LEX

on taking risks

this past spring, as i was unsatisfied with my current vocation and debating how i was going to spend the following year of my life, a friend of mine shared with me one of his favorite inspirational quotes. it served as a small bit of encouragement at the time, but i have to honestly admit it didn't impact me as it had impacted him. then just the other day i picked up a book that had been left here by brian & bethany off of the bookshelf here at the makarios house. the book is very aptly titled If You Want to Walk on Water You've Got to Get out of the Boat by John Ortberg. the first words on the first page before the first chapter were the words of that same quote. this time the impact left a bigger mark on my thoughts.

It's not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena... who, at best, knows in the end the triumph of great achievement, and who, at worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly. So that his place will never be with those cold timid souls who know neither victory nor defeat.
~Theodore Roosevelt

I know that it's a little early still to be considering how i'm going to spend the year of my life that follows this one, but it's something that is virtually always in on my mind - if not at the front, then somewhere deep in the back where we put those things we hope will work themselves out without too much effort on our part. but i always think of the future because, inevitably, my life is always changing. i often resist change and uncertainty as if they were the most evil of all things on earth. that must be why i'm destined for a life full of it.

and this time it's not just one year, not just 12 months, not just 52 weeks of my life that i'm contemplating. for once i do believe that i have found my "calling" - or whatever your theological disposition will allow you to call it. i have calculated all of my gifts and talents and passions and desires (*credit to Greg Koukle) and it seems that the sum results in a "vocation" of using ESL to reach the lost. but this is not simply to be my job - it is to be my life.

so now i must find the arena in which i will fight. no doubt this arena will not be magnificent or glamorous. it will not be a famous arena. it may not even be one in which others support my fight. and the fight, of course, will not be easy.

the arena in which i desire to fight is one that i must partially create for myself. i say partially because, ultimately, God is the creator of all arenas. i also say partially because i believe that no well built arena is the work of one man alone, but many working together with their different gifts and abilities. yet this arena still requires me to step out of my boat- a boat of comfort that includes stability and predictability and others making the hard decisions for me. it requires me to step out of a boat that many would say i'm foolish for leaving. it will require a fight that i am not guaranteed to win.

but if i find myself in the right arena, the fight isn't up to me. the comforts i leave in my boat will be minor losses to seeing the way God can work when we choose His Power over our own timidity.

so as this year continues, i'm going to begin building that arena with prayer. and if i fail, i hope to fail while daring greatly.

posted by Alexia & Jeffrey @ 6:40 PM