post--and this passage in Acts--is like a highway sign. If you're trying to follow Jesus' lead in this, you're on the right road.

For obvious reasons, THIS is our song for the day :)

Day Twenty: Ask, Seek, Knock

2008-06-21T04:35:00.000-07:00

"When you see the southern cross for the first time
You'll understand now why you came this way.
Cause the truth you might be running from is so small--
But it's as big as the promise, the promise of a coming day."
--"Southern Cross," Crosby, Stills & Nash

When we get where we're going, we'll know why we came this way. Interesting thought, huh?

I first heard Crosby, Stills & Nash in concert right before heading off on one of the bigger adventures in my life. I wasn't sure what was about to change, exactly, but I knew nothing would ever be the same. And these three guys, with their beautiful lyrics of hope and longing and loss, with the ambiguous spiritual undercurrent running through it all, connected me to God in a way that had never happened before. I remember that feeling: knowing that rough waters were ahead, perhaps, but that things would turn out okay.

Of course, I forgot all about this feeling the minute the rough waters hit...

Last night, I remembered it again. I'm taking part in a two-day workshop about how God can transform us if we let him. One of the main speakers was telling a story about searching for a house when he first moved to Boston. He'd almost settled for a grim little condo because so many people had told him it would be impossible to get anything at all in his price range. But when that deal feel through, a friend asked him, "Did you ever ask God for the house you want? You know--specifically?" He sheepishly admitted that he hadn't. But by that point it seemed crazy to ask God for something so much nicer than the grim condo he'd just lost out on. Nevertheless, he asked. "I'd like a place for a grill, God...and some yard for a garden." He also wanted to be near his son & daughter-in-law.

You know where this is going: today, he has a great little house a block from his family. He grills. His wife gardens in the yard.

This story totally busted me. I haven't been asking; not specifically, anyway. I've been praying in broad strokes, asking for vague "good things." Ugh. Sigh.

God invites us to MORE. He loves when we ask. So last night, I recalibrated. I asked. And I'm doing so again today. It takes some time, because there are a few different miracles I'm praying for. But if I'm on this ship headed for God's best for me, and I don't have to steer, that means I've got plenty of time to dream and pray about where we'll land.

Today, let's just do one chapter of Acts, as it's pretty intense. Acts 7. Stephen suggests that we tend to ignore (or kill) the people God sends to tell us where our ship is headed. Let's not do that anymore....

Day Nineteen: To get over the bar, we can't sneak under it...

2008-06-20T05:22:00.000-07:00

"I ain't settling for just getting by
I've had enough so-so for the rest of my life
Tired of shooting to low, so raise the bar high
Cause enough ain't enough this time."
--Sugarland

I want to start today by saying how proud I am of you guys! This is hard, what we're doing, and I love the fact that you're not only hanging in and pushing through, but you're also cheering each other on in the comments section, offering encouragement and saying, "Don't settle! We can do this!"

Amen to that.

THIS is, I think, why God wants us to pursue him together, why following Jesus is a team sport. We're not alone in seeking him for big things that feel impossibly far away; we're not the only ones out on this precarious ledge of hope, wondering if we'll fall or fly. Somehow, it helps to know this.

Today's reading is a doozey. Acts 5 kicks off with two people lying to God because they want to look good to the people around them, and the consequences are pretty high. It's tempting to look at this story as a threat that we have to give up everything that matters to us to be okay with God, but I think that's a red herring. What I actually think this suggests is much simpler: don't lie. Don't say you're "fine" when you're struggling; don't say you're sponsoring 14 kids at an orphanage in Brazil if you're not; don't say you own your house if you rent. Jesus' friend John warned that we'd be tempted to boast of what we have and what we do, but that this urge is not from God; it leads us off the path of his best for us.

But after this warning, it's back to the miracles: the apostles are put in jail, but set free by an angel. That's a pretty cool reminder that God has ways of getting us out of bad situations that go beyond what we can dream up. It's around this time, seeing all of these things happen, that a guy named Gamaliel makes a wise observation: "If their purpose or activity is of human origin, it will fail. But if it is from God, you will not be able to stop these men; you will only find yourself fighting against God."

Have you noticed how things of human origin fail? I'm thinking of diet fads, self-help suggestions, even the some of the things I read in the latest issue of my favorite women's magazine that make me cringe and think, "Actually, that's terrible advice..."

I feel like a point I keep coming back to in my life is how important it is for us to look at the lives of the people we're following. Not just their bank accounts, or that they have the power to attract media attention (although both of those are fun things to have). God keeps telling me: Look at the structure. Look at the life they come home to at the end of the day: their relationships, their sense of themselves. Are they miserable, always casting about in the hope things might be different, or they do they have that peace and grace that shines through when someone is connected with God's Holy Spirit?

This is, I suspect, part of not settling. We don't have to run down every path that presents itself. We can stop and ask God for direction and discernment, saying specifically, "Don't let me settle, God...I want your best..."

Here's to not settling. I'm pretty sure this is where the exceeded expectations hang out :)

Day Eighteen: Dig Deep

2008-06-19T05:01:00.001-07:00

We're almost at the halfway point of our 40 Days of Faith, which is typically when I start to wonder why I ever bothered. It's so easy to lose sight of the big picture here in the middle.

I've been chatting with God about this over the past couple of days, asking for ideas for how to cheer us all on and keep us moving in the right direction. But God's answers when I've broached the subject haven't been of the "let's throw a party to keep morale high" variety. Instead, he pointed me to the book of Acts and essentially said, "Get going."

My guess is, this is why: Sure, I could throw in a pep-talk day with a random, happy bible verse like Jeremiah 29:11. I could even give something away, like a book or an ipod shuffle with our song list on it. And at some point, I probably will. But I feel like God's point right now is that with this much of our journey left to go, we don't need a party to cheer us on. Instead, we need solid evidence that what we're pursuing is real, and worth the effort.

There's no better place to find this proof than Acts. We're only in chapter 3 & 4, and already we're seeing a crippled man healed. Which was such a GIGANTIC, OBVIOUS miracle that it freaked out an entire city and landed Peter and John in court. What strikes me about this part of the story is how different Peter and John's reaction to this hurting man is that what our society typically suggests: They didn't empathize with him. They didn't spend hours validating his feelings or dredging up his wounded inner child. They didn't give him money. Instead, they said, "Silver or gold I do not have, but what I have I give you: in the name of Jesus of Nazareth, walk." And he did.

I feel like this runs directly counter to the way we're typically told to help each other in today's world. The Acts approach is not about empathy, validation, or dredging up our past hurts and ripping them open again for more examination. Jesus promises us NEW LIFE if we're following him, and that transcends all our pop-psychology attempts to deal with things on our own. This path we're on is about more than than our own best ideas and efforts: It's about real spiritual power coming to change things in our lives so that we can be everything God created us to be.

I don't know about you, but when I'm in need, I'll take God's power over well-intentioned human expression of, "Oh, that must be so hard for you..." any day of the week. But sometimes I have to dig deep to get to the place that knows this, because the empathy lulls me into a false sense of comfort.

So today, no false comfort. Dig deep folks, we've got a ways to go. But we're going somewhere, and God is in this with us. That's good news!

Today's song: Love is Waiting by Brooke Fraser.

Day Seventeen: All Things Are Possible

2008-06-18T05:37:00.000-07:00

I'm not sure how many of you caught the NBA finals last night, but the Boston Celtics beat the pants off of the LA Lakers. Now obviously, as a lifelong New Englander and a sports fan, this was a fun game for me to watch. (Especially because I'd broken protocol and prayed for the Celtics on Sunday when I spoke at church about the power of prayer...)

I'm not bragging about basketball here on our 40 Days blog simply because I'm an excited fan. I'm bragging about basketball because what happened with the Celtics this season feels like a bit of a miracle. Them winning the championship represents an absolute, 180 degree turn around from where they were were at this time last year. Day and night, complete change. Beyond what anyone could have asked or imagined.

The Celtics have stunk for most of my adult life. Last year was especially bad; they won only twenty four games ALL SEASON, and I think one of those was a charity event against retired circus clowns or something. It was pitiful. Fans called for Coach Doc Rivers to be fired, captain Paul Pierce to be traded to some pickup league in the Arctic Circle, and Larry Bird to be brought out of retirement to see if maybe he, on his own, could amass a better record. You know, maybe win twenty five games.

Then everything changed. New players came on board, rolled up their sleeves and worked harder than anyone expected, checking their egos at the door for the good of the team in ways NO ONE thought possible. Attitudes were different, expectations were different, and (most excitingly) RESULTS were different. EVERYTHING CHANGED.

This is today's take home point: however things look today, it's not (necessarily) indicative of how they'll look at this time next year! That's an exciting possibility, right? What God invites us into is shaping that change, rather than coasting along hoping for the best. We can work with him to push back against inertia and hopelessness with real spiritual power. Now granted, we have to roll up our sleeves and work harder than we expect, and check our egos at the door, because now, we're part of a team. But the results!?! The Bible seems to suggest that it's completely reasonable to expect a complete turn around in our circumstances. How cool is that?

In keeping with this, we're diving into some deeper waters, reading-wise. We're turning to the book of Acts, which is the action-packed account of what happened after Jesus left earth for heaven. (If you need proof that Jesus can make good on his promises, Acts is your book.) It was written by a doctor named Luke, who also wrote the account of Jesus' life that bears his name...the book of Luke is a "prequel" to Acts--interesting reading if you want to check it out.

Right before Jesus left, he promised his followers that they would be "clothed with power from on high." That's what happens in the early pages of Acts: God's Holy Spirit comes and fills the people who have said, "I'm with Jesus." This changes everything in some astonishing, miraculous ways.

My friend Dave says that this one of the most important moments in human history--that throughout all time, people have longed for a connection with the divine, and at this moment God came down and filled us with his Spirit, such that we can speak with him and hear from him all the time. This strikes me as pretty great news.

Today, let's read the first two chapters of Acts. It tells us about the Holy Spirit showing up for the first time, and how it resulted in a pretty big turn-around in Peter, who had been a complete buffoon up until this point. Suddenly, he emerges as a powerful, encouraging leader...I'm pretty sure no one saw that one coming.

If you're on the fence about whether or not to jump into the "I'm with Jesus" line, today might be a good day to give it a go. And let's all pray, "God, fill me with your Holy Spirit, open up the doors of connection."

If you'd like more on this "talking to God" idea, here is a link to the talk I gave on Sunday called "How Can My Prayers Have Power?" (It jumps in mid-way through my first few sentences, but it's right at the beginning). And don't worry, I only spent a little time praying for the Celtics :)

Today's song: Turn it Around by Israel Houghton & New Breed. The first few lines are great prayers for today, saying to God (and reminding ourselves): All things are possible for you...nothing's too difficult for you...

It's the truth :)

Day Sixteen: Repeat as Necessary

2008-06-17T05:43:00.001-07:00

We're going to soldier through and finish Psalm 119 today. It's been a long time coming, huh? This is the longest prayer in the Bible, and to be honest, I was a little afraid we'd get bogged down in it and never find our way out. But the risk seems worth it, because this Psalm is a pretty handy thing to have at our disposal when we're asking God to do big things in our lives.
(Which, if we land in the exciting, dynamic lives some of us dream of, might be everyday...)

If you've read my book, you'll know that I first happened upon Psalm 119 as a escape hatch when I found myself facing a certain type of temptation (the nature of which I won't mention here because who needs that kind of web traffic?) Let's just say that sometimes, taking your mind off of things for a half hour or so is a helpful option :)

But now, as I read these last few sections, I'm struck by something slightly different: how the writer of this prayer reminds himself--and God--of the same few things, over and over and over again. At it's core, Psalm 119 goes something like this:

1. Okay God, I've investigated all the other options. I get it: your way is the best way if I want things to go well for me.

2. But I'm likely to lose sight of this, because--let's be honest-- the other ways of approaching life seem a lot cooler and more attractive than yours. But I've seen where those ways lead--which is pretty much nowhere.

3. Your way, in contrast, produces great results. I'll try to focus on that, because that's what I want my life to look like.

4. And now that we've established this, God...could you PLEASE answer my prayers?

I love the honesty in this. It reminds me that I have every right to come to God morning, noon, and night asking for the deepest desires of my heart. Why? Because I've decided to live according to his system...and this is how his system operates. He set it up this way. We don't bug God with our prayers; rather, we invite him into places that have up to this point been labeled, "No Divine Help Needed/I'm Fine Here, Really..."

Look at all the things the writer asks for in the final section of Psalm 119:
Hear my prayer
Give me understanding
Deliver me
Teach me
Help me
Save me
Let me live that I might praise you....

And by "live" here, I think he means the abundant life Jesus promises, not just mere survival. As Nichole Nordeman, my favorite singer-songwriter asks so poignantly:

Why would a young man live in a waste land
When the castle of his dreams is standing by?
And why would a princess put on an old dress
To dance with her beloved and the chance to catch his eye?

Why, indeed?

Her song, Live, is today's addition to the playlist. Let's ask God to make it possible (and repeat as necessary).

Day Fifteen: Who Are You?

2008-06-16T08:29:00.000-07:00

"If you're always guarding your image, you can't ever get to the essence of what God is calling you to." -- Mark Steiger

Wise words, huh? I feel like this has been a central issue for me in terms of "growing up"--giving up the illusion that I can/should/must control my image. Like anything I've ever tried to control with my own will, these attempts at perception management haven't gone so well for me. Instead, they created this bizarre three-way split between who I was in public, who I was in private, and who I longed to be. Intriguing, at some level, perhaps; but not anyone you'd want to spend more than a few minutes with unless you were doing research for a psych class.

I was pretty much at the end of my image when I finally decided to give Jesus a try. I was living in a run-down shambles of an apartment, temping at a job where I'm make one or two photocopies a week and then surf the internet for the other thirty-nine and a half hours. There was nowhere to go but up. And yet at some level, as my life improved in tangible, amazing ways, I always thought that at some point, I'd get it (my image) back.

Touring with my book over the past two months disabused me of this idea once and (I hope) for all. It was astonishing, really--at any event I went into with some pre-conceived idea of how I wanted to come across, I fell flat on my face (and got run over by a bus or two while I was down there). But when I checked my image at the door, amazing things happened: great conversations, answered prayers, interactions with fun people that instantly felt like friends. And (not coincidentally) lots of book sales. So much more fun and fruitful. Good stuff.

So last night, when I was with a group of people discussing a book called "HEROIC LEADERSHIP" (and what tempts me to start polishing up my image more than the idea of being a hero???) my friend Mark made the wise comment above. I scrambled to write it down. I should have it emblazoned on T-shirts, coffee mugs, and post-it notes; little reminders that guarding my image not only takes TONS of effort that could be better spent elsewhere, but it's destined to fail.

How about you? Do you have an image you cultivate?

Today's passage: Psalm 119:113-136

Today's song: My Life by Mary J. Blige

Day Thirteen: Pray it like it is

2008-06-14T07:02:00.000-07:00

My soul faints with longing for your salvation, but I have put my hope in your word. My eyes fail, looking for your promise; I say, "When will you comfort me?...How long must your servant wait?"
--Psalm 119:81-82, 84

These are the opening lines of today's section of Psalm 119. I love them, and at the same time they make me want to throw stuff across the room in frustration. Here's why:

I love them because they give me proof that we can pray honestly. The person who wrote these words wasn't stifling his disappointment or making peace with his plight. He was saying, "Look God--I'm doing what you asked me to. I spend all day, every day, looking for you to come through on your promise....until my eyes FAIL. When are you going to come through???" If I'm going to worship and interact with a God, I want him/her/it to be a God I can be real with. I guess it's like any other relationship--it quickly loses steam if I have to be someone I'm not. To me, it's good news that God can handle my prayers, even when they're of the, "HELLO!!! Have you lost my file???" variety.

The throwing stuff across the room part comes from the fact that I have these times at all. Wouldn't it be great if we didn't? If each time we found a new promise in the Bible--abundant provision, for example, or purpose and direction in our lives--we could just press the right buttons on the God computer and order them shipped to our front door?

I was just going to write that the Bible is not a catalog, but then I stopped. Because in a way, it is. It gives us pictures of things we can have if we're willing to pay the price. The thing is, though, the price is our prayers, our faith, our willing to wait for God's timing, rather than insisting on our own. It's expensive, this God life. But the stuff we get after all the praying and hoping and waiting is top-quality, custom built, and made to last.

A few lines later, the writer of Psalm 119 comes to the same conclusion I always do, still wanting God's best rather than something less: "Your word is a lamp to my feet and a light for my path," he writes. "Accept, O Lord, the willing praise of my mouth and teach me your laws...my heart is set on keeping your decrees to the very end."

Let's pray that today, honestly, from wherever we are. God can take it!

Here's a fun song that helps me bounce back from the funk of "have you lost my file?" prayers: My God is Good by Fred Hammond. It's a fine reminder :)

Have a great sabbath tomorrow (living like we know our prayers are answered, and the results are on their way) and I'll see you Monday!

Day Twelve: Teamwork Makes the Dream Work :)

2008-06-13T12:31:00.000-07:00

Sorry for the delayed post. I was in Princeton, New Jersey last night, speaking to a super-fun group of women. We talked some about life and love and spirituality—all my favorite subjects. But the focus was actually on bigger questions, along the lines of, “Does God want us to dream big dreams?”

Here’s what we came up with, in a nutshell: Yes.

What strikes me about last night was how much the women in that gathering supported each other. You could almost feel the energy and excitement in the room when I asked, “Have you ever noticed that sometimes it’s easier to have faith for other people then for ourselves?” These ladies didn’t just nod, they shot each other knowing glances, the ones you give your friends that say, “Don’t you DARE give up hope!” And some of them had never met before that night.

Powerful stuff, this. As I rode back on the train this morning, I was wondering how we could leverage this on our Forty Days Blog. Here’s what I came up with:

Someone, somewhere, said that 90% of life is showing up. Let’s start by showing up. If you come by the blog, if you have something you’re asking God to do in your life, leave a comment. Say, “I’m here.” This isn’t an attendance sort of thing. Rather, it’s a way to give us all a sense of how NOT alone we are—how we’re all hoping and praying that God will come through. That’s POWERFUL. We don’t know how our presence might change things for someone else. But we know for sure that it won’t change anything at all if we don’t show up.

So for the record, I'm here :)

Today’s wise words from my favorite how-to book: Psalm 119.

Today’s song: You Found Me by Kelly Clarkson.

Day Eleven: Enough to Go Around

2008-06-12T03:01:00.001-07:00

Have you ever looked at someone who has what you want most in life and thought, "Really, God? Her, but not me?"

I'm sure you never have. It's just me who goes to that place of despair and ugly hopelessness, certain that if someone else has the success, the relationship, or the children I long for, then there's none left for me.

The good news is, when I get in this headspace, I'm wrong. Not "wrong" as in, "My, Trish, that's not a very nice way to look at things..." or "Wow dude, that's, like, unspiritual..." But "wrong" as in, "That's simply not the truth of the situation."

Here's the truth of the situation: Anytime I see someone else walking around with something I'm praying for, it's fabulous, encouraging news. It means that God is still into making cool things like that happen for people; evidence that my prayers could be answered in the tangible way I hope.

I was reminded of this over the weekend. I was at a writers conference, and met a rising-star author who (and this is where you can feel free to say, "Wow dude, that's like, unspiritual...") I fully expected to dislike. I'm not sure why... I guess it's because her writing is so good. Disliking her was the last defense I had against the ugly truth that her success made me feel bad about myself. But she won me over: she was lovely and gracious, funny and humble.

This morning when I got up, I felt God say to me, "Pray for her..." Not as penance to atone for my own lack of graciousness, but as a reminder that her success is proof that God makes things happen; he answers all sorts of prayers, in all sorts of ways. So for today (and probably a good part of tomorrow), I'll be thanking God for making that author's book such a break-out hit, praising him for doing such excellent work, and asking for even more blessing for her.

Try it with me, if you want. It's a little hard to get going, but so far, it's made for a pretty sunny morning.

Here are today's verses from Psalm 119.

And today's song: Breathe by Michelle Branch. I just like it :)

Day Ten: The Right Step in the Wrong Direction

2008-06-11T05:27:00.000-07:00

I took our assignment literally yesterday, spending a good part of the afternoon driving through the hills of about fifteen different towns west of the city, listening to Patty Griffin's "Rain" (an impossibly beautiful song about broken hearts and dashed hopes) and wondering how far I could get before I'd need to pull out the map to find my way home. I used to love doing this. Driving through the mountains of Connecticut while listening to one singer-songwriter or another was one of the ways I occupied myself right after I escaped from my first husband (even when you're in hiding, you still need something to do all day). But now that a tank of gas costs almost as much as a monthly car payment, driving for the sake of driving seems outrageous. I have to say, though, yesterday's excursion calmed me in ways no massage or spa treatment ever could.

It also got me thinking about momentum, and direction--this idea we touched on yesterday that we're going somewhere. To do this, we have to get up off of the couch sometimes; we have to become initiators... and yet somehow balance this with letting God call the shots.

Have you noticed that God (unlike AAA) doesn't map out the whole trip for us beforehand? There's no yellow-highlighted direct route, or alternative scenic back roads marked out in orange. Usually there are just two marks: a giant circle with an arrow marked "Here's where you're headed," and then a tiny dot next to where we're standing, about an eighth of an inch from where we are. "This is your first step," is the implication, but it seems too crazy to be possible. Why? Because if we follow that dot, it will usually move us AWAY from where we want to get to. No rational person would choose this path.

A big part of my spiritual journey has been figuring out when to step away from what a rational person might do, to create some space to see what a person of faith might do. From what I can tell so far, that second person listens for God's suggestions, and then suspends disbelief for long enough to give it a try.

No rational person would choose driving through the country listening to a recently-divorced singer-songwriter wail as a way to restore her equilibrium, but God knows what we need. No rational person would believe that leaving the sugar out of her morning coffee would somehow bring her closer to God's plan for her life, but God suggests that it might. God knows what we need to get going, to build the right kind of momentum and direction (rather than that awful kind that leaves us exhausted and spinning our wheels) and it probably won't make sense to us if we think about it too closely.

So today, let's follow those small promptings. Let's chase after them, even. Ask, "Jesus--what's my next step?" and then when something occurs to you (it may be right away, it may be at nine o'clock tonight) jump in and give it a try. How will you know it's God? If deep down inside, something in you says, "Oh--that would be wonderful, but it's so ridiculous..." then that's your thing.

Speaking of wonderful and ridiculous, let's read Psalm 119 together over the next few days. It's a prayer, essentially asking for God's help in following the path he lays out for each of us. We'll start with the first three sections. My favorite part here is the line that says, "Open my eyes that I may see wonderful things in your law." That seems so honest, admitting that on my own, I'm likely to miss the good stuff.

If the language or imagery in what we read seems obscure, feel free to ask about it. Ask God, that is. I'm consistently surprised that when I pray, "Jesus, this seems like the stupidest, most outdated/obscure/ridiculous thing I've ever read; how could this possibly apply to me?" He answers in some very cool ways. It's almost as if he enjoys the conversation :)

Verse 105 of this Psalm says, "Your word is a lamp to my feet and a light for my path," which seems to indicate that the Bible is part of what he uses to mark our map. Here's to that experience being real for each of us, starting today.

Day Nine: Keep Driving

2008-06-10T05:48:00.000-07:00

So sorry for the lack of a post yesterday. I was stranded in Chicago because tornadoes kept rolling through the Midwest, making air travel a little dicey (at one point I was standing in the world's longest line at O'Hare, whimpering like Dorothy: "There's no place like home...there's no place like home...")

How are you guys doing 40 Days-wise? Feeling excited? Totally drained? Somewhere in between? I've noticed that "40 Days" seems like a short bit of time from the outside, and impossibly long when I'm in the middle of it. For me, it's kind of like the tornado my friends and I drove through on Saturday night: at times, everything looks dark and hopeless; there's a feeling that I could just spin off the road (in terms of faith, hope, or achieving any sort of dreams in my life) at any minute. But there's also no reasonable place to stop; all I can do is keep driving.

That's today's theme: keep driving. We're going somewhere, which means that we have to get through whatever storms roll in--whether they're literal or figurative, animal, vegetable, or mineral. This isn't much fun. It makes me tense, worried, and a little bit scared as my mind fills with grim "what ifs."

Music helps. And the perfect song when you just have to keep driving is The Bug by Mary Chapin Carpenter:

Sometimes you're the windshield
Sometimes you're the bug
Sometimes it all comes together baby
Sometimes you're just a fool in love
Sometimes you're the Louisville Slugger
Sometimes you're the ball
Sometimes it all comes together
Sometimes you're gonna lose it all

Here's to not being the bug :) And in that spirit, I'm putting off our next "tour through a book of the Bible" until tomorrow. For today, let's just focus on this amazing promise the Apostle Paul makes when writing to a bunch of folks in Rome who were trying to figure out questions of faith:

"And we know that in all things, God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose." (Romans 8:28)

That's US, in case you're wondering. We love God by including him in our lives--as I mentioned before, Jesus is a gentleman; he won't barge in uninvited. And in an interesting twist, the Bible also suggests that the only way people even think to invite him in is if God himself puts the idea in front of us--that's what it means to be "called." So I'd argue that by virtue of our hanging out together on a blog like this, we're the people Paul described, the ones for whom God works ALL things for our good. It will be interesting to see how he pulls this off :)

Here's to covering some serious spiritual miles today, even if it's looking a little dark out there!