When Life-Less, Ritualistic Living Just Won’t Do Anymore

I remember it like yesterday, jumping late at night, with all of my clothes on, into the dark lake waters.

I was young, enthusiastic, wanting to live full force, with nothing holding me back.

But as the years have crept on me, the diapers have needed changing, as religious duty and obligations have been exchanged for free thinking, unrestrained living…

I have found it can be easy to become fossilized without even realizing it, robotically running from place to place, being numbed to the reality that we have become much more like life-less rag-dolls, than vibrant, alive, fully engaged people who serve wildly a fully alive God.

My brother dared me to do it, ski down a hill that was not for a first time skiiers.  I was sixteen. My hope was to impress him.

I desperately longs to keep alive that “tom-boy” notion that a girl (even if she is a teenager) can do anything a boy can do…maybe even better

So, I took the challenge.

It took hours to get down that slope. Moguls, burning legs, an ice cliff that had me trembling and cold…

But as I think back to that teenage challenge, I came away, thrilled I took that dare and wasn’t left standing, looking up at that slope…wishing I had been brave enough to stand on that mountain.

And today, after court, and fighting for the little one that’s in our home, after years of dutiful religion, doing what’s right, being good…

I wonder if we sometimes can get hypnotized by duty and meetings, religious works, and obligations, forgetting He died not for our mediocrity, but so we could live, alive!

How many of us miss the rush of the slope, the feel of the water, the taste of victory take hold because we have thought we were content standing on the waters edge-way, failing to swim deeper depths, climbing higher still…

Instead of doing something new, different, challenging?  Instead of going and doing what He has always asked of us?

And when did we get old, start dying, little by little give our joy and hope, and happiness away?

What have we exchanged for living?

Where did we get the idea that God is a mean God, that somehow He wouldn’t want us to live engaged and fully alive,dreaming, being all He created us to be?

I dangle from a rope, guided by the same brother that left me on that slope. Anchored tight in the rock, I dangled and then finally pushed myself off, repelling off one solid, rock cliff, securely set into place.

And I have never felt so alive, trusting the anchor placed deep into the cliff. That feeling of flying through the air, kicking of the rock, and knowing the brother I loved was waiting for me, below.

And it makes me think…

If we don’t live large, if we don’t take chances, if we find ourselves lost or caught up in our small screens or technology….how are our children ever going to learn how to live the wildness of their dreams?

Don’t they practice what they see, not what we teach?

I awake and hear Him whispering, “Live your one life well”…

And it was like I realized somewhere….the duty of life had drowned me into believing “good works” is more important than living life filled with light and love.

I got to believing that “trying hard” and “doing good” was more important that grasping all this life truly offers us.

And I don’t want to go out when that clock stops ticking, resenting, regretting, wishing I had not wasted this life abundant Jesus died for. Do you?

So today, I ask you, I ask deeper of me…

Where have we let age and years, and lies about duty grip us and take us under?  Where have we robotic-ally been working instead of living, doing, being all He wants of us, here in this life, now?

As I ask of God, will you ask of Him to?  To show you where you have let doubt replace hope, dread replace dreams, questions take over really living and believing that our God is great and wants all that’s good for us….

After all, didn’t He died that we might LIVE. Him wanting us to taste and see and know, the promises He gives…

For a resurrection that often looks like hanging from a cliff…and pushing into open air.