Spend Yourself {Day 4} :: When it's all about me

I've spent the better part of the last ten years learning how to look up and around ... be here in the present tense. Awake in the now. Like I said before, I've been a self-focused kind of girl. I've been in my head and in the lead and in the spotlight and in the back row. I've been in the dark, I've been discontent. I've been hard on myself. I've been full of myself. I've been all about me: when it was great and also when it wasn't.

And I've been waiting to tell my story and wondering when all of my fumbling around all these years will mold and congeal into something valuable to share. But when I start to tell my story, it just feels gross... with a lot of I's and me's. So I don't want to tell my story anymore.

I want to tell His.

And there has to be a certain amount of me's and I's since this is the only part of the story I know:
His writing on this life. But it's all different now. I don't think I'm that great. In fact I know I'm not. And that makes this journey even cooler. And we all have one: a journey.

We have all spent our lives trying to find our life. And some of us have worked so hard to find it that we've missed it.

Truth is: the full life is right here. Right now.

I think I finally know where I am and I am finally learning how to spend these days. We've been away with friends, spending great hours with great people who have spent their lives loving well. But I'm home now and it's time to focus on you. Time to get down to business.

If you're just now joining me on this adventure, I'm writing for 31 days on what it looks like to spend yourself in this life. And it's big and full and I am growing right along with you. I am new at this and I have spent a lot of days hiding out. And writing outlines and writing plans makes me sweat and I eat too much sugar. And I stare blankly for too long and I get really upset. It's just not in me yet to think in a linear form so I hope you'll give me some grace as we work this out together. I am learning.

I haven't always lived in the present tense. I have lived everywhere but there. I have looked back and forward and to everyone else. I have been stuck so thick in the mire of self: self doubt, self loathing, self
analyzing... I have been called vacant. And I have felt that way too... one good blow and I just might have disappeared.

It's not that way anymore.

I hope you'll come back and walk this discovery with me. It's easier with some friends along the way.