If you want to participate in a triathlon, a marathon or century ride – what do you think is the best thing you can do to prepare yourself?
* Eat right, get lots of sleep and take recovery time – yep, yep, yep.
* Gather your friends and family for support – most definitely.
* Sign up for the actual race – of course.
All of these things are important …but the one most important thing any coach would ask you to do above all else is to – what? – to practice why of course. You could do all these other steps and might even still complete the race with sheer will power. But if you trained through practices – you might actually find you enjoy the race and complete it with much more ease.
This – this practicing – is what my life has become all about these last few months. It is why you find “Practice” in my title. This past Friday put me and myself and I to the test. Would I be able to put into practice all that I have been learning through my Life Skills class, through my time with God…through all the sermons and books I have read of late? Would the new tapes that I have been working on, training with, practicing with – the new tapes that tell me I AM a valuable person and that I CAN have a positive outlook on life even under negative circumstances – would these new tapes start playing as I have trained them to do?
Hold on here…I am getting ahead of myself. Let me back up a bit and do what I said I would do…as part of my practice of becoming more humble. Swallowing my pride and finding that I’m still okay. Sharing with you what the horrible news – or at least what I felt was horrible – was when I went to my mailbox last Friday afternoon.
I opened up my box, not planning on seeing much actually. With all my moves lately, I have learned to not do the whole forwarding address with the post office thing…and this dramatically eliminates the junk mail I receive. As I was flipping thru the few pieces of mail I had received, one quickly caught my eye. One from Fuller Theological Seminary, looking very official and grand. OM goodness, this is what I have been waiting for! Just earlier this week I had emailed my admission person and asked what was up, why hadn’t I heard back yet? My pulse jumped a bit, but the sheer thinness of the envelope immediately caught my attention and my concern. “If this was an acceptance letter, wouldn’t it be a little thicker, full of next steps and instructions?” I thought to myself. My heart caught in my throat momentarily for surely I would have been accepted, right? I mean, why wouldn’t they be willing to take my money so I can learn about God, right?
Those weren’t the words of course…but the rejection was still the same to this gal. Those old tapes, as I mentioned last time, kicked on loud and clear, “I wasn’t wanted, I wasn’t of value to them…how silly I was to think I would be good enough to be there. How foolish I must look to everyone that I so excitedly told I was going to seminary, to Fuller…because God was redeeming everything I have been through with this new direction in my life.”
I already shared much of my feelings at this point last post. But something I have not shared was the sinking realization that in all of this…in all the mistrust of God and myself…something else came glaringly apparent to me: my pride.
I realized that I said many times to people, “If I get accepted.” Yet, I do not think I actually thought I wouldn’t get accepted. Like I said, I thought they would be willing to take my money if nothing else. On top of that, I was always a stellar student – that was one thing I was sure of.
Then another glaringly prideful thought came to mind, “I’m going to have to swallow my pride and go back to the other local seminary. The one where I actually liked their programs better for what I want to do, but because they were Complimentariasts I didn’t want to be there.”
It’s amazing though how quickly I tried to push these prideful thoughts out of my head and instead, as the day went on focused on the rejection of it all…and eventually the anger that would unearth itself. This really was just the beginning of the learning that I learned these last few days.
The rest of that afternoon was, needless to say, not an easy one. Yet, the one glimmer of hope was that I had a babysitter lined up and a birthday for 2 dear friends to celebrate. I questioned if I was really in ANY mood to go be around happy, celebrating people when I was in such despair and disarray. I was afraid someone would ask me one simple question – like “what is your name?” or the other common and understandable one, yet poignantly painful at this point in my life “what do you do?” – and I would become a blubbering buffoon leaving the person looking for a bowl to hold underneath my eyes that had turned into faucets and wondering how they gracefully could excuse themselves.
For it reminded me that I, yes I am an adult and being that – I am fully capable of setting aside my misery for a night in order to do what God commands me to do in the bible – to celebrate. To celebrate with friends on their birthdays, to enjoy the little moments of joy that come only so often in this life…and to do so whether I felt like it or not. I knew that I didn’t have to go, but that going and with intent to “Practice Joy” might once again be the “sticky little film” that is holding all the jagged pieces of my fragile little life together.
So I went. I went with a warning to the birthday gal about where I was. I mentioned it to one other friend that I was not on solid ground that evening – but that I was there. And “Practice Joy” I did. I found myself relaxing a bit and being able to actually even have a good time – even if I couldn’t fully push the fact of the afternoon out of mind completely.
These few precious hours of practicing the practice would certainly help to carry me through the next day. While they couldn’t completely erase the tears from my eyes later that night, I have to say I was proud of myself …in a good way, in a parental way…that I could do what I am claiming is a good thing to do.
The next morning, as I prepared to go sit in a membership class, I knew I was at a potential dangerous spot in my walk with God. In a matter of days, Jesus had gone from being my husband, my dearest friend…to feeling like a distant, painful memory. One that I felt inadequate in and of myself to trust that He was real and valid for me and my life. I knew that this could very well send me out of the Church all together if I allowed it to. But this thought kept coming to me, “Where else would I turn to? Who else has the Truth that I have seen so clearly these past months? Who else paints the Reality that comforts me in this chaotic life?”
So, while I felt so distant from God, I knew what I had to do. I had to remember my faith was not about me, but about God. That it wasn’t about me or how strong or weak or unworthy I felt…that it is about God and His infinite strength and worth. I had to be a disciple and practice the disciplines of my faith, the disciplines Jesus showed to us.
Going forth, I would surround myself with with the worship music that just the day before had stirred my soul. I would continue to pray and be real and honest and transparent with where I was at this point in time. No, not just that – I would scream at God in my head as I pleaded for help in trying to understand my plight. I would continue to practice asking for help and prayer from those that are proving themselves worthy to be called friends.
The amazing thing is my mind, instead of dwelling on all the negative like I typically had done in my life…it, my mind, kept on asking me to go back to what I knew was true. To what I knew God had said to me beyond a shadow of a doubt. To hold firm to those things during this time of crisis of faith. To things like, “I am a valuable person”; to things like how He led me out of my bondage last May; to things like I know I am created to help encourage and inspire others. These things I know are true…and will always be true even if I get the means of carrying these out wrong from time to time.
Then on Monday night, after spending time reviewing the most popular posts I have…I read back over this question from Rediscovering the Christmas Season: “What do I really want? When it comes down to it…what are my deepest desires, ones that I feel I cannot live without?”
Back in December I got stuck when going to answer this question. Yet, on Monday it was as clear as day…crystal clear, picture perfect. What I want on the deepest level, beneath the surface of the prim and proper things like intimacy and connection and togethericity, more than all of these things I just wanted, I just want to know that I am accepted just as I am…
…a recovering romance addict who has a REALLY hard time letting go of her childish ways…who holds her fingers tightly closed around them in fact and is not keen on the idea of letting go unless they are somehow ripped from her hands;
…..a recovering blonde who doesn’t know if she really hears God’s voice correctly or if she is just making things up in her head and who doesn’t have whatever it takes to get into Fuller;
….a recovering legalistic, judgmental, prideful, hater who doesn’t know if she really has what it takes to make it in this life, if she has what it takes to be real in this life, to be authentic and vulnerable.
It was then that God reminded me of a vision He had given me just last Wednesday at a Lent worship service. Wednesday, before Friday. Before my crisis of faith, before my despair and mistrust set in. Oh, how sweet Wednesday now sounds to me…and how perfect this vision is to me. One in which God had ALREADY told me He accepted me…BEFORE I even asked the question.
It has not been an easy journey by any means. I have spent many hours this last 1.5 years PRACTICING what I desperately needed to put into practice this last week. Many hours practicing new “tapes” that are slowly and eventually replacing the old tapes. These new tapes share Jesus’ reality of who I am in Him… and I have to say I am amazed that – while I still have a ways to go to climb back out of this new hole this last earthquake left me in – I again have a grandeur, bigger picture of how Great a God there is for us to practice getting to know. I have a deeper root system; I feel more grounded as I look upward towards where I am growing. I see now the bigger picture of why the LIFE Jesus lived, why His life was such an example to me on how to live a life of practice.
As a coach, one thing I always tell (or I should say “told” since I haven’t coached for a while) those I coached was – on race day: “Do not fret; do not start questioning yourself nor your ability to run this race. Instead trust in the training that you have done with me. Trust that your training, your practices will be enough and will get you through the race. Trust in your training.”
