Day 157: Finish Strong

If you had asked me how I expected to feel on Day 157 back on Day 1 or 3 or Day 33 I would probably have told you something to the effect of: adjusted, strong, giddy with wedding plans. Here we are, 35 days until the wedding—17 until I see Mark. So close to the end. That’s really what this day-counting is about: days of being in Columbia without Mark, days of working a grownup job. I knew I was in for a journey, taken from the warm arms of university and thrust into a lonely and very sobering reality. It’s been a difficult season, one I can best understand in the context of running. 

I’m training for a half marathon. I don’t know why, really, just that I want to. It started years ago when I ran one mile and then wondered if I could do two. Two became a 5K and then a 10K. It’s invigorating, running farther or faster than you ever have before. But it’s all in the training. There are days I want to run but know I should rest. More often, though, I clumsily hit the alarm and pour myself out of bed and into my running shoes. You’ve probably heard that the hardest step is the first one? It’s true. Anyway, Sundays are my long runs. I save my energy for Sunday mornings because this is the run where I build mileage, where I run my farthest. It’s a mental routine. I wait as long as possible before heading out the door, in nervous anticipation of the long run ahead of me, and I spend the first mile warming up—feeling the kinks in my steps, the stiffness in my joints. After that first mile, though, I get amped up. I can do this. Bring it on. I will own this run. Thoughts like that. Then somewhere around mile 3 I slip into “the zone.” The place where I stop thinking about my run altogether and relax my mind. I pray or think, sometimes sing in my head, but most often pray. The zone is interrupted by brief hiccups: moments where I notice the way my feet strike the ground, the way my knees kind of hurt, my breathing, the pain. They’re only little hiccups. I slip back into the zone fairly easily. Then there is the last mile. The last mile, no matter how many or few hiccups I’ve had, is where the zone dissipates and there is a sudden realization of pain, exhaustion, questioning. My quads are so tired. I am so tired! Why am I even doing this? I start to wonder if I’m going to be able to finish this run. As if after seven miles, one more will kill me. But that’s what it feels like. There is no zone, no buffer to keep your eyes off the pain, but somehow you have to do it. You have to keep your eyes off the pain. You don’t know how, but you push through. And then euphoria, but only because you made it through that last mile, not because you made it through eight (or nine or fifty, whatever). 

If I had known that this season was going to be a long run, I would have had a better idea of what to expect. In the midst of being burnt out from a job that keeps me face-to-face with a computer and not a person, having few accessible friends in Columbia, and being exhausted and stressed with wedding planning, I have lost my zone. This is the last mile and I desperately want to finish strong.

My prayer requests: that I would be able to boldly share Christ in my last two weeks in the office, that I would have energy and peace to finish wedding planning, and (most of all) that I would be socially satisfied. 

Day 122: Counterfeit God

Chelsea Steyn described herself in her devotional article “Working for Contentment” as “one of those people who is perpetually busy.” She explains, “When not occupied with [my 15 month old son, teaching, and being a choral director], I created work. I can barely sit down and watch a movie with my husband without doing something else at the same time—sewing, returning emails, whatever it might be.”

Wow. That just described me. If I am not busy, I make myself busy. “Rest” is really just easier work, because that feeling of being productive is bread and butter. A day where I can’t stand back and say, “Look what I’ve done!” is not a great day. Steyn continues:

“About three months ago we picked up and moved to a new city for my husband’s job. Everything that was keeping me so ‘busy’ was suddenly gone. No coffee dates with friends, no running around to rehearsals or lessons. I was at a loss. I hadn’t realized what weight I put on my productivity, on seeing tangible results from my labor. My work as a stay at home mother is demanding and time consuming and I am so thankful to be able to stay at home for a hundred and one reasons, but at the end of the day it is difficult to see actual ‘results’ from that work. Without realizing it, I had made productivity and being busy an idol in my life. I identified my worth by what I could accomplish and my contentment, in this new environment, suffered for it.” 

In early April of this year I was very ready to not be productive anymore. School had just about sucked every ounce of drive from me and for once I didn’t mind tossing the checklist. But when Mark left and I started my new job (yep, 122 days ago), I found myself entirely lonely and, to put it lightly, discontent. As you can imagine, that was fantastic soil and the Lord did and is still doing so much with me. As often happens, incredible pain was accompanied by incredible growth. But I have to admit that being still is harder now than ever. With loneliness at the back door, busyness became my new companion, productivity my new best friend. I have a full-time job and a wedding around the corner as well as a half marathon I’m training for. It’s a struggle to not find my worth in what I’m accomplishing each day.

Steyn then says, “work is one of God’s good gifts,” but “we are given gifts and abilities to use for the glory of God and in service to the church and community.” Working on my wedding and my job and my race aren’t bad things, in fact, they are good. The problem arises when they get the front row seat of my attention and my heart. 

Tim Keller writes in Counterfeit Gods of how idols are often good things: “The greater the good, the more likely we are to expect that it can satisfy our deepest needs and hopes… A counterfeit god is anything so central and essential to your life that, should you lose it, your life would feel hardly worth living.” 

Steyn progresses: “This feverish pursuit of productivity is getting in the way of my ability to be still and spend time with the Lord. David Powlison in A Praying Life wrote ‘Efficiency, multitasking and busyness all kill intimacy. You can’t get to know God on the fly.’ I have to learn how to sit down with my hands still, to stop thinking about my next project and talk to God. I need to recognize my weakness, to wear it like a garment when I come before Him in prayer.” 

My attempts at productivity will never satisfy me. Praise God that His grace is sufficient for me and that His power is made perfect in my abundance of weaknesses. So Lord, help me to find my value and my satisfaction from You, the Bread of Life.

Amen. 

Day 109: Confession

As the title would imply, I have a confession to the blogging world. Who knows, maybe there is security in the immensity of such a public statement—that being so incredibly public (yelling in a crowded room, a drop in the ocean) I might find anonymity. This secret, this atrocity might go unnoticed. No replies. No likes. No hash tag mentions on twitter. Ok. Here goes. 

[I really like listening to 89.7 in the morning…]

It’s so freakin positive! AND ENCOURAGING! AGHHH!!! The perfect start to my day! I am my worst nightmare. I’m that person. Next thing you know I’ll be rocking a fanny pack (and not in the cool hipster way)! 10 kids! An 89.7 car sticker! WIND SUITS! My future is hurtling toward me and I can see it. Mom jeans. Lots and lots of mom jeans. 

Day 94: Go Get Yourself New Pants and a Tetnis Shot

The first 20 minutes of this workday was by far the most eventful 20 minutes I’ve had since I’ve been employed here. 

I lazily clomp along the tiled office in my giant nude heels and favorite green pencil skirt—compensating outwardly for the dullness of my brain that is overcome with a head cold. Time card: stamp. Computer: on. Lunch: refrigerator. The gorgeous Nikon D90 is sitting on my desk reminding me of the construction outside that awaits me. We like to keep our readers informed on the goings on here, which means our office extension will soon be featured on the blog with some satisfying before and after photos (nothing like a good before-after shot to fill you with the deliciousness of progress) and a brief article. There is something powerful about giant nude high heels: the four or five inches taller that you stand, the loud announcement of every step, the incessantly flexed calves. And yet, wobbling on gravel to the construction zone among a cloud of cigarette smoke in that favorite green pencil skirt of mine, I feel a bit less like an attractive young working woman and a bit more like a newly born giraffe. I wield a camera that far exceeds any paycheck I’ve ever taken home and as I approach the smokey cloud of paint-splattered men, my clothes seem to be yelling to be looked at. My cheeks turn red. I force my feet into submission, to walk as though heels and gravel were as natural a combination as steel-toed boots and gravel. I can still feel eyes. 

I step through an open window onto the safety of cement floor and begin snapping photos. I’m playing with light options and assuring the men around me to please don’t let me be in their way and that they can walk in front of the camera whenever they like. My presence is awkward and dense as the men work in silence around me. I’m almost done, though, and soon I will have my photos. I crouch with my back to the unfinished wall for a few final pictures when it happens. I feel it behind me: the scraping. I turn to see the sharp nail sticking so obviously out of the beam. I bet it would smile at me now if it possessed the ability. For it was as I crouched that I bent right into this nail, ripping through my skirt, my underwear, my skin. With a surprised gasp I look up directly into the eyes of a thoroughly amused worker. “Charge it to Marty’s bill: a new skirt and a tetnis shot,” he says chuckling. My pride insists on taking a few more pictures. This is merely the life of an office worker. We get out too. See the paint on your pants, yeah, I have a hole in my skirt. I don’t care. It happens. I jokingly smile and hold one hand to my newly sliced cheek. “It’s a good thing I walk like this anyway,” I tease awkwardly to a still silent audience. They watch me and the remnants of my skirt and pride walk back to the office. 

I am sent home to get a new skirt. And a tetnis shot. All in 20 golden minutes from when I got here. 

Anyway, it was kind of a hilarious morning. Turns out I had my last shot eight years ago, so I’m in the clear on tetnis. No awkward doctors office stories today. :) Some quick life updates: It is 98 days until Mark and I get married! It feels so so so good to be in the double digits and very soon the time we will have been distance will outweigh the time until our wedding. Yes! Even better news: I just got back from seeing him for the first time since he left! California was like another country: different plants, different birds, different people, different way of life. And yet, it was astoundingly similar to here. I am not sure what is more fascinating about going somewhere new, seeing how different or how similar it is to what you know. I am excited about living in Davis (right outside of Sacramento), but I am very scared about so much change. In my fear, though, I am comforted by the Lord’s promise: “‘For I know the plans I have for you,’ declares the Lord, ‘plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.” Jeremiah 29:11 — Speaking of fear, the last 94 days truly have consisted of facing many fears. On the trip to California I faced my fear of flying for the first time in over four years! And guess what! Four flights later: not half bad. I’ll be up in the air again in two weeks. :)