The mass of  men live lives of quiet desperation, and go to the grave with the song still in them.  –Thoreau

My 20 year old daughter, Grace & I were having yet another discussion about BALANCE – the 7 letter word that has become a dreaded four-letter-kind-of- word for she & I pretty much since she was 14. 

Grace is my youngest daughter and my most social child.  Like all of my children, she is unafraid, smart and gifted with words.  In high school she was president of the speech/debate team – find Gracie a stage and give her a topic or a poem and she’ll entertain you, bring you to tears or persuade you – I promise.  She’s just that good.

Grace is a good student too – graduated high school with honors, has made the Dean’s List a few times.  She has a clear vision for her life and knows what she has to do, educationally, to get there.  She loves Jesus and people so much she just can’t say no to anything that involves either one or both.  That’s been a problem for this 20 year old who recently graduated from LVN school.  She works as a night nurse, takes a couple of classes towards her RN and still manages to make church involvement and time with her friends a priority.

I’ve walked a fine line with her for years – how do you fuss at a kid for doing too much when they’re only doing really great things? 

So Gracie and I were talking yet again about the importance of keeping our lives in balance – not staying so busy doing everything that comes our way that we aren’t able to steadily focus on doing the most important things with excellence.  I could tell she was getting impatient with the discussion anyway (are you taking the time to eat and sleep properly?) but then she looked at me and said, “you mean like you do?  Come on mom – I come by it honestly.  Look at YOUR schedule – have you even started writing that book yet?”  Ouch.

Four years ago that statement would have garnered some type of punishment.  Since this is a 20 year old who doesn’t live at home anymore, grounding didn’t really seem like an option.  Instead, I mumbled something about not waiting til she’s 48 to learn the lesson and we quickly changed the subject, but I thought about her words all the way home.  In fact, they’re still there – melding with other things God’s spoken to my heart lately, hopefully taking the form of action in the words I type even now.

There’s a novel by Leon Driskell that I keep on my nightstand, largely because of a quote that struck my heart with conviction.   

There’d been a suicide many years before.  Mama Pearl was remembering that time and muses aloud “You do not have to take a knife – or maybe a razor – or a gun or pills to deny your life.  You can just not live it.”

How many days have I spent going through the motions – doing good things but not really living the life God has planned for me?  How about you?  Is there something God has spoken to your heart and uniquely gifted you for that you’ve just not done?

My friend Mollie is a counselor, the real kind – Licensed Professional Counselor it says on her door.  While she has been a close friend and confidante for over 25 years (long before she went to school for those degrees), she sometimes gets on my nerves when she slips into “counselor mode”.  “Why aren’t you writing?  Are you afraid of failure?  Make roses out of those rejections slips and put them in a vase!  Consider them rewards for your efforts.”  Yes, God uses her to get into my head.  Once I get past “I wish she would stop doing her job and just be my friend”, I’ll chew on her words for months, exploring but not always acting on what I’ve found.  (She IS being my friend, by the way – speaking the truth to me in love). 

In Revelation 2, we see the church at Ephesus kept busy doing really good, godly things but John got onto them.  He noted their efforts but said they had lost their first love.  They were doing the same wonderful things they had always done, but they probably didn’t even know why they were doing them anymore.  

I think I know.  They were doing those things – things that looked godly and ministered to others and made them feel good about their stagnant hearts but they were denying their lives.  They were avoiding the very things God called them to.  I understand this because I’ve done so much of it the past few years.

For so long I have lived my life one day – one moment, at a time.  Good advice for the alcoholic, but really, is that all there is? 

Some of the people I have most admired (like Gracie) are the ones who had big dreams – visions – and worked hard to get there.  Unlike me, they don’t live life daily, just dealing with whatever comes their way.  There’s a master plan and they do the tasks each day necessary to get there.  They live, to borrow from Rick Warren, purpose driven lives.  They get that this life isn’t just about today.  Or themselves.  There’s more to it, if we dare to see the bigger picture.

I have made some progress – baby steps.  This blog.  A few submissions.  A couple of fairly well-developed book ideas.  I even bought a ring that says “Love Life” on the band with “Be Brave” engraved on the inside as a physical reminder to not shy away from those things God has placed deep in my heart. 

The apostle Paul knew who he was created to be and he didn’t shy away from it.  In fact, he doggedly pursued God’s calling on his life, knowing – embracing even – the risks. He didn’t just sit down and do nothing.  He didn’t give in to the temptation to do other really good things instead.  Paul stayed focused on the prize of the high calling of Jesus Christ.  Like Gracie, he had a clear understanding of his calling and he wasn’t afraid to walk in it.

Not that he didn’t struggle.  Paul wrote in Romans 7 and Keith Green paraphrased it so well; “there are things I hate, I end up doing.  Things I wanna do, I just don’t do.  Lord it seems so sad.  Why am I so bad when in my heart, I only wanna be like you?” Paul somehow pushed through his failures though and kept going.  He kept looking ahead.  He was unafraid because he knew his life wasn’t his own.

Do I get that?  Do I understand that there’s a purpose to my own calling – touching someone’s heart with words He gives – that’s far beyond me?  The Emmaus community talks about being Christ’s “hands and feet”.  We aren’t the brains behind the operation – just the wheels – one of the ways God gets His work done.    

What is your high calling?  Has God birthed a dream in you that you’ve not yet stepped into?  I wonder sometimes what we’re so afraid of.  If we trust in the Holy Spirit to work through us, there can be no failure.  He created us!  He birthed the desire and He will see it through to completion, just as He promised. 

Won’t you join me?  Grab hold of that calling.  Confess it to someone.  Begin to act on what God has spoken to your heart. 

Won’t you join me?

Be brave.

Love life. 

Trust Him.