I’ve decided that I am no longer keeping track of my progress. I’m no longer marking my progress trying to configure how to out do my last set of failed attempts, moments, opportunities. No more invisible competitions with me or the people who don’t even know that I have conceded to their unspoken challenge to not only race them but out do them. I’m tired of it. Exhausted of it. Just thinking about it makes me weary and weighed down with grief and sorrow. Yeah. To hell with it, and I literally mean to hell with it.
Somewhere along the way I adapted this mindset, this way of living. This idea, this measurement style of existence. I think I clung to it when I learned that it takes 21 days to secure a new habit. Nobody told me how many days it takes to keep it. Anybody? Maybe I learned it when I was attempting weight loss one of the 37,000 times over the course of my 32 years of life. Perhaps when I discovered that to grind is life. Always leaving someone like me a step or two behind the masses.
Honestly, at this point I just want to live. Live free and happy and committed. I don’t want to mark my commitment by days. My brain can’t handle the pressure anymore. I want to commit from the stimuli of love. Love which will fuel my choices and bear beautiful fruit and fragrant flowers.
I want love to drive my relationship with Jesus, Love for myself, and my neighbor. I think that this love is a cycle. A healthy simple cycle. And the discipline is in choosing to receive love, exist loved, and give/be love.
If Christ is the center and base for that love, then my decisions and choices are properly nourished. In turn I am liberated to love and be loved. I’m sure I sound broken recordish... I’m just trying to establish a theme. My churches E.P, Torace Solomon, made a statement that has adjusted my perspective. Sobered me right on up. It sucked too, but it’s real. He said that at some point we have to resolve that Christ’s work on the cross was/is enough for not only our sins but the sins and offenses of others as well! Whew! Talk about relinquishing our rights! Yikes!
So when I say love, I mean love that results in bloody sweat. Digging, and deciding. Digging and apologizing. Digging and receiving. Digging and accepting. Digging and discarding. Therapy and honest conversations. Sitting still in blessed quietness. Valuing restoration and reconciliation. Choosing Jesus, choosing self, and choosing others. And for goodness sakes, YES, even when it’s ugly, bloody, and hard.
This is how I want to live my days. Love fueled. Love nourished. Not just in a romantic haze that comes and go’s based on emotional fervor. No. I want to dance to the rhythm of intentional love ready to agree to the unpredictable and necessary changes in her tempo... Love is at least worth that commitment...
