Half-Marathon Update!

So today the Boston Marathon is going to be happening, and while I'm not running in that (or anywhere close), on Saturday, I finally ran my first half-marathon--time to check that off my bucket list! It was so intense but also so fun, and I want to run another one as soon as I can, probably in late June. I think it would help me to have something physical to prepare for this summer to help balance me out while I study for the bar exam. I ran pretty much nonstop for the first six or seven miles, at a nice slow 13-minute-mile pace, and during that part of the race I was thinking, this is so easy! Why didn't I do this a long time ago? I want to run another one of these tomorrow! But then . . . reality set in at mile 8. And it's like, I'm SO hungry. And my legs hurt. And I'm really sweaty and I just want to go take a shower and eat a bacon cheeseburger and some fries (which is exactly what I did when I was done). Then I ended up getting off course at mile 8.5 and turning around at one of the water stations when I was supposed to keep going beyond it. The next mile marker I saw, instead of being 9, was 12. And I knew something was wrong because I had skipped 3 miles . . . I definitely considered just going on to the finish line, but I just couldn't. I was determined to do it right and do the whole thing, so I went back and got back on the trail and walked/ ran the rest of it. So ultimately I did 14.1 miles instead of 13.1, but that's ok. I came in last in my age group, but that's also ok. The main thing is that I finished. That's all I set out to do. And now I'll be in recovery mode probably for the whole week, and then I'll start running again next week. I'm going to do some low-impact exercise this week like swimming, but there is no way I can run for a few days considering that I can't even walk like a normal person right now because my knees and legs are so sore. But I'm already in substantially less pain than I was in on Saturday afternoon, so I know I'm on the mend. I have at least two more of these races in mind to do this year because this has now become a competition with myself--next time I'll want to beat my time from Saturday, and then keep getting better from there. But overall, it feels so great to finally check that goal off my list!

Ponder Anew . . .

I've been listening to a lot of the old classic hymns on Spotify lately. While I love modern worship music, sometimes I feel like there's really no substitute for these old hymns that have stood the test of time. One I've been listening to every day lately is Praise to the Lord, the Almighty. There's a verse in that song that says this: "Praise to the Lord, who doth prosper thy work and defend thee. Surely His goodness and mercy here daily attend thee. Ponder anew what the Almighty can do, if with His love He befriend thee." Think about those beautiful words for a moment. The Lord prospers our work and defends us. And ponder anew what our Almighty God can do if He befriends us with His love. I'm pondering it right now, and it overwhelms my heart, in a good way. We serve an Almighty God who is willing to befriend us and to work on our behalf, and there are few things that are better than that amazing truth.

God truly can do above and beyond all that we could ever ask or hope. He truly can, and I am asking Him to do just that in my life, and in yours, this year. This is why I'm not willing to settle anymore, folks, in any area of my life. I'm not willing to settle because I serve a God who can do immeasurably more than all I could ever ask or think. I read this amazing quote the other day and I'm quite certain the author didn't mean to apply it to prayer, but it relates just the same: "Sometimes the only difference between wanting something and having it is asking for it." Now, of course it's not the point of prayer to get whatever we want just by asking God for it. And there can be a lot of reasons why God doesn't give us things that we believe we want or need. But I think there's a very good underlying concept here, and it's that we need to be willing to ASK. ASK God to do more and greater things in your life. ASK God to spark a revival in your home, your church, your city, your world. Ask Him to show His power and goodness in your life in brand-new ways, ways you've never even thought of before. Ask Him to do the work He does best: redeeming your brokenness, healing your scars, transforming your deepest wounds into your most powerful ministry, bringing your life up from the pit and crowning you with love and compassion. Ask Him to give you greater territory to take over for Him, greater spheres of influence in your job, your school, and your community. We need to start asking. There are some things that aren't going to start happening until we start asking, and we may not even know what we're missing out on by not asking. And I refuse to be someone who does not have because she does not ask.

I want to embark on a journey of deeper and more heartfelt prayer this year, and I invite you to join me in this. I want to become, more and more deeply, a woman who ASKS. Who asks for revival, who asks for healing, who asks for transformation, who asks for miracles, power, blessing, and favor from our Almighty God, who, even though it blows my mind, wants to befriend me and to prosper my work and defend me. I don't even know exactly what all that looks like right now, but I am determined to exert myself in prayer until I find out. I'm committed to praying until I find new strength, until I find my deepest hope and peace in the Lord alone, until I find the life purpose the Lord has created me for, until I tap into that deeper well of spiritual authority through which Christ said that whoever believed would do "even greater things than these." I'm totally talking to myself right now and not my readers, but maybe we need to start spending less time on Facebook and more time with our Almighty God. Maybe we need to start straining in prayer just as much as we strain to complete every last item on our to-do list. Maybe we need to start being willing to get up earlier and quit hitting the snooze button so we can immerse our day in prayer from the beginning. Ponder what could happen: the chain reactions that could begin, the revivals, the blessings. Don't leave a blessing unclaimed because you didn't ask for it. I'm just not willing to do that anymore. I want this to be the year of prayer.

Readers, here are some specific things I am praying for in my life right now, and I invite you to join me if you feel so led:
1) I am graduating in just 3 months, and I desperately want to graduate having made a lasting positive impact on my law school for Christ. I want the lives of many students and others to be substantially better, richer, and more in tune with God because I was there and because they knew me. I want to leave a powerful legacy for Christ, and I am praying that I would be able to leave such a legacy on my school and my community.
2) This year, I want to do more with my writing. I want to actively use my blog and other writings to introduce more people to a deeper relationship with Jesus Christ. I want my writing to become better known and more widely disseminated, but I need wisdom for how best to do this because, as a soon-to-be attorney, I'm unwilling to do non-legal writing under my own name because I have to be very careful what employers and colleagues can find out about me online. But at any rate, I believe that God wants me to use my writing to positively impact others, and I believe that in a very real way, I have a calling to write--and I want to follow that calling. I just need to know how and when and in what way.
3) I want to pursue the job and career that God has planned for me. This is yet another area of my life where I don't want to settle for less than His best. I've settled in the job arena before, and I'm not willing to do it again. I am praying that God would prepare the right job for me and lead me directly to that job, and that the process of finding it, this time, could be substantially less stressful than it has been in the past. And I'm praying that when I find THE JOB, I'll know it and know that it is right for me. And I want to have an amazing testimony of how God graciously led me to the right position and opened the doors for me to receive it.

So those are a few things I'm praying for right now, and I want to ponder what God will do as He defends, protects, and befriends me.

When to Stop Setting Goals

I've had a pretty exciting week so far--besides a good start to the semester overall, I just found out that the paper I wrote last semester on patent protection in biotechnology is going to be published, so I'm happy about that. It's no great American novel or anything, but it is exciting to be able to officially "be a published author"--something I've wanted to be for a really long time. It was pretty satisfying to pull up my goals list and check that one off!

And that started me thinking about goal-setting in general, and about how making and pursuing goals is a really big part of my life. In fact, I make goals on many different occasions--the new year, a new semester, the start of summer, my birthday, a new month, and you get the idea. And while I don't think there's anything wrong with that, and in fact it keeps me motivated and makes me want to work harder, I've started thinking that it can be possible to set goals and plan out your life so obsessively that you almost push God out of it, and that's something I want to make sure I stay away from. The biggest goal we can have is still so much smaller than God's plans for our lives! God can do more in you, through you, with you, and for you than you could EVER plan for and more than your biggest goals could EVER reflect. Your goals for your own life are miniscule compared to what the God of the universe wants to do in your life, if you'll allow Him to do so.

Whatever you do, don't fall into the trap of thinking that God's plan for you is only as big as your plan for yourself. Your most farfetched, wildest dream for your life is only a drop in the bucket compared to what God dreams for you. Don't settle for simply setting and meeting your own goals when the Lord wants to pull you out of your comfort zone, continually surprise you with His goodness and mercy, and lead you into His dynamic and divine plans for your life, which are greater than what you can dream up or set goals about. Don't be so focused on your own plan that you miss greater things for your life. Cultivate your capacity for awe--awe at how deeply you are loved, at how exciting, unexpected, and wonderful God's dreams for you truly are, at how great His thoughts about you are, and at the fact that the One who keeps the planets in orbit cares to know your name.

Everyone's talking and blogging about coming up with a "word" or phrase to define your year in 2013. I've read a lot of people's choices: abundance, joy, revival, etc. My 2013 phrase? "Awestruck wonder." Because living out God's dreams is living in a place where the amazing becomes ordinary, where heaven meets earth, where the oceans part and the mountains move--and that's something to be in awe of every day.

Wrestling for Blessing

Recently, I was reading the story of when Jacob, one of the most interesting characters in the entire Old Testament, wrestled with God. You can read it in Genesis 32. It's one of the strangest passages in the Bible: basically, Jacob was getting ready to reunite with his brother Esau, and he was very worried about how the meeting would go because he had stolen Esau's blessing years before. The night before, he was standing alone at the ford of the Jabbok River when a mysterious man (understood to be an appearance of God) stepped out of the shadows and "wrestled with him till daybreak." The two wrestled all night long, and Jacob finally said, "I will not let you go unless you bless me."

I will not let you go unless you bless me. This story has always kind of bothered me, and I finally figured out why: it's so unorthodox! Wrestling it out with God and demanding that He bless us? That is not what you typically hear of as a good way to approach God (which in our times is usually done through prayer). No, we're usually told to submit to God, to demonstrate our total willingness to follow His will, and never to insist on getting our own way.

Jacob took a much more stubborn, demanding, persistent, tenacious approach. He literally fought it out with God all night long, holding on to Him and demanding that God bless Him then and there. I was tempted to think this might have just been a dream or a vision of Jacob's, but yet, there was a physical manifestation of his night of wrestling with God: in the intensity of his struggle, he injured his hip and walked away limping the next day.

But there's more to the story. Jacob received the blessing that he asked for from God. Jacob demanded God's blessing in a very physical way, holding on to the mysterious man and refusing to release his grip until He blessed him. And verse 29 tells us, "Then he blessed him there."

The most surprising thing is that Jacob's utterly unorthodox approach worked. He insisted on receiving God's blessing, and receive it He did. God's blessing and favor in Jacob's life was clearly evident when he went to meet Esau the next day and was warmly received, even though he had been fearing for his life because he was convinced that Esau hated him.

Jacob's life wasn't always the best example for us to follow--after all, he cheated Esau out of his father's blessing and was deceptive in other areas of his life. But in this passage Jacob had a moment of raw openness and persistence with God that in some ways could be a model for all of us. It is ok to ask, and ask boldly, for the blessings of God. It's ok to be stubborn in prayer and stubborn in pleading that the favor and blessing of God cover our lives. If God's response to Jacob here is any indication, it's even ok to hold onto Him for all we are worth and insist that He graciously bless us.

It won't be without cost. That kind of desperate passion with God, that raw vulnerability, strips us of our pretenses and our excuses and demands a new level of commitment, of reckless abandon. It demands that we struggle through it with God when everyone around us tells us to give up. It requires that we exert ourselves in prayer in a way that we possibly never have done before. It may be painful and difficult at times.

But although Jacob walked away limping, he also walked away blessed.