NO RUSH

I caught myself. It was close but I felt this fidgety, anxious spirit rising from my belly and then I caught myself. You [speaking to myself] cannot, will not, wish for this time to pass quickly. 
I will not miss what is right in front of me for the sake of preoccupation over the what ifs of a treatment that can only be experienced to be understood.

December 30th I will agree to do something I always said I would never do.  Never say never. Such a pedestrian thing to utter and yet so powerfully true.

What are you agreeing to that you proclaimed you would never do?

Life has a way of shoving us smack into the middle of what we fear and then watching how we rise, gloriously to our highest potential.

My career has been the embodiment of this—speaking in front of large crowds about how Jesus saved my marriage; being interviewed by dozens of media outlets about a controversial development project; designing a worship complex for the people I love the most to meet the God I cherish above all.

Lately, I’ve started playing this silly game of, “Would you rather…” Would you rather speak in front of 5,000 people or go through five months of chemo? Would you rather consult a group of angry business owners who are losing everything or lose all your hair? 

What would you “rather?” And how is this “rather” creating an avoidance that keeps you from standing in the midst of your glory?

Glory—High renown or honor. Magnificence or great beauty.

Did you know that there is nothing suitable to be called “Glory” that didn’t require risk, sacrifice, and maybe even some suffering along the way?

December 30th. Round two. The tendency is to rush through, to tell myself, “It will all be over soon enough.” But pushing through with the end as the goal, relegates the here and now to an inferior position. 

What are you trying to get through or get over with? 

What is happening in and through me now is as necessary, as useful as every scripted moment in this extraordinary life. 
To set this season apart, as something happening “to me” would subjugate, victimize…and I am no victim. 

I caught myself. Are you? Is there a part of you that defines the hard thing as something to avoid, to disdain? The miraculous thing about life is it has to be lived, fully, to be understood. There is no great mystery or heroics to how this must be done. It simply must be done.