| comfortability |

It is very clichéd, but it is true... We humans are very much creatures of habit.

Everyday I have the same morning routine. I get up. I pray. I read some scripture. I try to dwell on it. I pray again. I get out of my bed, grab my toothbrush and head to the bathroom. I wet my brush, apply toothpaste while walking back to my room, start brushing, and turn on some morning music. I brush my teeth for about 5-7 minutes (any less and I feel like I haven't done a thorough job). While brushing my teeth, I use only my right hand (my left hand is used only to hold my toothbrush while I'm rinsing my mouth out). I go back to my room and retrieve my mouthwash, gargle for about 50 seconds, then I'm off to the shower. I get dressed, and then turn my music off and head out to face the day at work.

So I admit that when it's broken down into such anal details, I do sound like I'm pretty obsessive compulsive. This has to be done the same way every time that I do it. I might sound particularly crazy, but I promise that this is not a plan of attack I come up with every night before I wake up (that plan would be the same as every other night... trying to take over the world.) I don't set things in action before each new day, just so that I can repeat it day after day. It's just the way that I've become comfortable doing things. I don't even think about it. I'm so comfortable with the process, that I really just blindly fall into doing them the way that they get done. It's only when I stop and take time to break down my actions, that I realize how specific, rigid, and crazy this all sounds to me.

That's just how it is though, right? We get stuck doing things so often, in the same exact way, that it becomes habitual to us. Living life is just that, and part of living is having things go just the way that we are used to them going. We have ideas of how things should be, and those ideas constantly stay with us, no matter what. Living with secrets is just like that. There may not be a lot of constant thought about the secrets that we have, or the specifics that keep them something to be secretive, but we are constantly carrying them with us. We hold them close to us, and a lot of times we feel lost without them. These things that we hold onto in life are things that are sometimes only understood by us. The idea is that maybe if we were to let people in on them, they would be freaked out by the secrets. Of course, we don't want to have that happen to us. With that, we decide that it'd be the best thing if we learn to live comfortably while keeping these secrets with us.

Sadly enough, the things that are the secrets in our lives usually affect how we define ourselves. For example: I would always feel alone. That was my secret... Even in a room full of people (friends or not), I could feel like no one got me or understood me. That thought constantly made me feel like I was alone. That secret led me to start alienating myself from people. I would begin to deliberately sabatoge social situations and blame things on the fact that I was made to feel like I was alone. No one understood me or cared about me, so it was ok to be solitary. I got very comfortable with living life like that. I was so comfortable in fact, that I would deny myself chances for heavy social interaction altogether. When other people would call me out for being hermit-like, I would cower in fear. I thought they would try to discredit my secret or challenge the ways that I was comfortable!

A lot of times, I think that we Christians view our faith like that too. We get comfortable in seeing our faith in the same way all the time. A lot of times, our beliefs are so static. We read the Bible with the same lens, we pray in the same way all the time. We have the same way of connecting with God, or even having ways of experiencing Him. We get set in our ways, and we have a cow when a different way is presented to us. "How can someone tell me how to relate to God?!? I've been doing it for years, and I've not had any problems." We have the tendency to really latch on to the ways that we are introduced to God, generally with little deviation.

How do we get past doing or feeling things when they are so comfortable to us? How do we open ourselves up to new ways of doing, feeling, or even experiencing things in life? We have to challenge our comfortability! This would include even our better habits. When dealing with our faith, we definitely have to think outside of the box (such a corporate idea, that I feel connected to every ceo in the universe right now). It's true though, Jesus was so revolutionary, because He was never overly comfortable with anything. He was able to be in a state of constant change.Being a certain way was not good enough for Him. Having a standard relationship with His heavenly father was not good enough for Him. When we die to our comfortability in things, we can let ourselves be open to experiencing new, different, and awesome things. Jesus was not comfortable in carrying secrets with Him. He really included His community when thinking about things and doing things. Holding onto these secrets and being comfortable with them make it hard to get rid of them. Keeping things in the open is truly freeing. In God's vision, the world was void of secrets, there was true intimacy with Him and with other people. He calls us to be part of a revolution! A revolution in which we develop real community with each other, in order to really love and uplift one another. In order to do that, we have to be able to become uncomfy with being secretive. Let's try to set ourselves free.

What are you too comfortable with?

I'm out...