Faith to Walk on Water Means Getting Your Feet Wet

I've always admired people with great discipline, probably because I fancy I don't have any. And while that may not be entirely true, it's not entirely NOT true, either.

Let me put it this way: being a random/abstract person can be challenging - nay, intimidating - when you live in a world with sequential/concrete people. My mother. My husband. How did I ever manage to do well in school? What a funny li'l lab rat I must've been. School undoubtedly trained me to run that maze and get that cheese. The structure must've sustained my random abstractedness.

Becoming a mother felt like a free fall through outer space. Suddenly, all structural mechanisms had to come from inside me, but at any given moment, THIS is what it's like to be me:

Guess which one is me...

I spent much of active duty motherhood bewildered, overwhelmed, and depressed. Bewildered, because I had no idea how I got here. Overwhelmed, because I hadn't even the tiniest sense of routine and how to run a home. Depressed, because it seemed so simple to everyone else around me. Wow. What a loser I must be. The hardest thing for you - is keeping yourself alive? And now there are other humans involved?

I had zero internal tools to navigate this new job where I was the CEO of my home, and as Batman, I foolishly fancied I had a higher calling that came with a note from home: "Please excuse Laureen from these menial tasks; she is on call to save the city."

This is all to say: I thought routines were somehow beneath me - which is really to say - they were actually far above me. Measuring in light years.

Any routines my children grew up with were the most serendipitous accidents. I didn't begin to know how to practice establishing routines until our oldest was out of the house. Thanks to FlyLady online, who had her own cape lurking in her closet, she had the right kind of brain to explain to me that routines are like practicing a choreographed dance routine. I need to learn one step at a time - master it, and then add the next step. Thanks to teaching Suzuki Piano Method for so many years, I got that. Slowly, over time, routines emerged.

Ish.

Fast forward to last year. Empty nesters for years, any sense of routine that had been won by then had been wiped out with nearly dying two years earlier. Any bump in the road threw Little Miss Random/Abstract into free falling again. Sleep had become an Issue again, and I went to see a sleep therapist. Even if you're normal, I don't need to tell you that sleep issues are a major bump in anyone's road.

One of my assignments from the sleep therapist was - if you're giggling as you're reading this, you're way ahead of me - to establish regular routines for going to bed and getting up in the morning. More than that, I should shoot for going to bed at the same time and getting up at the same time, despite what happened in between.

For Batman, that is the organizational equivalent of splitting the atom.

For those of you wondering what any of this harrowing tale has to do with faith here it is: I had been praying for help with routines. Begging, actually. The fact they'd dissolved again wasn't lost on even me. I felt completely helpless to make such a tectonic change on my own. I knew I needed power beyond my own.

I knew I needed Jesus.

Because - as a dear little 3-yr-old told me many years ago - "Jesus has all da powa. My mama tol' me."

I started to pray every day for Jesus' strength to add to mine - frankly - because I fancied I had none. I thought HIS power could get my sorry self out of that bed every morning, or throw that sorry self into bed at night.

What I didn't realize was that there would be some effort required of me in this project. I had to get myself into and out of bed - Jesus was not going to levitate me. It's an incredible confession coming from an alleged adult, but there it is. Somehow, that li'l random/abstract brain was surprised to work through the discomfort of stopping doing something terribly important to save Gotham and go to bed already, or get out of bed even if I didn't feel finished sleeping.

I had to relearn what Scott Peck calls the legitimate pain of discipline. I say relearn because as I've spent the last eight months hurling myself into bed and heaving myself back out again eight hours later, I recognize the discomfort. I'd simply used various life circumstances as excuses - the notes from home - to not put myself in a place to feel it.

I was equally surprised to discover that discomfort doesn't kill you.

I started getting up at 6:00 a.m. no matter what. It didn't go perfectly, but now, eight months later, when I usually awaken naturally at 5:45 or so, I smile and silently thank Father. I can't even believe it's true. It's still not 100% but it's a significant enough change to cause wonder and delight every single morning.

I reach up to turn out my light at 10:00 p.m. no matter what - and while it still doesn't go perfectly, it happens regularly enough to make me smile in gratitude and praise.

Now. Faith.

Faith in Jesus Christ is a terribly important qualifier. The reason we say faith in Jesus Christ is because in spite of our failings, our proclivities, our reluctance, our openly rebellious attitudes, we can do absolutely nothing by way of change - NOTHING - without Him. NOTHING.

Not stop biting your nails or kicking your dog. Not stop swearing or wanting to gossip.

Not start exercising or reading scriptures every day. Not start going to church or paying tithing again. Not start learning French or reading a biography every month. Not start eating healthier or stop chirping about it to everyone who hasn't decided it yet.

ANY change we want to make rests on putting our efforts - with all our reluctance and discomfort - on one side of the yolk - and allowing Jesus Christ - with "all da powa" - to do the heavy lifting. But He needs your discomfort of new effort. He needs you to power through the fear of - "What if I can't do it?"

He needs you to power through the fear of - "What if I can?"

He needs you to get your feet wet.

Getting your feet wet means rummaging through your meager wallet and pulling out your widow's mite of desire and ability. THIS is the amount you have zero faith in - because when has it ever been enough in the past?

Getting your feet wet means you hand it over. Put it into the hands with wounds in them - knowing that to Him, the amount is immaterial in the equation. HE is enough - and because He is enough, He HAS enough - to make YOU enough.

The popular cultural feel-good phrase of "I am enough" makes me cringe a bit. I am SO not enough - never have been. That's the point. Being not enough is what gets me to my knees, begging for more - for HIS enough.

If I may edit that with my ever-twitching red pencil - I prefer to say instead: "I am enough... WITH HIM."

Faith IN Jesus Christ means I fully recognize that any upward urge, any upward decision, any upward movement and progress- at all - is only possible because Jesus is the One and Only of God's children who navigated earth life with perfect precision. Then, He gave His life to pay all the debts we accrue in our imperfect navigation, and offers to share what only He could earn with His perfection and sacrifice.

Every good thing comes from Jesus, and is possible because of Jesus. Even people who don't believe in Him will be astonished to learn one day that all improvements they made in their lives were only possible because of Him.

Psalms 16:2 says, "My goodness extendeth not to thee." Thank heavens the footnote gives us the more accurate Hebrew: "I have no good apart from Thee."

Even something as mundane as learning routines is only possible because Jesus helped me through the discomfort of trying something I didn't think I could do, and kind of didn't want to do. I'm grateful I trusted Him enough to exercise faith IN Him, because I had very little faith in myself.

Exercising faith IN Him looks like this: me getting my feet wet and taking the first uncomfortable steps towards Him, knowing He'll be right there on the other side of the yoke, carrying the biggest part of the load.

Because He already did - in Gethsemane and on Calvary.