things i don't do part I

Last January, a motivational speaker came into one of my last business classes before i was handed that coveted diploma. he was inspiring and captivating. the way he bounced around the classroom proved time and time again how confident and swift he was. about half way through the speech, he asked us all--us being the students--to get out a piece of paper and write in big words across the top I AM AT MY BEST WHEN...

And so I began to write. The list consisted of daily devotionals, running/working out, dining with friends, baking...blah blah blah. The list was about seven or eight "I'm at my best when's" deep. I had never been encouraged to do something like that before, and it was neat to have on paper all the things I love, yet somehow let slip through the cracks.

Over the summer, the speaker who came into my class that bright and changing January morning, came out with a book called "Your Best Just Got Better". The title is motivating and catalysis all in one. It makes you envision all the things you have always dreamed of doing, but for some reason fear, despair or angst got in the way.

Better is a scary and hopeful word all rolled into one. In one sense, its envisionary and seductress. Something about it makes you dream. It allows your mind to wander into the depths of all the things you once desired for as a young child. In the other sense, its messy and better left ignored. It means change and amendment, and who wants to go through with that? The truth is--for me at least--that we desire better but are either deathly afraid of it, all the change it can bring, and the thought alone is too scary..so we settle for what is now. The comfortable. The known.

Better is alluring. better, better, better. In our minds, we can do everything better. Not the things the Lord intended for us to be good at, but everything, because everything done by us alone is, well, better. Or so we think. Instead of doing everything better, I have decided to make a list of things I do. The list is not everything. But rather what I do well, and what I do not, and more than likely do not want to try.
In that list I drafted back last January, in hopes to be better and at my "best", I have decided upon inspiration from Shauna Niequist and the desire to step out of comfort zone, to make a list of things. And although its scary and exciting. Its both alluring and repelling. 


This is entirely different than any blog post I have every written, somehow the fear and deceit of it all makes it captivating.