Those first steps.  They are so easily discarded, so quickly traded for magic beans.

Jesus’ first steps, he fasted 40 days and then the tempter came.  How easy it would have been for him to taken the low road.

Same for me.

Ten minutes into a run today I wanted to quit.  I heard it.  One pounding stride, then another.  Rhythmic arms swinging with my steady inhale/exhale.  And then again, like a fish hitting the hook another time I heard it again softly “quit.”

On I ran.  Forward.

Forging you can into I will I did.

so what do I do when they are standing right in front of me

when my tidy life gets invaded by some one who got a raw deal

by someone who made poor choices

by someone who could have been me?

I am figuring this out as I write.

Where do you go when you’re upside down with more regrets, guilt, and shame than your soul can bear?

Sex, drugs, and alcohol when I was younger were places I went to get my debt restructured.  What a dark hole that proved to be.  As did my career, marriage, other-people’s-approval, the newest tech tools…none were able to short sale my soul.

Along the way I found that Jesus has a special deal for people like me who are upside down.  The deal is this – Jesus pays the debt that I owe – it is called “grace.”

Jesus was and still is all about forgiveness, short sales on our souls, fresh starts.  Jesus is not a bank officer unwilling to extend a helping hand.

Let me know if you would like to know more about this amazing offer!

What is it for you?

What will it cost?

When will you begin?

Yes, you can.

Carl Sandburg earned the Pulitzer Price – he didn’t win it.

Dreams become real when forged by a long repentance in the same direction.

The central skill of learned optimism is personal choice.  For some this is good news.  For others it is a downer.

It isn’t the power of positive thinking.

It isn’t rose colored glasses.

It isn’t avoiding pain or suffering.

It is how you make sense of things when they go wrong.

We cannot stop the birds from flying over our heads but we can stop them from building a nest in our hair wrote Martin Luther.

Learn optimism and unleash an amazing life!

You can!

You can’t do it.

It isn’t possible on your own.

For it to be worth it it must be Everest in scope.  No amount of time and intentionality will get you to the top.  The willpower that fuels your crawl, walk, run will fail you.

I’m sorry to tell you that you can’t swim to Hawaii.  You can’t cross the chasm between you and God.  You can’t repay your trillion dollar debt on your minimum wage crawl, walk, run through life.  It just won’t make it.

So “What’s the deal?”  you say.  “One post you inspire me to walk on water and the next you bring me back to small thinking with this “You Can’t” post.  What’s that all about?”

Don’t drop the call.  Bend the “You Can’t” to “I Can’t” and the door to making your impossible it opens.

Power is perfected in your weakness.  Power and possibility are released by unconditional surrender.  The end of yourself is the beginning of possibility.

Double talk?  No way.

Straight talk.

You were not created to do it alone.

“But I’ve been pretty successful with it so far” you say.

Yes, I know.  That is true.  But your little its don’t really satisfy do they?  Your its lose their luster when they become obsolete as yesterday’s iPhone.  Everything becomes obsolete.  The new car smell wears off.  Your child gets sick.  Your husband betrays your trust.  The dream fades then dies and you settle for survival.

So, yes, you’ve got it going so far.  But.  But when all the chips go into the pot in a big hand of five-card stud poker and all you have is a pair of 3′s.  And you’ve bet the farm, borrowed from the bank, hocked your kids milk money and you lose to a pair of Aces what do you do?

And when you get to the end of your self you will find God is all you need.

The door to making it happen is to walk through it with God.

It matters.

It doesn’t matter what it is, we all have one, and my it probably isn’t yours.  It doesn’t matter.  It does matter.  What matters is that you find a way to crawl, walk, or run your way toward it every day.

It isn’t about being particularly good at it at the start.  Isn’t that why we quit?  Amazing is a function of time and intensity.  Malcolm Gladwell in Outliers documents the “10,000 hour rule”; i.e. excellence comes when you near 10,000 hours of experience in a specific field.  So if you don’t put in the time with intensity then kiss it goodbye.

It isn’t about having others endorse it or even know about it.  If what others think about it matters more than what you think about it then it’s the wrong it.  It is about you doing it for you.

It, for it to be worth all the effort, will be impossible to how you have been doing things.  Impossible as in you’ve tried a thousand times to loose 10 lbs, to play the violin, to earn a million dollars, to overcome an addiction.

You were created to do the impossible.  People who are no longer in your life told you it couldn’t be done and you believed them.  Shame on them.  Yes.  You can.  God created you to do the impossible.  God is not glorified by your small thinking.

The moment you commit to it providence swings into play like a fly wheel.  The moment you declare the impossible it possible you begin to tap the inner resilience to be creative, you become single minded, you settle for nothing less than it.  You find a way.  You fail.  You come to the end of yourself and your limited resources only to find God eager to help.

It won’t be easy.

The power you harness as you crawl, walk. or run will always be met with resistance.  Steven Pressfield wrote passionately about the shadow it in his gem The War of Art.

Resistance will nail your knees to the floor, freeze you with indecision, paralyze you with procrastination.  Once you commit yourself to it resistance knocks on your door like a chocolate bunny.  Resistance is a ruthless enemy that whispers “Do it tomorrow.”

The secret to making it happen?

Crawl, walk, or run every day.  No matter what.  What you lack will be given as you find a way to make it happen.  And it is nothing less than the impossible that will demand as Kipling wrote in If, the capacity to stretch every nerve and sinew to run with endurance the race before you filling every minute with sixty seconds worth of distance run.

Begin where you are.  You can.  You know what it is.  You may never have spoken about it to another person or even said it out loud but you know what it is.  Whatever it is you can find it if you crawl, walk, or run toward it every day.

Yes.  Every day, find a way.

You can.

12/29/11  Carmel, CA

“In those days when you pray, I will listen.”  Jeremiah 29:12

• “…those days” when things were hard.
• “…when you pray” when you talk openly and honestly with God.
• “…I will listen” what a powerful promise.

These are those days.  My prayers are rustic but real.  I am not alone!

Gnarled tree stands

light streams,  horizon in shadows, sky rolling.

My heart steady against the wind