Each day I understand better that our value is not tied to what we do or even what we can do.  We all have value because we are.  There’s value in just showing up and being present.  Planning and preparing are important, but they aren’t everything.  I am learning that, while being prepared is invaluable, being present is just as important if not more so.

The section I read today in the book was on rituals.  Being one who loves variety, I have always thought of rituals as ruts, but this book has given me a different perspective.  Rituals can help us get in the groove.  Madson was relating about the rituals she was introduced to in some classes she took.  She says,

At our desks in calligraphy class, we began with the ritual of grinding  the ink.  There is a correct way to hold the ink stick and to move it in small circles in a tiny pool of water on the stone that serves as an inkwell.  The action of making ink became both a physical and mental preparation for the work of learning how to paint Japanese characters and bamboo leaves.

These rituals at the beginning of each session had the effect of creating order and harmony.  We knew what we had to do when we entered the sace.  Cleaning and grinding ink got us into the world of the art without the stress of creation.  There was a calming effect…

My best meetings have been the ones where I not only prepared for the content, but took time to prepare my self to clear out the clutter and be more present.  What a wonderful way to look at rituals as preparation for the art of being present.

We had a great time and a few adventures ; some planned and some not so planned. I am learning that the unplanned adventures are where growth occurs… or not. These are the places where it is possible to get un-stuck.

This is about the unplanned adventure…

The Adventure

The night of the Alcatraz tour, Jeanie and I drove into San Francisco in the car while Justin and Erin came from Berkely on the BART (subway). We parked in a garage and they walked from the BART to Pier 33 where the Alcatraz tour meets. The tour was awesome and afterwards, we had dinner. We offered to drive Erin and Justin to the station because it would save them a mile long walk and also because it was getting close to the last BART run for the night. When we arrived at our garage, the doors were locked and the garage was closed for the night! We couldn’t believe it. In a big city like San Francisco, the garages close? We were without a car.

My feelings were running strong right then. I felt very tired; I was ready to stop walking and go to bed. I felt foolish for having parked in a garage that closed while we were out. I felt confused because I was tired and forced to make a decision that I had never been faced with before. I didn’t know what to do. We quickly discussed what to do next and came to the decision that we were all going on the BART to Berkeley for the night. We quickly realized that we no longer had the luxery of a drive to the BART, we had to walk… FAST to get there AND buy tickets for Jeanie and me before the last train.

We walked and walked and walked some more. Finally arrived at the station and there was a line to get tickets! ARGH! While I waited in line, Erin tried to buy them on the other side of the gates, but that didn’t work. I finally got to the ticket machine and called Justin over to me. I said, “Tell me what to do.” I didn’t have the luxury of time to figure out what to buy or how to tell the machine. He told me which buttons to push and everything was going just fine until the machine rejected my ATM card. I froze momentarily then decided to use the credit card. It was then that I realized that I wasn’t using the card I thought I was. I thought I was using my debit card, but it was a credit card. I said, “Oh, I used the wrong card,” as I put the right one in and typed my PIN. While I was doing that, Jeanie asked me, “Which card did you use?” I’m afraid, my response was not what I wished it had been. In the moment I snapped at her, I don’t remember the words, but the message I sent very strongly was, “It doesn’t matter which card I used, just leave me alone and let me do this!”

I got the tickets and we hurried down the escalator. Just as we stepped off the escalator, the train came to a stop in front of us. It was literally that close of a call. Had we missed the train, I am not sure what we would have done next. I am grateful that we didn’t have to make that decision. After we settled in for the ride, I apologized for snapping at her, but it was clearly not the right time to resolve the issue. We were both just too tired to think clearly. It was a very quiet ride to Berkeley.

When we got to their apartment, Erin was so wonderful. She got on the computer and printed out the instructions for us to ride the BART back the next morning and what bus to catch to avoid the long walk on the other side too. It was just what we needed and I was too sleepy to understand it the night before. We got back, got the car, complained to the garage attendent (who was sorry for us, but charged us the overnight fee regardless). We drove back to the hotel and begged for a little extra time to check out, which they were very gracious to allow us. (Thank you, Holiday Inn Express in Redwood City). Lastly, we checked out of the hotel and drove back to Berkeley to really visit with the newlyweds.

What I Learned

I was not happy with my behavior that night. I was feeling emotions very strongly for good reason and I couldn’t seem to control myself. The next day I was better able to articulate what I learned. On the way to the hotel, I asked Jeanie if I could tell her what I learned about myself. She listened as I shared my heart. I shared with her how I have a tendency (maybe even a need) to focus on a single thing at a time. When I am concentrating on a task, nothing else matters. If someone interrupts me when I am focused, I feel irritable because the thing I am focused on is all that matters to me. That ability to focus is a strength, but if I am not careful, I can run roughshod over people I care about all for the sake of a task. I feel like I want to be left alone and yet, I recognize my need for community.

Mostly what I took away from this experience is a feeling that I am in a bubble with a very thick skin. I try to keep my heart and emotions well within this skin where I have control over them. I imagine others living in similar bubbles. When we move close together, our skins rub agains one another and wear thin. It feels like the emotion escapes as I begin to lose control. It is in the connections, the places where the bubbles touch and rub agains one another that we have the ability to understand ourselves better and to grow. When I feel, and I know I am feeling, I can examine the emotion and ask what belief or desire is causing me to feel that emotion. In this way, I learn what my heart of hearts truly believes and what I really desire from my core being. Let me try to explain…

My friend, Curt used to say, “We say what we think, but we live what we believe.” I think that is true. The heart-belief I am talking about is from the core of our being rather than an intellectual belief that we talk about. It is the belief that is so much a part of us that it controls our behavior. It is the difference between saying, “I believe that chair will hold me up,” (intellectual belief) and sitting in the chair (heart belief).

What will happen on an emotional level if I sit in the chair and it works just like I expected it to? Nothing. What happens if the chair breaks beneath me as I sit on it? I will feel strongly. I may feel angry or embarrassed. Whatever the emotion, it is easy at that point to blame the chair, but the feelings don’t come from the chair. They come from my core belief that chairs are supposed to hold people when they sit on them.

My friend, John has taught me that if I can stop myself (while I am feeling strongly) and ask, “What am I feeling?” Then I can follow it with the next question, “What do I believe or desire that causes that feeling?” The belief may be true or not. The desire is probably good on some level although it may be expressed in an unhealthy way.

The cool thing is what I can learn from my emotions. When I feel, I can learn what my own desires and beliefs are! I can know myself better and as I know better who I am, I know better who God made me to be.

Search me, O God, and know my heart;
test me and know my anxious thoughts.

See if there is any offensive way in me,
and lead me in the way everlasting. –Psalm 139:23-24

The night of the adventure this is what I learned that I believed and desired…

• I felt irritated because I believed I was the cause of our stressful situation — A false belief. I didn’t cause the situation.
• I had a desire to fix the ticket problem and get to the train — A good desire.
• I felt frustrated because I believed I should be able to answer Jeanie’s question and finish buying the ticket too — A good desire, but based on a false belief. I was unable to do that. I need to know my limitations.
• I felt frustrated and pressured because of a fear that we were going to miss the train — A very likely possibility that fortunately did not come to pass.

I am thankful that I have a sweetheart who loves me in spite of myself and who is willing to listen to me and truly hear my heart. I am also thankful for a God who pursues me as if He really loves me. What a concept!

…our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms. (Eph 6:11)

The battle is real. The stakes are our lives and the lives of the ones we love. The good guys are not always the good guys and the bad guys are not always the bad guys. The tools we use to fight are not the ones we are used to… they are not the ones we have been given by the good guys either. It is time for us to wake up and see the reality that is around us.

In The Matrix, when Neo takes the red pill, it destroys the fantasy that he had been living all of his life. He finds out that the world is not at all what it appeared to be. All the pleasures that he had experienced were there simply to mollify him into complacency. The powers in control wanted him to be happy and not ask questions. All the while the “machine world” was literally sucking the life out of him. Here’s how I see it playing out in the present…

For some time, I have been going through a “crisis” in my faith. I have begun to question many of the beliefs that I always took for granted. I was raised in the church and the church was good for me. I have a foundation of understanding of the Bible that I could never have gotten if I had not found a relationship with God until I was an adult. There is something about the things we learn as children that make them stick. They become the foundation that our life is built on. That’s is not always a good thing, but I’m talking about good things. As an adult, I realize that the people who taught me those thing were flawed just like me. When I was a child, I thought the adults knew it all. I saw life in two stages, childhood and adulthood. Childhood is the learning stage where you are working your way into adulthood. Then it is over. As an adult, you have it all together. I was wrong! The ones who were adults when I was a child did not have all the answers. I thought they did, but now I know that they were full of questions and doubts just like me… Many of them, unlike me, didn’t ask the questions, or let their doubts see the light of day. Most of them, if offered, took the blue pill.

The Matrix

This story is about the Church. Just the word, “church” evokes emotion in me and probably anyone who knows the meaning of the word. When I hear the word, “church”, I think of buildings with steeples, store-front buildings, homes that people gather in, meetings on Sunday, meetings on Wednesday, meetings on Saturday night. I think of preachers giving messages, songs sung, acapella or with pianos, organs, drums, guitars, keyboards and let’s not forget the horns and violins. We talk about “going to church”, which (to people like me) means attending an event of some sort on Sunday morning. I have great memories of church and not so great memories of church. I cannot cover every thought I have about church, so what I want to focus on, in this blog entry is the Sunday morning event and how it is of such paramount importance. It was expected that “good christian people” go to church every Sunday. It was (and is) a duty that must be fulfilled.

The Red Pill

The struggles that I have been going through lately are very real and hard. I find that many of my friends from years past and present are going through similar struggles. Some of them have met me here on this blog in their comments. Others are blogging and sharing their struggles. Some have been at it for a while and others are only just beginning to allow themselves to ask the hard questions. While I want to encourage the examination of our hearts, I also want to add a word of caution. It may seem that those who constructed the churches are the enemy. They are not! They are us and we are them. More about that at the end…

The feelings we have are our own. Our feelings come from our values. When I find myself irritated “in church”, I ask myself why. Here’s what that conversation looks like… Not too long ago, I thought this was the most happening place around. What changed? It wasn’t them, it was me. So I ask myself why I am feeling irritated. If it is not about them, then what? What am I believing? What do I desire? Then ask myself if those beliefs are true and if the desires are good desires. I have learned that my irritation comes from a desire for the church to be about the people and not the event on Sunday morning. These are my feelings based on my beliefs and my desires. I own them.

The Church in the Bible is also known as the Body of Christ. It is the group of people who identify themselves with Christ. [Disclaimer: I am no expert in church history, I welcome corrections.] The early church in the book of Acts was a movement of people who were meeting together in their homes and having meals together. I get the feeling that they were friends. They lived in the same neighborhoods, their kids played ball together, they all shopped at the same Harris Teeter. I imagine their time together was talking about what they were experiencing in this new found faith as naturally as we talk about the latest movie with our friends. What I don’t see is an emphasis on meeting every Sunday morning to sing a few songs and listen to a preacher. I see an emphasis on the relationships between the people.

What I am not saying is that meeting for Church on Sunday morning is wrong. Please! Hear me. I am saying that meeting together in a building to worship together is frequently a good thing. Many people would say that the meeting itself is church. I disagree. The Church is not an event. I wish we had another name for the event. I think it would help separate the defensiveness that this topic frequently brings.

In the book, The Present Future , by Reggie McNeal, the author tells of meeting with church leaders on Sunday morning at 11:00 in a restaurant. He asks them to look around at the people in the restaurant. While they are taking it all in, he asks, “Do these people look like they struggled with deciding to go to church this morning?” Of course they don’t. Most people today consider going to church to be an irrelevant waste of time. What reasons have we in the church given them to think otherwise?

The Blue Pill

We are missing the boat when we make Church all about a building and an event. I think of it as creating a box for us to fit in. The box is made up of our corporate beliefs and expectations of one another. When we are in the box, we feel safe because there are so many others just like us. Even worse we have also turned the Great Commission of Jesus to reach the world into “getting others into the box with us.” This irritates me because it seems to me to be so not what Jesus would do (read pharisaical). Who creates the box? Who maintains the box? We do, when we love the safety of our common belief systems more than we love God. That is hard, I know and it leads me to questions about myself that I am uncomfortable with. When do I create boxes? What boxes am I living inside today (very comfortably I might add)?

I belive that well meaning leaders throughout church history have created many boxes in order to give people a place of refuge, a sense of belonging and a common faith in God. These are noble motives and great, positive desires. Many if not most of the original leaders of these movements were sincere and hearing from God in their calling. But their followers over the next generations followed the leaders rather than the Lord. Over time, it became about defending their faith (the box) rather than seeking God.

There are many reasons for the boxes that we have created, but I want to stand up and shout. The boxes are not the point! Jesus said that the world would know us by our love for one another. To me that means breaking down the walls that divide us including denominational walls. Not that there are no differences, but because our love (Christ’s love) transends the differences. We love one another and honor our differences. What a concept!

Concerns

In closing, I want to share some of my sincere concerns for myself and for my brothers and sisters who are seeking God and seeking to understand their hearts.

• I want to avoid passing judgement on others who do not believe as I do, or deliberately using my “liberty” in such a way that it causes someone who is not ready to hear it to stumble.

Therefore let us stop passing judgment on one another. Instead, make up your mind not to put any stumbling block or obstacle in your brother’s way. (Romans 14:13)

• Creating division as in “us and them”. My desire is for unity, but not at the cost of being the person God created me to be. If the cost of unity in the body is everyone-being-an-eye, then I am not interested. Like my buddy, Curt says, Christ is calling us to unity in our diversity. I won’t say what body part I am, but I will say that it is necessary.
• Beliving in nothing. I am becoming more and more aware of how easy it is to criticize what exists. It is easy to tear down. It is much harder to build up. I find myself disenchanted with the church as it exists today in 21st century North America. However, I want to be about helping to define what it should be rather than pointing out what it shouldn’t be. I love Jesus, but I do not identify with much of what is done in the name of Jesus today. I want to be known as one who is helping to reshape the church and redefine what it means to be a Christ follower or a Christian today.

A few months ago, I was stirred as I read this article, Feeling Stuck? Getting Past Impasse by Timothy Butler. Sometimes I like to try things out before I share my opinion. As I have applied the lessons, they rings true for me. It has changed my outlook and the way I approach life greatly. As I shared the lessons with my church group this morning, I realized it was time to share it with my blog community too.

Getting Unstuck

The first step in getting unstuck is realizing that I am stuck. It comes to me as a frustration or irritation. It feels like I’ve been here before many times and I didn’t like it. Yet, at the same time, it feel inevitable. Maybe I am doing something for the millionth time that I know I shouldn’t… but I just cannot help myself. Or maybe I am avoiding or procrastinating something that needs to be done. Maybe it feels like outside forces are pressing in on me, forcing change that I didn’t ask for and I do not want! I feel powerless to change me or the circumstances.

I feel stuck, (like my son-in-law, Mark with his jeep in the mud, but it isn’t fun). Just spinning my wheels. Going around in circles and never getting any closer to what I want. The most important life lesson, I have learned from this is that, as uncomfortable as the feeling of impasse is, it is necessary in order for me to grow. If I don’t feel the discomfort, I will have no reason to make adjustments.

Climbing the mountain

Picture a narrow path around a mountain as an upward spiral of growth. As I move along the path, I am moving upwards towards a healthier life (physically, spiritually, emotionally and mentally). Along the way, I encounter difficulties. I can ignore them for a time… but by choosing to ignore the impasse, I am also choosing to ignore the upward path. I may travel along happily around the mountain and be surprised to find myself back at the impasse. The impasse is unforgiving. It will not let you progress untill you deal with it. Like the person driving the car up the road in this photo. They are not getting up the mountain until they get past the bus that is sideways in the middle of the road

I can change plans, or I can just go around the mountain again, but when I return, there it will be. I can only go up the mountain (grow) by dealing with the impasse. How many people spend their whole lives running up against the same impasse over and over and over and… I don’t want to be like that.

Applying the principles

Dr. Butler has divided getting-past-impasse into six neat phases. While I don’t think life usually works out so elegantly as to fit the phases, it does give us a lens through which we can observe and learn… and grow. He starts with recognizing the impasse, moves to learning other ways to view and deal with it and ends with acting on what we have learned. I encourage you to read the article to understand all six phases and begin to give them a whirl.

There are two tools that Dr. Butler does not mention that, as a Christian, I feel are very important. The first “tool” is prayer: When I climb up on Daddy’s lap and tell him my troubles, He is faithful to listen and extend grace in my life. Grace in this sense is both forgiveness and help. That grace/help leads me to the second “tool”: My community of faith helps me to get through impasses in my life (I Pet 4:10). When I am vulnerable with Jeanie or one of my close friends and share my problems, they can listen, understand my situation and share their thoughts and advice. With their perspective, I can see things very differently, which helps me to rethink my approach. They also hold me accountable to do what I say I want to do. (”Accountability” sounds legalistic, but I don’t mean it that way. The difference between legalistic accountability and grace accountability is that with grace accountability, my community is merely encouraging me to do what I said I wanted to do. Legalistic accountability is telling me what I ought to do that I didn’t agree to).

So there you have it. To keep moving up the mountain is to get through the impasses that we face. It takes willingness, insight, faith, vulnerabilty and courage, but it is worth it. I encourage you to name an impasse in your life, imagine yourself on the other side of it, write it down, pray, seek counsel, courageously face the impasse and lastly, leave a comment to tell me what happens.

Imagine four guys getting together for a day long retreat for the purpose of going deeper in friendship. What might that look like? We didn’t know either, but we can invent it as we go. The reality is that we don’t make up anything in an of ourselves. I didn’t make my brain, I didn’t create my body. Any good ideas I have are not because of anything I can take credit for. We owe it all to God who lavishes his goodness on us all.

I can imagine your asking about now whether since I am expressing thanks to God that I might be over and done with the doubting and questions. Rest easy (or not) I am as full of questions and doubts as ever, but this one thing I am sure of. There is a God and for some reason He loves me. I still have lots of things I just don’t get. I hope I always do.

My friends and I decided to set aside a day to get away and hear the hearts of our friends. We talked about things that are important to us, we dreamed, we went digging for treasure in our dreams. We call it “heart spelunking“. We learned and practiced tools for better communication. We experienced the benefits of each of our God given gifts. We felt deeply and experienced breakthroughs. It was difficult at times and incredible throughout. We joked and laughed, spoke our fears and dreams and cried. It was truly an auspicious day.

When I have gone to conferences and retreats in years past, my objective was always to have fun or to learn more. These days, I find that my objective is to invest in things that will help me be the person that God made me to be. Don’t get me wrong. I want to have fun. I do want to learn, but not fun for the sake of escaping life nor learning just for the sake of learning. I long to maximize my time here on this planet because I realize more and more how short it is.

I am so very thankful for the weekend, for great friends, partners in life, your thoughts and prayers and a God who loves me in spite of myself. I am also thankful for the people who invested their precious resources into creating the High Pastures Retreat. If you need a place to get away from everything, I highly recommend it.

A tight group of my friends and I are exploring this together beginning with our values. Together we are wrestling with defining what it is we value in life. I find it difficult to narrow down and nail down what I value. There are so many things that I value in different ways. I think that there are different ways to approach this whole exercise in naming values. I can identify values by where I invest my scarce resources. My friend Mark (who writes a blog here) calls this revealed preference. We value what we value because… well, we just do. This is revealed by examining what we are already doing. In Matt 6, Jesus said, “…where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.” That makes perfect sense to me, and it is a start, but it isn’t enough.

There’s a part of me that wants more than just whatever feels comfortable in the moment. This part of me realizes that I have tendencies to do what I don’t want to do. I also know that I can make choices that will get me to what I’m after in the long run (even though they are not comfortable). I know that I’m no good at fighting my urges alone. I need the power and Grace of God and the help of my friends. I know that God has made me the way He made me for a reason. As I learn more about that reason, it will help me know what I want to value and where I want to go. Ultimately, I want to live for Christ… and if you know me at all, you know that when I say that, I do not mean becoming more religious. I mean being the best damned¹ Jim Anderson that I can be, infused with the Holy Spirit of God living in me.

I don’t fully understand it, but i know that God is calling me to be more me and more Him at the same time. One thing I am sure of… when I am fully me and God is fully Himself in me, it will look like no other person in history. We aren’t supposed to be identical. He gave us different gifts, strengths and talents for a reason. He loves variety!

—————-

¹Sorry mama. I know you don’t like bad language, but I needed to write that word. It wasn’t against you, it was for me.

April Fools!

I did not make my goal. My time was 1:05:22. I was a tad disappointed, but not too much. I ran my best and I feel good about that. There is no way I could have run any faster. I gave it everything I had.

My daughter Melody ran the race “with” me. By that, I mean we started together. Her time was 54 minutes. Way to go, Mel!

Some highlights were the group of people (men and women) in red dresses, there was a group dressed as bowling pins and another in banana suits. The most touching were the marines. Scattered throughout were marines running with 55 lb backpacks. The backpacks were in honor of their comrades who cannot run. Twice I saw groups of marines taking turns pushing a wheelchair-bound marine. That is the kind of friend I want to be. Every time I passed one of the marines, I told them, “Thank you”.

The best highlight for me was when I was about a half a mile from the glorious finish line, I saw my sweetie and her sister there to cheer me on. That’s the first race I have ever had someone there watching for me. So cool.

I have been following the FIRST training plan, which calls for long runs once a week. Today’s run was 8 miles. I decided that it was time to test myself to see whether I was in the ball park for my goal. I planed to run the first 10K at my 60 minute pace. I was sorely disappointed with my performance.

The first mile, I was right on pace. In the second mile, I checked my heart rate and it was spiking. I knew that there was no way I could keep that up, so I dialed back the intensity a bit. My legs just ached and argued with me. At the 3 mile mark, I had to walk a bit. Then I picked up the run at a medium pace. At 4 miles, I walked some more and beat myself up for not doing any better than I was. Ran through to 6.2 miles (10K) and checked my time 1:16. Ugh! I walked a bit and jogged the rest of the way in. Right now I am feeling a variety of emotions; disappointment, hopefulness, thankfulness, wishfulness and questioning.

• I am disappointed that I cannot run faster even after the training I have been doing. My expectations are apparently too high.
• I am hopeful that this was just a bad day for testing myself and that I really can run faster. I was running alone today and I wonder how much better I might have done with a buddy “pulling me along”.
• I am thankful that at almost 49 years old that I can run at all. I haven’t injured myself and my body still works well enough to run.
• I am wishful that I had started earlier in life and had years of training under my belt. Wishful that I could run faster.
• I am questioning what to do. What does one do when one has a goal and a good reality check tells them that they cannot do it? Do I give up? Take what I’ve got? Just run the stinkin’ race and see what happens? Keep telling myself that I can do it even when the evidence says otherwise?

As I wrote that last sentence, I remembered something that I read just yesterday. In Good to Great, Jim Collins, describes one of the difference between great companies and merely good ones. He speaks of the Stockdale Paradox (named for Vice Admiral James Stockdale), which is fundamentally retaining faith that you will prevail in the end, regardless of the difficulties and at the same time, Confront the most brutal facts of your current reality, whatever they might be. Applying Stockdale to my situation: I will prevail. I will run the bridge in 60 minutes. I had a really bad run today. I have a lot of training yet to do. What can I learn from my run today? What can I do better next time? How can I overcome what I must in 6 weeks to reach my goal?

I quickly realized how untrustworthy my will is at 5:15 in the morning. As soon as the alarm goes off, I start whining (on the inside) about needing five more minutes. In the moment, I truly believe that five minutes will make all the difference in the world. Just a little more rest and I will be ready to get up. Of course five minutes really makes no difference at all and if I give in, I’ll be whining for five more. The key for me is that I put my feet on the floor immediately when the alarm sounds. I can sit for about a minute before my backup alarm goes off. Yes, I have a backup alarm. I am sneaky and untrustworthy at 5 AM and I love to sleep. Here’s the wakeup alarm algorithm. I have a fancy radio/CD/alarm clock that my family gave me for Father’s Day a few years ago (Thanks ladies, I still like it). It has two independent alarm settings. I set the first one to go off at 5:00 AM softly playing NPR news. It gets gradually louder until I reach up and turn it down. I am still mostly asleep. At 5:15, my phone alarm sounds. This is the “real” alarm. When this one goes off, it is time to put the feet on the floor. No excuses. I mechanically sit up and put my feet on the floor. After about another minute, I get the backup alarm. My Father’s day alarm clock changes from news to an annoying buzz (just to make sure I didn’t talk myself into sleeping in again).

Even then I am still not really awake. I could easily lay back down and snooze away. So, I go brush my teeth, shave and either shower, or get ready for my morning run with the guys (depending on the day). Only then can I trust myself to stay up. So that’s the routine. Boring, eh? Some of the toughest things for me in life are the boring, repetitive tasks that have to be done.

Each morning, the goal was to get up. that’s it. Not to have a quiet time or to read my bible or anything else. Just get up. I’m a simple man with simple needs. I know how easy it is to take on too much and fall flat on my face. At 48 years old, I know that there have been times in my life that I have been good about waking up early, but they didn’t last. I wanted to evaluate getting up alone, so I limited my focus to the getting up part.
So what did I do? Some mornings I read the web, books, read my bible, meditated, reflected on stuff, prayed. I wrote in my journal and I wrote a blog or two. There were a few mornings that I was still very tired and sleepy even after my wakeup routine… so I took a nap. If that sounds like cheating, I didn’t see it that way at all. I made the decision using my rational, awake mind. The cool thing was that I could be up for an hour, take a 30 minute nap, feel refreshed and still not have to rush out the door.

The first Friday night after completing the month, I stayed up late and decided that I wanted to sleep in on Saturday. Again, this is my rational mind doing the decision making. So, off with the alarms. I slept in until about 8:30 and it felt great! I needed the rest and I didn’t feel like I violated any promises to myself by sleeping in. Later that day, I realized how much I missed that time. The day just flew by even faster than ever.

Sleeping in helped me come to make the decision to continue to get up early. I am making a few changes though. Fifteen minutes of radio is too long. It is just long enough for me to fall back asleep. So I am cutting the “gentle wakeup time” from fifteen minutes to five. The other change is that just getting up is not enough for me now. I am ready to kick the discipline heat up a notch. Now that I am sure that I can get up out of bed even when I don’t feel like it, I believe that I can add one little thing to that routine. I have decided to begin writing every morning for 20 minutes. I can write here, on my blog. I can write in my journal, I can write a letter… anything I want to do, the promise to myself (and anyone who’s reading) is to write for 20 minutes every day. I will try this for a month and evaluate it.

I know that when I am feeling something deeply, there’s more to it than just emotion. When I am feeling something irrational, I know there’s some real gold to be found in mining that. It is worth figuring out what is at the root of it all. The problem is that it is uncomfortable to even admit that I’m irrational. How can I be introspective when I feel stupid?

Russian Dolls

At a retreat I attended a few years ago, Gordon McDonald compared us to Russian dolls (you know the little dolls that you open up and there’s another one inside that looks just like the one you opened only smaller. He said that the outside doll is the one we show to people. So, when I meet you, the Jim that you see is my outside doll (Jim-1). If I get to know you better, I will show you (Jim-2), but I’m going to have to feel pretty darned safe in order to share Jim-3 with you. Jim-4 might have secrets about me that only my best friends will ever know. I expect to spend the rest of my life learning more about Jims-5, 6, 7… The key is that I don’t know everything there is to know about me. The reasons I behave irrationally is that on some level it isn’t irrational. Jim-13 may be crying out for attention. Maybe something happened to me when I was little that I don’t even remember… but it affects me. It is part of me. I want to find out and give Jim-13 what he needs.

Three Questions

I have begun asking myself a series of questions to find out what’s going on inside when I feel. The intensity of the feeling is more important than the feeling itself… at least at first. A feeling may be huge and debilitating, or it may be just a little flip in my gut. It can be a flush of embarrassment or a sudden defensiveness. When I recognize it, I am learning to ask these questions:

1. What am I feeling?
2. What do I believe that is causing this feeling?
3. Is the belief true?

Feelings are caused by beliefs. I don’t mean something spiritual (necessarily). My beliefs are the way I truly see the world (like a map). For instance, I am feeling confident and comfortable sitting in my chair typing on this computer because I believe that the chair will hold me up and that the computer will work long enough to help me publish this blog. (I just felt a sense of mistrust in the computer which caused me to save my work.)

Once I know what the belief is, I need to know if it is true or not. Sometimes I believe things that just are not true. When that’s the case, the first step is to know the truth and allow it to replace the lie. Sometimes, my belief is true, and the feeling is valid. That is a good thing to know, when I feel confused.

Many times the belief that causes the feeling is unrelated to the situation at hand, which makes the puzzle that much harder to solve. That’s not fair though. If it wasn’t related, the situation would not have triggered it. Rather than say it is not related, it would be more accurate to say that the belief is related to the situation only in my heart. No one else would connect this belief from my past to this situation in the present, but I did. I know I did because I recognize the feeling and I recognize the belief. Just because it is only related in my heart does not make it false. Something is going on inside of me and it is worth the effort to get to the root.

An example of when I did it right… When I was a kid, I was a complete klutz when it came to sports. I didn’t like sports and sports didn’t like me. In PE class, when the team captains picked their team players I was always the one at the end that they both wanted to give to the other team. The one time I tryed out for little league I got taken out on the first cut (and I was glad). A few years ago, I started exercising regularly. One thing led to another and I began running. I started running with my friend, John fairly regularly about a year ago, but John was a much better runner than I. I apologized for slowing him down. John is the one who started my thinking around the three questions, and he asked what I was feeling and believing in the moment. I was feeling like the athletic failure from school because I thought I was impeding his goals. He assured me that the reason he was running with me was because he wanted just wanted to be with me. So the answer to question #3 was no. The belief was not true. After that, I felt better about running with him… and we are still running together… and I don’t slow him down (as much as I used to).

Back to the original story… I was embarrassed over what I had done, but it didn’t make sense. Why was my stomach all in knots when nothing was wrong? What was I feeling? What was I believing? Were my beliefs true?

Did I say that the questions were easy to answer? They are not. It is hard to work through the feelings in the moment when we are feeling such intense emotions. However, in the midst of it all, I had a vision of a jar…

The Vision of the Jar

I saw a large clear glass jar, like the ones you might see in a restaurant kitchen. The jar was full of clear water. You could see straight through the jar and the water. At a glance, I thought that the water was clean, but on second look I noticed that there was a layer of sediment on the bottom of the jar. The sediment was all settled so it didn’t cloud the water at all. Then the jar got bumped ever so slightly. The silt and mud in the bottom stirred up a little and caused the water to become cloudy. After a while, the cloudiness settled and the water was clear again. Another time, the jar got shaken a bit and the stuff was all stirred up in the water causing it to be so murky I could not see through it at all. As the jar remained still, the sediment began to settle once again to the bottom of the jar until it was clear again.

The jar of water is me. When the water is clear, things are going well. Nothing is bothering me and I am not bothering anyone else (as far as I know or care). To look at me, you might think I have it all together. You might say that Jim-1 is polished up for showing off. I am feeling good and looking good. The world is right because I feel right.

The problem is the sediment. The sediment is the junk in my life; the hurts I have received, the names I have been called, the times I have been disappointed the embarrassing moments, the times I tried and failed, the times I didn’t even try, the broken promises… It is also the hurts I have given, the names I have called others, the disappointments I caused, the promises I have broken. The sediment lays there just under the surface where neither of us can see it. Then something happens to stir it up. Maybe it is a small bump of the jar like a glaring look or being the butt of a joke. Rather than address it, I hold my chin up and try to be very still emotionally until eventually, the as the feeling goes away, the water becomes clear. Ahhh now I can continue with life. Everything is fine. Except it isn’t.

Life is full of bumps to mess up my jar by stirring things up. The key seems to be in understanding that the sediment is there and not ignoring it. The sediment is part of who I am. When I stop ignoring it, I can better understand who I am; where my feelings, thoughts and behaviors come from. When I understand me better, I can handle life much better. Not by ignoring the junk in my life, but by understanding it.

Here’s the rub… I can truly only examine my sediment while it is stirred up. Once it is settled, I cannot see it. I can talk about it abstractly, but it is on real in the moment. In the moment, I can feel it. It is ugly. Only when I believe that there is great value in understanding the sediment, will I welcome the shaking and stirring of the jar. Even then, it is a love-hate relationship. I don’t want to see the sediment. I don’t want to feel it, but I truly want to understand who I am, so I am learning to be comfortable with the discomfort.

Each time I have gone through the process of examining the sediment, I feel like I have grown more. The things that I do not know about me block me from being the person God wants me to be. Who does God want me to be? Me! The hurts, habits and hang-ups in my life prevent me from being me.

I was so glad to learn that I don’t have to go through the examination process alone. As I learn more about my sediment, I have discovered that God meets me there. In fact Psalm 139:23-24 addresses it this way:

Search me, O God, and know my heart;
test me and know my anxious thoughts.

See if there is any offensive way in me,
and lead me in the way everlasting.

I want to be searched and known. I want to be led in the way everlasting. Shake me, God. Stir my heart.