Rising to Requirement

I've taken to picking up the mail in order to get me out from behind my desk. Yesterday, there was a large package for one of my bosses needing to be taken across campus back to our office.

Instinctively, I hoisted it and the tray of other mail up on one hand above my head just as I had learned to do when I waitressed.

When I did so, I recalled my training days and how intimidated I was at the idea that I was not just encouraged but required to carry each tray full of food with one hand above my head, grabbing a tray stand with the other and maneuver my way to the correctly numbered table.

Some of those trays were 30 or so pounds or more--don't even get me started with fajitas for a table of four.

Muscle is not something I've ever prided myself on. Ain't no pictures of me flexing in front of a mirror. This task was my personal fear factor. Images of dropping hot plates of enchiladas on children and the elderly danced through my head during my entire training. How was I going to do this?

But I did.

Fajitas and I never became bosom friends, but I got some very nice shoulder muscles and learned to do my job quickly and efficiently, with a smile on my face.

It's amazing how much capacity we have to rise to the occasion even when, at the start of a project/semester/job, it's easy to become overwhelmed and discouraged.

When I began my MA program, it was 5000 word papers that caused anxiety.
Waitressing brought "big tops", timed everything, and tray carrying.
Admissions brought travel season planning, events coordinating, and dressing like an adult every day.
Running brought running.

We rise to requirement, whether that's psychological, emotional, spiritual, physical, or mental.

The times we don't, I truly believe it's because a piece of us doesn't want to or doesn't believe we can.
Sometimes, like obedience, the actions come before the feelings.

If I think about running, I won't go. If I think about the distance that I need to run, I will give up.
If I had let myself ruminate on my papers when I was coping with my depression, they wouldn't have gotten written. I'm still unsure how they got written in the first place, but they did.

Looking at the whole can be wholly exhausting.
One step, one phone call, one mile (or one lap), one tray, one chapter, one paragraph, one outfit.
Small achievable goals.

And someday, you'll be walking across your own quad with a heavy box above your head/walking across the stage to receive your Master's/finishing up 6 weeks of travel for work/running 3 miles for the first time/effortlessly pairing a business casual ensemble for the 3972 time (or whatever your equivalent is) and think to yourself, "I can do so much more than I can imagine. Thanks be to God".

Ugly Running

After about a week and a half after I downloaded the app onto my phone, I finally worked up the gumption to start C25K, a running app designed for lazy non-runners.

Also, it should be known that by "gumption" I mean "the leering guilt which came through devouring an entire box of macaroni and cheese by myself in one sitting...again".

I am not a runner.

Tried Track for a couple months in high school, made it two months under the regime of the interim coach and one day of the actual team.
My sophomore roommate Lauren got me to run for the same two months 5 years later. We ran every single morning. Mile and a half, ending with the 100 stairs on campus. It was miserable.

I've been four years clean from running, and thank goodness. That stuff is terrible, and I get just the worst shin splints.

And yet.

C25K.

Why?

You guessed it.
Office peer pressure.

We're going to a conference for nationwide admissions folk and guidance counselors at the end of next month and, for some ungodly reason, there is a "fun" 5K involved.

Basically, I was tricked into believing that we were all going to do it.
We're not.
But I have been promised a tank top.

So there I went to the health complex to get my run on on the track above the intramural gym. Because it's beautiful outside, nobody else besides me (the Allergic Wonder) was there.

5 minutes of warm up walk, followed by variations of a minute of running to a minute and a half of walking for 20 minutes, then 5 more minutes of walking.

It was all good and fun (ish) until I hear thumping behind me, see a runner (CAME OUT OF NOWHERE I TELL YOU), and scream. Like a little girl. That poor guy. He finished half a lap and escaped out a side door not to return.

The idea of running has always appealed to me. I have visions of running through fields, down country roads, or down really really long hallways in the basement of Pentecostal churches after hours, with my hair streaming out behind me and my 3 mile legs taking me so far so fast.

Reality? About 15-20 seconds of glory before I'm panting and feeling the start of shin splints.
I've got no endurance. Or patience to learn endurance.

Many things have come easily to me learning wise.
If someone makes me feel stupid or less than, I will kick their expectations right off the table. Nothing can sidetrack me from my goal.

It takes that challenge, though, to make me change, to grow, to...try.
I've tried tricking myself into different challenges, like a weird self-antagonism, but it just doesn't stick. I need that outside antagonist, just one person that I've got to prove wrong.

That's how I passed Honors Algebra 2 and AP European History, why I was able to hold to my determination against slipping back into anorexia, how I managed to complete my Master's degree.
I still know the triggers from each. And there are more.

There have been other things I have vaguely wanted to accomplish, but the hard-nosed drive just isn't there.

I suppose I've always seen it as one or the other: either I'm so determined I'm scary or so apathetic others are scared for me. The gentle incline of appropriated endurance is not something I've endured long enough to see the fruits of. I try once, get irritated with my failure, and quit.

That brings me back to running.
I'm going to finish the 8 weeks this dumb app makes me do, and I will do it on its terms, not mine.
Honestly, I don't really care if I become a passable runner or not. It's more that this is a practice in a form of discipline that no one else would even know about if I didn't tell them.

So many areas of my life I wish were different. At the same time, I only think that because I keep focusing on all the large battles lost when I'm not even paying attention to the small battles.

Of course I can't read a 300 page book when I can't read a 300 word article on TheDailyBeast.
Of course I can't turn my phone off for a full day when I can't turn it off for half an hour.
Of course I can't write a new book when I can't write a letter back to Leslie.

Small, consistent practices of discipline. The gentle incline of appropriated endurance.
That's what I'm lacking; that's what I want.

Identity Deliveration

The Lord has been drilling a theme into my life the past few weeks, continued on through small group tonight and Oswald Chambers this morning.

Identity.

Paul tells us to model ourselves after soldiers, athletes, and farmers.

Soldiers who sacrifices their own desires for the sake of The Lord, who are loyal unto death, who seek justice for others.

Athletes who are disciplined and consistent. Take basketball. You show up every day, you do the sprints, you do the suicides, the lunges, the passing drills, the dribbling drills, the shooting drills. And some of it seems applicable and some of it doesn't, but even with the stuff that doesn't seem relevant, you follow your coach because you trust him.

Farmers don't farm for a living. Farming is a lifestyle. They live and breathe their work and do it with diligence. Not just because they want to but because they must. Every day is important in the life of a farmer.

That's the model of identity in Christ, but what about every day living?

NI people struggle with this especially. "Are we British? Are we Irish? We're Northern Irish but there's no checkable for that in the dropdown list." They don't know who they are as a people.

On an individual level, we each state our identities into life every day whether we think we do or not. "I'm crazy," "I'm such a bad friend," "I'm not good for anything," "I'm such a screw up," and those are just a few from the facebook status world.

We may consciously classify ourselves as sisters and girlfriends and daughters (or the male versions) but we speak ourselves into other boxes of identity daily. Those boxes of self-construction become stifiling to growth. If you constantly call yourself a screw up or a bad friend or a non-communicator or an over-communicator or a worrier or whatever it is, then you are disallowing yourself from becoming anything other than those things.

Oswald says, "God will not discipline us, we must discipline ourselves...Do not say, 'O Lord, I suffer from wandering thoughts.' Don't suffer from wandering thoughts. Stop listening to the tyranny of your individuality and get emancipated out of your personality."

Does that not give you shivers? I'll say it again (because I have it both underlined and starred in my devo book. "Stop listening to the tyranny of your individuality and get emancipated out of your personality. "

AMEN! Am I right? We spend so much time labelling ourselves and trying to find ourselves when all we need do is look into ourselves to see the truth of our identity as children of the living God.

And it doesn't feel that way sometimes. But I had a camp counsellor who once said, "Live out of your position, not your condition."

It works with God as well as other people. Feelings do not a friendship or a relationship with God make on any given day. Our position with Christ means that even when everything else sucks, we are still marked with his freedom and truth and must act out of it.

With others, we know not only our ultimate relationship to them but also our relationship with them in terms of how they are our brothers and sisters in Christ. That is our position. Thus, we must live out of that in any season.


Sermon over. I've just been very joyful recently, especially today. The Lord has been filling me with tranquility and freedom, a full release from anxiety because he is greater and stronger and more powerful than anything my personality could throw at him or tangle me up in life.

How beautiful, how wonderful is the grace of the God we serve.