Some Advice, Maybe

I have been thinking a lot lately about life. Deep thoughts, mostly. Like how silly most everything we are worried about really is, how dachshunds aren’t as bad as I have always thought, and how running is actually the worst thing on the planet. Things like how frustrating it is to run beside a girl in a sports-bra who seems to be giggling as she jogs, while you puke on the sidewalk in your oversized t-shirt. (I’m looking at you Becca Feagin.) Other things I’ve thought of involve me wanting to straight blow-up the train that passes my house every half hour during the night and never fails to toot it’s horn MULTIPLE TIMES right as it crosses my window, shaking the walls of my house while I scream “GET BEHIND ME SATAN!” from beneath my pillow.

I digress.

Honestly though, life is funny. Everyone lives this completely different reality and none of them can really ever coincide. I can never get someone to FULLY understand how I feel and what I think. Probably because not even I know how I feel and what I think most days. Don’t get me wrong; one of the biggest blessings in this world is to be able to walk alongside others through the ups and downs and twists and turns of life. To love and be loved. However, we are each living our own story – I can’t have yours and you can’t have mine, and sometimes the story includes the same people over and over again and sometimes it moves you across the country to walk (or ski) with people you’ve never met.

Some of the greatest people I know live in Texas, some live in Colorado or Florida or Tennessee. Even Louisana which is baffling. Futher, one actually lives in New York…which is a phenomenon because there can probably only be one good person in New York at a time. New York is the anti of everything I value in life (sweatpants/nature&outdoors/naps/etc.) Some of my friends are terribly happy, some frustrated, some mad as hell, some wondering what’s next, and some exhausted to the point that it manifests in what appears as drunkenness.

Everyone’s problem is how we are going to spend this one odd and precious life that we have been issued. Whether we are going to push, and stress, and fight to the top trying to achieve whatever goal it is that we think will quiet the throbbing ache and anxiety inside us. Or whether we are going to stop, rest, taste and smell life, enjoy it, and figure out who we really are as opposed to who we think we are supposed to be.

Some advice, maybe:

I don’t know where you are right now, if you are hurting or crying or laughing or dancing or doing drugs in the girls bathroom, but I do know that you are not the sum of whatever it is that you think defines you. Unless of course, you think that God defines you…in which case you would be spot on correct and you should immediately consider stopping the drugs. In the end we are all exactly as God says we are, despite every achievement and every rejection or failure. And God says we are fiercely loved. And, while it’s extremely hard to believe during these hard times of the mundane 8-5 schedule, we are free. We are here to love and be loved, freely.

I don’t know about you but I think sometimes I get caught up running the rat wheel. And WE ALL KNOW HOW I FEEL ABOUT RUNNING. (See paragraph 1.) And lately, I’ve remembered that life isn’t about being famous or making money or gaining respect from people who actually could care less because, for me, I feel best when I’m not doing much. When I’m in nature preferably by a campfire with beloved other souls, or very quiet, or paradoxically, listening to music. That’s when I can sit back and remember that I am here for a purpose, and that purpose is not to become “the best version of myself.” I am here to love and be loved, and to glorify the One who created me for exactly that.

So for shit’s sake, let’s all lighten up. Can we all agree that nothing feeds the spirit like a sense of humor? We should just try to laugh a lot - at everything, and travel…and rest. Try yoga. Try a different form of yoga where you just lie around as much as possible. Do that yoga in a hammock outside under a big tree and read a book. Calm down. Pray alot. And when things are hard, we are free to cry hard, pressing into suffering in hopes that there is a future glory where pain doesn’t exist. And let’s do something for people who need help, because the day is coming where you are that person. Be thankful. And let’s stop being so asthmatic with anxiety because that just culminates in us wasting this gift that is life. Also, it ends in wrinkles, and fatal diseases caused from stress.

If you hear nothing else: Get to know Jesus. He is infinitely and eternally worth it. Read the bible and just find out about Him. Ask one of your friends who knows Him. Ask Him about himself. Ask him what he thinks about you. He is crazy, and amazing, and perfect, and worthy of our worship. Jesus is the only thing that makes our human existence REALLY mean something; it is only through him that we are able to enter into something of significance that is much, much bigger than ourselves.

Finally as one of my favorite authors so BEAUTIFULLY advises: “Refuse to wear uncomfortable pants, even if they make you look really thin. Promise me you’ll never wear pants that bind or tug or hurt, pants that have an opinion about how much you’ve just eaten. The pants may be lying! There is way too much lying and scolding going on politically right now without your pants getting in on the act, too.”

In conclusion: wear sweat pants. That will solve most of your problems right there.