My first 40 days.

This year I decided to do lent for the first time. For some reason when the opportunity presented itself and I had the chance to give up all of my favorite things for an extended amount of time, I took it.

For 40 days I gave up coffee, candy, social media and alcohol. I wish I could say that the hardest part was the no coffee but lets be real, it was giving up candy.

Before this year I didn't really know much about Lent. Growing up my family wasn't big on Easter, we would go to church the weekend of but besides that we wouldn't do Easter egg hunts, or baskets or anything. I grew up with the sense that Easter was another holiday that society capitalized on but didn't truly understand.

The last 40 or so days have changed my entire view of this season. Easter is more than just another day out of the 365 that we get each year. The concept, the truth behind Easter, is the foundation of the Christian faith.

For those who aren't super familiar, the 40 days leading up to Easter, lent, is meant to model the 40 days that Jesus spent fasting in the wilderness. The bible says that Jesus was led by the Holy Spirit into the wilderness and he fasted for 40 days and 40 nights and when it was over he was tempted by the devil. Hebrews says that because Jesus suffered and was tempted he is able to help us when we are tempted.

On Easter Sunday, as I sang a set of worship songs to a congregation full of people the truth of Easter reverberated in my soul. I realized that regardless of what we add to the day, how we enhance it and make it marketable, Easter is and will always be about Jesus.

Lent for me was not about just taking a break from things that I enjoy. It wasn't about forcing myself to stop going on Facebook and to lay off the candy for a few weeks. Lent helped me to be able to narrow my focus, It took away the heavy distractions and clutter that often fogged my view. Lent pulled away the junk in my life and pointed me straight to the giver of life, it pointed me to Christ.

Easter is the celebration of the resurrection of Jesus Christ. It's what happened after the disciples saw Jesus hanging on a cross, crucified. Jesus, their hope for the future, was gone. The messiah had seemingly been defeated and death had won.

The truth though is that death is defeated and Christ is risen. He rose again on the third day and renewed the disciples hope in him as their savior and as the savior of all mankind. The darkness of the weekend and the sight of him hanging from a tree was erased by the joy of seeing him again in all of his honor and glory.

Easter is so much more than just pastel colors and packed church services. Lent reminded me that the resurrection is the Christian story. It's the three years that Jesus spent preaching and reaching out to the lost coming to an abrupt halt and then beauty, glorious beauty, being born from the ashes.

Lent was the path that I needed to take to become truly connected to the Easter story. It was the defining moment that made Easter not just another bible story but rather the moment in history that makes everything that I believe in truth.

"If Jesus rose from the dead, then you have to accept all that he said; if he didn't rise from the dead then why worry about any of what he said? The issue on which everything stands is not whether or not you like his teaching but whether or not he rose from the dead."  - Tim Keller

The happiness of a Patriots fan.

I've been a Patriots fan for as long as I can remember. Growing up my brothers, all 5 of them and my dad, loved the Redskins. It seemed like the Redskins were the Magloire family football team but I never seemed to develop a liking for them. Instead, I gravitated towards the team with a coach that never smiled and a sixth round quarterback draft pick from California.

Before I even knew what it meant to be a fan of anything I was a fan of the Patriots. I didn't really know what I was doing as far as being a football fan was concerned. Eventually, I figured that I just needed to model the behavior that my brothers displayed.

So I would look up stats and players names and I would watch games and make noise when we scored a touchdown and make noise when we got scored on. I figured if I was constantly making noise during a game I was doing something right.

Now that I live in Denver, I often get slack from people about the team I like. The most common things I hear are "But wait, you're not even from New England," or my personal favorite "Oh great, another bandwagon fan."

I love football and I love being a Patriots fan but during the Super Bowl I had a moment that forced me to take a look at myself and be reminded that it's just a game.

Picture this, there I was on Super Bowl Sunday, eight minutes left in the fourth quarter and I was sobbing. I was sitting there crying so hard, not at all embarrassed because I thought the Patriots were going to lose. My friends all laughed at me and called me ridiculous and I just sat there crushed. Feeling like the game was so important, like the Patriots really needed to win or my life would be affected in some major way.

For every game that is lost in football there's a coach, a team, investors and a few others that are greatly affected. It changes the trajectory of their season, whether they go into the playoffs or not and for some players it affects whether they're able to even stay in the league. When the Patriots lose, nothing in my life changes. I wake up the next day, the same as I did the day before and I continue going on with my life.

The truth is, for the majority of us Football fans, besides our emotional state being altered for a few hours, our lives don't change at all by the results of these games. Yet there we are, crying,  in a room filled with people we love because we think that a game might not end the way we want it too.

Super Bowl Sunday was kind of a reality check for me. It was like I had an out-of-body experience by seeing my behavior through my friends eyes. Is football really that important to me?The answer, is that it's not.

What's really important to me, one of the things that I want people to see me engaging in passionate conversations over and fighting for, is education.

So many of the students that I work with want to play in the NFL or the NBA. They want to be famous singers and rappers, they want to drive Ferrari's and live in mansions in LA and a lot of that is far fetched for 99.9% of them. What shouldn't be a far fetched dream though, is for them to be able to go to a high school in their neighborhood that offers them a rich education geared towards their learning styles.

I want to yell and raise a ruckus about things like that. About all of the thousands of  under served and disadvantaged youth in this country and my city, that don't have access to the opportunities they deserve. For kids from low income families that aren't able to get an education that gives them a chance to have a better life. One that is better than the one their parents had and equips them with the tools they need to break the cycle of poverty.

Football is often as simple as win or lose and maybe that's what I love about it. There are four quarters, a slight chance of overtime but regardless it always ends with someone winning and someone losing. Education, on the other hand, may not be as simple but it's undoubtedly more important.

I firmly believe that I was made to help youth. Made to support them in their struggles and provide them with the resources that are often just out of their grasp. Football brings me happiness but education and being a bridge for students in that way, that's what brings me real joy.

I'll probably still watch football next season. I may buy a jersey and even try to get tickets for the Patriots vs Broncos game. What I won't do, is forget how small it all is. In the grand scheme of things and the big picture of my life the Patriots are just a team and football is and will always be, just a game.

Lovely.

The other day I took a trip to my favorite coffee shop. Across from me was a young lady, about my age, with long red hair and clear green eyes and every time I looked up she was staring at me. It was kind of an intense situation because she was only sitting one table away from me. The more I tried to avoid her eye contact the more awkward and weird I felt.

I had just gotten to the coffee shop so I was still settling in and putting my things down and when I finally went to get a cup of coffee she spoke to me.

She looked me right in the eyes and she said “Hi, how are you?” I smiled and told her that I was doing fine and then asked how she was doing. She told me that she was doing well and then a huge smile spread across her face and she said “You are lovely, I noticed that when you walked in and had to tell you.”

I couldn’t help but to laugh. As far as looks were concerned I wasn’t having my best morning. I had gone to bed late the night before and woke up early to meet Patrick for breakfast before he went to work. My face felt tired and my body matched those sentiments. In that moment, lovely was not the word I would have used to describe myself. Yet there I was, surrounded by people I didn’t know and where I saw a frazzled hot mess this lady with flowing red hair saw something lovely.

How often do we do that? We look at ourselves and see all the flaws, all the things that are out of place and the things that aren’t quite right. We see the bags under our eyes and the air of exhaustion radiating from our skin and miss all the layers of ‘lovely’ that envelope us.

I took a break from blogging recently. My reasoning was that I thought I needed to refocus. I thought I needed space to clear my head and find the beauty in the ashes but now I think the truth is that I got caught up in the mess. I got so caught up, in fact,  that I was lost in the cobwebs and the dust and missed all of the gorgeous layers and hints of lovely.

The thing about commitment, real commitment, is that it’s independent of feelings. I won’t always feel like writing, I won’t always feel like my thoughts or opinions are valuable and I’m sure that I won’t always feel like I have something important to share. Commitment though, doesn’t really care about how I feel. Commitment calls out to my integrity and requires of me that I show up and do what I said that I would do regardless of how I feel.

Because when you learn to show up, even when most of you feels unprepared, unmotivated and even unworthy, that's when you start to realize that lovely things are all around you. It's in the follow through of our word and being willing to step into the uncomfortable places that we learn how to really see it.

So here I am. An inexperienced, passionate, joy filled and sometimes unmotivated writer ready to embark on a journey with you. One where I commit to the process and instead of being attached to the outcome I become attached to always showing up.

I encourage you to master the art of showing up, it'll be especially useful if you ever find yourself in the place that I found myself a month ago. Feeling like an arrow. Like I needed to pull back in order to be shot forward. Regardless of how you feel, show up and be committed to your word. You might be feeling like an arrow but maybe you're meant to be an anchor. Steady, unmovable, reliable, always staying in place even when the waves are rolling and the storm is raging.

So for now I'm committing to that. To being the anchor even when I feel like I'd much rather be an arrow. Maybe one day I'll run into you in a coffee shop. You'll be standing there thinking that you look frazzled, unwashed, and a mess and I'll be the one staring, trying to find the words to describe something so lovely.

Xoxo,