showing up

A life meant to be vibrant, now dull.
A life meant to flourish, now yellowed and wilted.
Busy. Moving, always moving but barely thinking.
Distracted. Unaware and disengaged from my own soul.
Sleepy. Deciding by default that the easy choice is the best choice. 

Showing up for life takes courage. What if what we have to offer is rejected? What if we show up with all we can muster and it’s only given a passing glance, a halfhearted look that doesn’t hold anyone’s attention, including our own?

If we show up, what comforts will we have to forego? Because showing up always comes at a cost. Showing up for our own life means setting laziness and ease aside. It means not watching the lives of others, but participating in our own life. It means not seeking things that numb but doing things that require discipline. It means having all the conversations--the good soul-feeding ones, the hard ones, the messy ones. It means valuing authenticity over pretense.

When did escaping reality become such an attractive choice? Maybe when reality required more than we were prepared to give. Maybe when we believed the lie that comfort was priority. I wonder if it happened little by little, one small choice to avoid or disengage at a time. Like a drug addict who began with a few impulsive half-hearted decisions which led to larger decisions, until eventually there wasn’t a decision to make at all--the path unknowingly had already been decided in small increments along the way. As the addict one day looks around and sees nothing resembling real life, just cheap counterfeits, I wonder if after living on autopilot for far too long, we might have this same realization. We know our life is a gift, but we’ve treated the minutes and days as if they were something to be wasted. We’ve allowed ourselves to live in a stupor, full of mind-numbing entertainment and distraction.

In our quest for something more interesting, we’ve traded reality for a false, heavily filtered image that no longer resembles anything true. What if we decide to lay our current image of a life down and search out and remember a life that is LIVED? A life that GOES, a life that DOES, a life that is no longer just a reaction, but thoughtful and intentional. We can show up and participate or we can retreat. We can hide who we are--our thoughts, ideas, gifts, failures, uncertainties, or we can open them up for others. We can take our desire to be admired and wad it up like an old grocery list and toss it in the trash, because connection trumps admiration every time.

Oh Lord, When my vision is hazy and feet walk in the grooves made from repetition, when the world feels like a wheel I simply must rotate, awake my soul, turn me upside down, shine that bright bright light in my eyes. Help me not move left and right because of decisions I made years ago, or because of decisions made for me, living without thinking and thinking without pausing. Make my heart one of intention and purpose. Draw me out of spiritual stupor and invigorate my soul with You.