randalevan's blog

If you don't speak, I can't learn

I have been realizing lately how important it is for each one of us to speak up. It seems like everywhere I go, every conversation I engage in, videos I watch, even some of the things I am reading communicate the same thing: If one of us remains silent, we all miss out.

Going After What You Really Want

What do you want? I mean, what do you REALLY want? The difference I make between wanting something and REALLY wanting something is like when you would like to lose weight but you would also like to eat a bag of tortilla chips when you get home from work...which also happens to be about thirty minutes before dinner...and eating the chips is what you end up doing. Believe me: I know of what I speak! (*On a side note: doesn't it seem like bags of tortilla chips are smaller these days and easier to consume a full bag in one, half-hour sitting while mindlessly watching CNN's Newsroom?)

Thinking about what I really want made me think about Donald Miller's book, A Million Miles in a Thousand Years. Frankly, part of what makes the book so powerful is that by uncovering some of his own weaknesses and shortcomings, Miller turns the lights on some of the excuses we have been feeding ourselves...perhaps for years.

"You can't do that."

 

When was the last time somebody told you, "You can't do that"? I have certainly heard it a time or two! I was reading the foreword of a book on Saturday morning and it got me thinking. It describes some of the obstacles the author had to overcome in order to get her book published. She received multiple letters of rejection from a variety of publishers. Here is one of the comments she received: "Lady Di could be cycling nude down the street giving this book away, nobody would read it."

In spite of all the opposition, she felt like the book had something to say, so she tried one more time...and the rest is history.

The book I am referring to is Feel the Fear...and Do It Anyway by Susan Jeffers and I have a copy of the 20th Anniversary Edition. The publisher who said "Yes, you can!" has sold over 2 million copies so far.

I guess all the other publishers were wrong...and they probably kicked themselves when they saw how successful the book has been!

Jeffers isn't alone. People are telling us all the time, "You can't do that." Let me share with you just a few examples.

Comparison: another obstacle to joy

The preacher pissed me off at church yesterday. It wasn't her fault. She did a fine job. In fact, I encourage you to listen to what Susan had to say. (Go to: http://www.vcfp.org/sermons.html, then select the sermon for May 22nd entitled, "Greed is Good".)

The reason I became angry was because the topic - money - is a sensitive one for me & Jacquie right now. Our whole world (*that, I recognize, is a bit of an exageration!) has been turned upside down. I spent the last 20+ years devoting my life to my calling: pastoral ministry. While I still feel called to be a pastor, I am currently choosing to not be paid for it. (*For more on this, please check-out my April 27th post: Overcoming Conflict (More on "A Million Miles...".)

So, when the sermon began and the preacher started talking about money, I began to celebrate my own little pitty party. Boy, am I glad no one else was invited!

Swimming in the Ocean, facing my fear.

In mid-April (*April 16th, 2011 post) I wrote a post about dealing with fear. Specifically, the fear of swimming in the ocean and finding that I was not alone...
Well, my wetsuit arrived last Friday, and so Jacquie & I decided that Sunday - Mother's Day - would be the day to head to Aquatic Park in San Francisco.

It was an absolutely gorgeous day. Windy, but still almost-perfect. We immediately found a parking space right across the street from Aquatic Park...a small, but significant gift from God, as anyone who lives in a city knows.

We got out of the car, I liberally applied my "anti-shark" balm

(aka "Glide", to avoid my wetsuit rubbing my skin off!), and then donned my new wetsuit

Overcoming conflict (More on "A Million Miles...")

Donald Miller is a master story teller. He can make you laugh (check out the story about the girl he notices and wants to impress so he tells her he is going to hike the Inca Trail to Machu Picchu - Kindle location 1276), and, he can make you cry (for example, the story about his friend Jim who lost his wife of twenty-seven years to cancer - 2382.) In each, Miller hits home the definition of a story worth telling: "A story is a character who wants something and overcomes conflict to get it." (670.)

I can relate to overcoming conflict. For the past five or six years, I have been asking myself, my friends, family, and God Himself for wisdom about how to live the only life I have to live. I have this sense that I am going to continue to be a pastor, but, that it will look very different than it has looked over the past twenty some-odd years. But what will it look like? That's where my conflict comes in.

Is there more to life than owning a Volvo?

Jacquie & I have some of the greatest kids on the planet. Last year for my birthday, our son Nathan & his wife Meredith (aka: tmbdilitw), sent me an amazon.com gift card so I could purchase Donald Miller's A Million Miles in a Thousand Years: What I Learned While Editing My Life for my Kindle. They knew that I had been thinking a lot about my life and how best to live it and thought this book might help. Well, in two words: It did.

I am not sure how many posts I will do, nor how long it will take me, but I have a few ideas from the book that I would like to share with you. Maybe they will help you. Maybe you will start asking yourself some questions. Maybe it will provide some answers for your questions. I hope so.

Dealing with Fear

 

 Man, it´s been a long time since my last post! Life has been wonderfully busy...career change, triathlon training, fulfilling prerequisites for a bilingual teaching credential program, life coach training, continuing my seminary education, starting a new business...hmmm, did I leave anything out?!

Anyway, let me get to something I have been working on...before it does its work on me! That "something" is fear.

One of the things that will always be true of life - at least this side of heaven - is we have to choose how we are going to respond to the things that scare us. Will we fight, or will we run for the hills? While sometimes it is wise to run as fast as our fat little feet will carry us, there are other occassions when we need to recognize our fears...and then do what we really want to do anyway. While I could write about many areas of my life right now where I am having to face a multitude of fears, let me focus on triathlon training today.

Exercising our Faith Requires Taking Risks

Wouldn't it be nice if walking by faith was easier than walking by sight? No risk, no worries, and no confusion or doubts. The problem is, then it wouldn't be faith would it? The writer of the ancient letter to the Hebrews described faith in this way: "Faith is the confidence that what we hope for will actually happen; it gives us assurance about things we cannot see." (Hebrews, chapter 11, verse 1.)

But what does "confidence" feel like? In my experience, it feels like jumping off the edge of a pool, believing that God will catch...but there is that hesitancy you feel before you actually leap...and...the adrenaline and fear that rush through your veins when you are airborne, inbetween the safety of the pool's edge and God's arms.

I had the privilege of traveling to Spain last month...something that I have been able to do quite often over the past nine years...something that I am grateful to God for. On the way back, I had what I would describe as a "divine encounter"...an encounter with someone who had recently taken "the plunge of faith"...someone who had a message from God for me...that I would like to share it with you.

my wish

i have always liked this song...

 

  My wish, for you, is that your life becomes all that you want it to.