"How have you been lately?" "I have been sooo...grateful..."

I have a lot of stuff in my head that I have wanted to blog about recently, but since it’s that time of year, I am going to express my thankfulness of the life God chose for me.

I definitely don’t think November is the only time to take a deep look at your life and express thanks—whether it be to a friend, family member or JC himself—but I am certainly grateful for the Thanksgiving holiday because it always gives me a new perspective on the “things” I am grateful for and that I take for granted every single day. 

One thing that has been weighing heavily on my heart is my particular response to someone asking me: “How have you been lately?” If you know me and you’re a part of my life on a consistent basis, you know exactly what my answer has been for the past 6 months and what it was if you asked me the same question today. “Busy—good, but busy.” Well folks, good news: I am going to stop with that nonsense.  Not because me being busy is not a fact, sure…it's the truth, but because I think responding like that gives a negative vibe.  I don’t want people to show me empathy because I make it seem like my life is “so hectic”, because really, it’s not. At all. I should be continually grateful that I have things that occupy my schedule, ie: lots of wonderful friends who are all such blessings in my life, a large family full of so much character and love, a job that presents me new opportunities to grow in my career, my legs, arms and health so that I have the ability to run and workout, and a church family in which I have a desire to grow in daily. If you told me I had to remove one or more of those things from my life, I would at you like you were crazy. I couldn’t pick or choose. So why would I ever look at my schedule and complain? I have no reason to. But, as you can see, I have plenty of reasons on why I should be grateful.  

So no more of that “I am soooo busy” (with an exhausted look on my face) nonsense. I am going to try my hardest to turn that into a positive vibe. I am so thankful God has given me the life he did. And I am mostly grateful for my Savior…who gives me a completely different perspective on life every day. He gave me life through his own pain and undeserved sufferings. I am fully confident that God has given me the opportunities He has for reasons I may not understand for years. He is preparing my heart for so much...things that I don’t have a single clue about. But, I trust Him. I know He is faithful and I know everything He gives me and puts in my path is for a purpose. I am thankful for it all. 

::Be joyful always; pray continually; give thanks in all circumstances, for this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus. :: 1 Thessalonians 5:16-18

Just Do It.

I’m sure many, many important meetings must have taken place back in 1988. But one meeting in particular helped determine what the future would look like for the well known sports apparel and equipment company, Nike. Anytime you hear the words “Just Do It”, most people’s minds immediately think of “the swoosh”. During that meeting back in the late 80’s, Nike’s ad agency Wieden and Kennedy and Nike employees sat in the meeting and Wieden said out loud, “You Nike guys, you just do it.”

Imagine if we all ‘just did it’. Imagine how much that would change your life, my life and your neighbors life. If everything we wanted to do, we did. "Just do it." It seems easy enough, right?

People go to seminars for their jobs, for parenting, and even for motivation. You can go to a seminar for just about anything these days. And don’t get me wrong, I don’t think that’s necessarily a bad thing. It’s important to educate yourself. But think about how much time is put into preparing those seminars. And how much time is put into listening to the speakers. And how much time it takes to write notes on your pad of paper so fast that you feel as if your hand is going to fall off. Now think about this: how much time do you actually put into practicing what you learned about, wrote notes about, and exercised your mind about?

Same thing can be said about serving God. You might go to church on Sunday… and may even learn a thing or two. While that is all wonderful, do you let what you learned change your heart and then allow your heart to "just do it" and shine as a light for our Lord?

Just going to those ‘seminars’ makes us feel better when we leave. Like we just produced more revenue for our company, like we just became better parents, like we want to go into work RIGHT now and get started on a new project. Just like going to church makes us feel good. Like we did the right thing, like we did a good deed for God. Again, not a necessarily a bad thing…

If you follow through.

We have to put the ideas we let come into our hearts and minds into action in order to actually produce more revenue… become better parents… and most importantly, better serve God. But where do we start? That always seems to be the question. How do we "just do it"? Sometimes the idea of putting our thoughts into actions is scary. No matter what aspect of your life you might be dealing with.

As I’ve shared with many of you, I am reading a book called The Me I Want To Be by John Ortberg. For those of you who might be close to me, you know how great I think the book is. I highly recommend it to all of you reading this. But anyway, in Chapter 10 of the book, he talks about taking direct action to face your fears.

 

Ortberg writes, “Information alone will not bring about the transformation of the whole person. We may read book after book, hear talk after talk, listen to sermons- maybe even read the Bible- but still remain just as anxious as we ever were before. There is no way to get the peace of God from our head to the rest of our body besides trusting God enough to directly confront our greatest fear (126).”

I’m definitely no expert, but if you want to begin your "just do it" journey, my friendly advice to you would be to find the form of worship in which you feel the closest to God and start there. Go to him. Trust in him. Hand it all over to him. Let the love you feel from those moments you spend with Him shine in all aspects of your life. And take action to ensure that light keeps on glowing. Don’t give up on it. 

Just. do. it.