Day 5: What's Your Story?

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

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?

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

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?

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

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

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!