Just Start

Just start.

Yes, I’m talking to you. I usually avoid talking to you, I like to protect you, coddle you, and hope that you can “learn by example.” I’ve been trained to use “I” statements, or tell stories like Aesop, in hopes you’ll take the hint and see the moral in the end. I wouldn’t want to offend, I wouldn’t want to come off as a know-it-all, or even worse: holier-than-thou. There’s no need to spell it out, is there? You know in your heart what to do. I’ll just leave it between you and God.

But the thing is, you’re really not doing it, are you? You’re not starting. That open door lies before you, but frozen in fear, you simply won’t go through it. That opportunity is there, but it’s buried under layers of hard work, so you avoid it. That freedom is waiting, but the emotional cost is high and you’re not sure you want to pay it.

You pretend it’s just procrastination. But it’s not. Procrastination is looking at a sink full of dirty dishes, sighing, and turning on Netflix instead. No, we are talking about a lot deeper issues than procrastination. We are talking about who you are and what you’re about. We’re talking about the very essence of life here, and procrastination isn’t your main problem, not by a long shot.

I get it, I get it, I really do. No one gets it better than me. What excuse do I have, staring out a window instead of banging these little black and white keys? I don’t want to create, creating is painful and vulnerable. Creating costs me something and in a short-cut, short-change world, too often I take the path of least resistance. So yeah, I get it. I get you. I am you, for goodness’ sake.

But there is a price to pay either way, isn’t there? You already know that very well. In the moments alone, unguarded, when your screens go black and it’s just the rise and fall of your chest in the night, the steady throb of your pulse telling you you’re alive, and the thoughts come, uninvited, unsought, and yet unavoidable—what if…?

What if I just started?

What if I walked through that door?

What if I said “yes?”

What if I said “no?”

What if I get up tomorrow and decide that everything is going to be different?

You want to know something? You have a destiny and a purpose, just like all the gurus and preachers say, but that doesn’t automatically mean you’re going to reach them. A truly amazing life does not fall freely from the sky into your lap as a gift from heaven. You are not bound to live an extraordinary life or do extraordinary things. You decide that. You take the gift and give it back to the world, or you squander it like the prodigal, or bury it in the backyard like the wicked servant. You do that. Only you decide. Not your spouse, not your parents, not your friends, not even God himself.

Just you.

So just start.

You’re afraid of resistance? Ok, yeah, you should be. I’ll give it to you. There’s not just the physical law of inertia, there’s the mental, emotional, and spiritual ones too. “A body at rest will remain at rest,” and a spirit that is asleep wants to stay asleep. Everything in this world is against you waking up, and everything is against you starting. You need to just accept that reality, and it won’t be easy.

But there are higher and deeper realities than those laws, you know. Something and someone who supersedes them all. Someone who is for you. And he put in place a spiritual law that this world is trying to hide from you. That is, a spirit in motion stays in motion and a soul that wakes up and grabs hold of life with everything they have is capable of changing the world. And I mean the world in eternity, not just this one. This world and the days we live in may give you nothing but a sucker punch in the gut. As a matter of fact, for your sanity’s sake, just assume it will. But the unseen, eternal world that your destiny belongs to operates on a totally different set of rules.

So just start.

And do yourself (and the rest of us) a big favor, and start small. Begin with what you can do, albeit the smallest thing imaginable. You don’t seem to understand that a human life is comprised not of the few, big, “monumental” decisions we make but the billions of tiny, seemingly insignificant ones. Start by inverting your assumptions that the big stuff is the only meaningful thing in life and start to cultivate the minutiae of life. When you come to the end of your days on earth, you may be shocked to find that all those irritations and discomforts you chose to endure that those around you did not have resulted in diamonds and pearls in your hand. And you will actually have something to give to the one who gave it all for you.

So just start.

Don’t you dare hold back anymore. You are withholding from this world the very best of who you are, and for God’s sake, we need you. We need you to wake up, get up, and get in the game. We need you to get determined and feisty. We need you to resist, and fight, and overcome. We need you to initiate and motivate and create. We need you to sing and speak and write. We need you to kick down doors and climb mountains and explore the depths. Above all, we need you to stop looking at yourself, fixating on all the reasons you can't, and instead look to the one who has called you and equipped you with everything you need. We need him, without question, but he made it so that we also need you.

So just start.

By the way, I decided to just start by putting this out into the world.

So come on. If I can do it, so can you.

We can start together.