Your deadly comfort.

On the last day of April my pastor preached part two of a message called 'Simplify.' He talked about our time being one of the most important things we have and that the way we fill our minutes before we know it evolves into the way we fill our life. The take away and what really struck a chord with me is that we need to focus more on who we want to become and less on what needs to get done.

As I sat there listening to his words my planner flashed before my eyes. All of the color coded plans and clearly outlined appointments played like a slideshow in my mind. My calendar is filled with things that need to get done, tasks upon tasks upon arguably meaningless tasks.

As I sat there thinking about the person that I want to become I realized that the things currently on my to do list don't add to my big picture. A few years ago I created a mission statement for my life, the idea behind it being that I would weigh my actions, my decisions and my weekly tasks against it. It would become the measure by which I would weigh my life. Today as I sit here I don't even remember what that mission is or even where I wrote it down.

Sitting in my warm seat at church I was slapped with the realization that I wasn't optimizing my time and dare I say it out loud that I was comfortable with my life.

One of my friends has a shirt that says "Comfort wants you dead," and it's a phrase that for the past week has been on my mind. As my minutes become my hours and my hours my days and my days my life, I see a recent string of comfortable days. Days where I push just enough, or lean in just enough to do a good job but not enough to break molds. Molds like the one I'm comfortably housed in right now.

My comfort zone, though safe is slowly killing me. Killing the passion in me that thrives on new situations. Situations where I give a little more, love a little deeper and push myself just ever so slightly pass my normal stopping point.

This week I decided to make one slight change to my schedule. I set my alarm for 15 minutes earlier than my normal wake up time so that I can spend quality, uninterrupted time with Christ. It's a small and ever so slight change but the peace that it's brought to my week has been incredible. If I look at my planner and the circumstances that I was faced with this week, the outcome should have been unrest but instead it was peace.

I used the first 15 minutes, just 15 minutes, of my day differently and it affected the entire trajectory of my week. In the days to come I'm planning to look at my schedule even closer, with the goal being to subtract and minimize things and tasks that are unnecessary and aren't adding value to my life.

I'm also going to recreate the mission statement of my life and set myself back on a path of growth and discovery, back on the path of life.

If you only take one thing away from this post I hope it's the truth that your comfort zone may be safe but it's not beneficial. Comfort is not a place where we can thrive or grow. In order to do more and to get closer to the person that we so desire to be we have to take a step outside of and away from what's familiar. A step outside of our deadly comfort.

"In this world you're either dying or your growing so get in motion and grow." Lou Holtz

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,