I'm showing up

I have not written in a really long time.  And wow.  I'm really feeling it.  I have a lot to process.  So many thoughts.   I HAVE ALL THE THOUGHTS.  However.   I repeatedly find myself in a face-off with my laptop every time I sit to write.  She stares at me, taunting me with her blank screens and that darn-it-all blinking cursor.  Write something.  Write something.     I am silently praying and willing all the thoughts to run down my arm and move my fingers to type something concrete.  Something meaningful.  Something beautiful.  But even as I  try to make these words come to life I am aware that writing is not going to magically just happen to me. 

Because writing.  It's a discipline.  Because working out.  It's a discipline.  Because the study and application of the Very Words of God is a discipline. Because loving Greg and loving my girls is a discipline.

Because really.  All I want to do is eat chocolate chip cookies and sleep all day.

Historically discipline and I have had a love/hate relationship.  Meaning I will spend three hundred dollars on Paleo foods and buy the latest cookbooks and read all the blogs and then two weeks in Greg will find me in a closet with a loaf of french bread and a stick of butter growling at him to leave me and my friends in peace.  Or I will have a vision for chore charts with matching stickers for the girls and after three days their charts are collecting dust under their dirty (and unmade) beds.

When it comes to discipline, I am all bark and no bite.

Woof.

Well.  Just recently I hit a breaking point.  My body felt broken and tired.  My mind was so worn from my discipline plans starting and ending.  Starting again and ending again.  But the worst. The worst was my spirit.  My spirit felt weary and defeated.  I was tired of myself.  Tired of hot and cold.  Tired of dieting or pigging out.   Tired of my plans.  Tired of feeling like parable of the seed that falls on fertile soil only to pop up for a few days before withering away.  I was withering away.  

And that is where God always meets me.   At the end of myself.  Without fail.
My Jesus.  He met me.  He softly spoke over my heart: I will teach you a better way still.

I slowly began to realize, through prayer and Scripture and countless conversations with pillar people in my life that maybe, just maybe, there is a better way still.   Maybe it's not about discipline.

Maybe it's just about showing up.

Showing up to the gym even if all I can do is walk for ten minutes. Showing up to friendships where I've been a little checked out even if it's over e-mail or text.  Showing up before God, even if it isn't a life altering Jesus encounter every time.  Showing up for my girls even if it's just reminding myself, over and over, to be present and to look them fully in their little faces when they speak with me.

I want to show up to my life.  BECAUSE I JUST GET ONE.  I want to be as alive as I possibly can be in every moment I can be given.  I feel so done with crazy diets, blanket statements and making impossible-to-keep standards for myself.   I want to learn to be broken but to be present.   To choose progress over perfection.  To check out of the ideal and into my imperfect reality.  

Showing up.  Even if I feel a mess.  Showing up broken and vulnerable instead of scheming how put together I will be if I follow steps A, B, C.  Showing up and not making it about winning or losing but just about being.  Showing up with a patient heart that leans towards understanding that is not my own.  

Slowing my step.  Deepening my breath.  Eyes wide open.  Ready to do this.  

Because, if I'm being honest with myself, I know that is the only way to get to where I want to go.    Slow and steady wins this here race, and I am all in.  Even if it means crawling at times, this train is moving forward.  Inch by inch.  Showing up along the way.      

So.  I'm back.  I'm showing up on my little corner of the interwebs (as Greg likes to call it) and I am saving this space to not be polished or witty or perfect or even make sense.  I'm going to continue to show up, because I know that God wants me to use words for Him.   And as I fumble and struggle and mentally flip the bird at my computer screen I know that He is present and He is satisfied.