arena

The Secret to Persevering in the Arena

Recently I had a week of awkward engagements, mostly in the form of writing emails telling people what they don't want to hear, or pushing into uncomfortable topics with others. Yuck. I thought, "Is there a hole I can go crawl into now?" But each of those interactions was necessary because of the tough arenas of life God has called me into for this season. Brene Brown, in her book Rising Strong, says, "an arena is any moment when or place where we have risked showing up and being seen." Inspired by the Teddy Roosevelt 1910 speech (below), those arenas are places of blood, sweat, and tears, where we fight for what we believe in. We hope for victory, but know that failing is always a possibility. This is a "venture into tough new arenas" year for me. They ask more of me than I want to give sometimes. These arenas call me to risk, lead, take stands, and put myself out there. Can I be honest? Making a difference, affecting change, living bravely, all sounds great in theory. But it's tiring. A lot of the time, I want to quit. Stop writing. Step away from leading. Let things go rather than fight for a stance. Comfort is more appealing than potential failure, regardless of what I or others might gain. It's hard to put yourself out there when there's a risk of falling on your face. So much more appealing to stay on those safe shores. And yet, we must keep fighting. When I am tempted to step out of the arena, wipe the blood, sweat, and tears off my face, and throw in the towel, I feel a check in my spirit. A voice says, "Stay. Stay and fight. You don't need to stop. You just need more truth for this." We don't need to quit. We just need to get stronger. And where does that strength come from? It comes from the truth. Here's the secret to not quitting when life is tough: We need a stronger theology for the arena. What does that look like? To begin with, it means more strength training out of the ring. We train our minds with the truth; that this is for His glory, not our ours; that there is no failure so great to put us out of His reach; that every second in the ring is only possible because of His power, not our own; that a knockdown does not define our worth. The more we are called to the arena, the more we need to feed our minds and hearts the truth about who He is and who we are. Then, when we are tempted to quit, instead we choose to double down on those truths. Second, we need to train our hearts to hear our coach's voice, even in the thick of the fight. He is with us, for us, in us. No one is more for us in the arena than He is. We can't…

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Moana and the Power of Grit

  If there’s one thing I hope to say about myself by the end of this year, it’s this: I’m grittier than I was. When I say grit, I’m talking about courage and resolve, showing up and staying in it for the long haul, doing the hard things that get you places you thought you couldn’t go. I’ve learned, in the last year, that I am not a naturally gritty person. I like safety and comfort. I like staying in known places where I’m doing well. The problem is, not much happens in those safe, comfortable places. You know who has grit? Moana. I’m in love with this character from Disney because she is a great picture of the rewards of being gritty. Moana lives on an island, where she is destined to be the next leader. Their island is slowing dying, food is scarce. The people are getting desperate. Moana suggests they go beyond the reef to look for more fish, but her father tells her, “There’s nothing beyond our reef but storms and rough seas. As long as we stay on our very safe island, we’ll be fine.”  He tried to go beyond the reef before and found nothing but heartache and an unforgiving ocean. Moana tries to stay as her father asks, but the desire to save her people, and the call on her life to be the one to help them compels her to go. Throughout the movie, we see her waver between doubt and courage, resolve and giving up. In the end, (spoiler alert) her perseverance pays off. We all have a safe island where we could stay. And we all have ways God is calling us to live out who we are, asking us to venture into new waters. He calls us to places that test our resolve, places of potential failure, but also great reward. For me, writing has been that call onto the water. It’s been a challenging and anxiety-ridden ride at times, full of temptation to compare myself to others, wonder if I have what it takes, and be discouraged. I have tried to be courageous and put myself out there, but often I have wanted to give up and walk away, back to my safe island. To be honest, I feel that right now, today, as I write this. When we attempt to do something that calls us beyond our comfort zone, it's tough. We get tired. There's heartache and failure. Sometimes it feels like the world is against us. Our dreams seem just out of reach. We doubt it's worth it. The question is, “Will we keep going?" It takes grit. Leaving the island takes grit. Staying the course takes grit. But what’s the alternative? If we stay, our worlds get smaller, until we are stuck on our islands. We are safe, but we aren’t living. Comfortable, but accomplishing little. We miss the call. So what does it take for us to leave the island, to stay gritty? In my experience, it's a combination of being…

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