10 Days Without

“Daniel?” the hairstylist said aloud.

I raised my hand, set down the magazine I was looking at on a nearby table, and walked up to the desk. A curious look appeared on her face as she noticed the miniature whiteboard dangling around my neck.

“What’s this?” She asked.

I pointed to some words at the top of the board that I had scribbled with an orange wet-erase marker.

They said: I’m not using my voice today, to be a voice for 27 million slaves around the world.

“Wow! Okay. This will be interesting.” She replied.

I could tell that she wished that she had taken a little longer with her previous customer so that another stylist would have finished first and had to cut my hair. But she finished first and, as a result, had to cut the hair of the weirdo wearing the whiteboard.

“So what are we doing today?”

I wrote as fast as I could: 4 on the top, 2 on the sides, please leave my sideburns.

“Okay, we can do that,” she responded and began to cut. The razor buzzed, the comb combed, and she didn’t say another word for several minutes. Finally, I decided to break the ice and try to assure her that just because I couldn’t use my voice didn’t mean we had to sit in awkward silence for the next 20 minutes.

I’m sorry if this is awkward for you, but I’m trying to raise money to fight slavery.

“Oh that’s okay. What you’re doing is important. Are there really that many slaves in the world?” she asked.

I wrote: Yes. I didn’t believe it the first time I heard about it, either. Do you have a family?

That did it. That was the question that finally helped Denise get comfortable enough to start talking. For the next 20 minutes, we had a very in-depth conversation—Denise with her words and me with my whiteboard and purple dry erase marker.

I went 10 days without speech and 10 days without a lot of other things because I was tired of being a Christian by word only. When you are just another marketing guy in an everyday sort of job, it’s hard to figure out where faith and real life meet. Over time, this struggle—to figure out where faith and life intersect—had led me to a relatively apathetic lifestyle. One day I had an idea: go 10 days without shoes, blog about it, and raise money for kids who don’t have shoes. So I did it, and it worked. In 10 days, I raised $171, which provided 37 pairs of shoes for kids in need. That small experiment led to a dozen other experiments, one of which included an awkward hair cut appointment with Denise.

When I began this journey, I had no idea that I would be learning about the power of spiritual discipline, while also creating a model that could help other people apply their faith to their lives, but both occurred.

The most common spiritual discipline I applied was fasting, and for the first time in my life, I experienced the power of going without something. Let’s face it. We live in a culture of excess. A culture that promises more is merrier and bigger is better. You could describe our culture as a culture of “with.” So not only is going “without” counter-cultural—a rebellion of sorts—but it also opens us up to a new level of understanding. It’s like being in a really noisy building: sometimes, in order to gather your thoughts, you have to leave the building for a moment and breathe some fresh air. We live in a very noisy marketing culture, and going without is a chance for us to get outside of the crowd and breathe for a moment.

Also, I found out that “10 Days Without” could serve as a good model for others to follow—not just to make a difference in the world, but also to make progress in other areas of their lives. A youth group in Iowa participated in five, “10 Days Without,” experiments including furniture and media. Another guy went 10 Days Without sugar.

I think people need a model. I know that we, as Christian leaders, try to focus on the heart and the foundation for why people act certain ways—and we should. It’s vitally important for someone to have a right understanding of God. But there’s also a huge value to creating simple steps for someone to follow to achieve a goal. That’s what a model is—a simple set of steps. And that’s what I unknowingly created with 10 Days Without.

I didn’t create something new. If you read through this blog/article, you will not stumble upon sage words from a life of experience. All I discovered through this experience was that there’s a lot of value to going without in a culture of with, and by creating a new twist to the ancient art of spiritual discipline, I found apathy fading and a new life of compassionate action waiting.