Just Be It

A friend once told me about an experience he had when he was in college. He and some buddies were enjoying one of the first warm days of spring by going swimming in the mountain streams nearby. Their destination was a place called "the sink," which featured a beautiful, dramatic, twenty foot waterfall with a perfect lagoon below for swimming. There was even a cliff on the opposite side with a ledge that was ideal for jumping or diving.

So after horsing around for a while, my friend told me he jumped from the ledge into the water below. Only when he tried to come up, he found himself directly beneath the pounding stream of the waterfall. He began swimming harder, but the undertow of the waterfall pulled him right back beneath it. Starting to panic and running out of air, my friend began paddling frantically toward the shallow end of the lagoon. He could hear his friends talking and laughing, they hadn't noticed his predicament yet, but he couldn't break the surface.

Finally, after several minutes, my friend said he realized that he was going to die. He had exhausted himself in the struggle to swim free of the vortex of water created by the falls above. So he stopped paddling and allowed the water to push him deeper still. But after sinking several feet, his body suddenly shot like a torpedo to the surface and through the falls!

Gasping for air, he realized that only when he had completely surrendered did the undercurrent release him from its grasp. If he had relaxed and floated sooner, he wouldn't have exhausted himself and risked drowning. He had to quit working so hard to save himself if he wanted to live.

The doldrums often affect us in a similar way. We find ourselves in a storm or just in a rut, and suddenly we think we'd better try harder. If only we'd exercise more, stay later at the office, help out with the household chores more, spend more quality time with the kids, pray more often, read the Bible every day . . . well, then everything would be all right. But, of course, we only end up burned out and on the brink of spiritual, physical, and emotional exhaustion.

The doldrums flourish when we're focused on doing rather than being. We forget that real life happens internally more than externally. We would rather do something than be something.

There are always two ways to determine behavior, the internal motivation and the external motivation. In other words, every behavior is motivated either by an internal force or an external force. I can drive at a safe speed out of concern for my safety and the safety of the people around me or I can do it because of the sign on the highway that tells me I have to drive at a certain speed. I can be faithful to my wife out of my love for her or I can attempt to be faithful in obedience to the law that says, "Thou shalt not commit adultery." I believe there's a constant tension in us and in our society between internal motivation and the use of external constraints to determine our behavior.

It's always much easier to have an external rule to make us behave. But while rules are important, that's not the gospel. The Good News that Jesus brought is about a transformation of the inner person that makes us different at our core.

If you're ever going to make it out of the doldrums and stay out, then it comes back to your inner motivation. Why do you do what you do? What do you want to do with your life? Where do you want to go?

The purpose of this book is to put wind in your sails again. To get you unstuck. To move you through the storm. To help you reclaim your compass and redirect your course. Heaven knows, we don't need another motivational, inspirational, feel-good self-help book. I'm not saying that these books aren't helpful or even biblically based, just that there are plenty of them. Most of them focus on changing behaviors and cultivating habits. Again, that's not necessarily bad; it's just inadequate for making lasting change.

You can focus on externals all you want and try to imitate the methods of others in hopes of duplicating their success, purpose, or happiness. But you'll only end up on the treadmill of disappointment, more frustrated than before, unless you make changes on the inside first.

If you want a breath of fresh air in your life that will resus-citate your spirit and bring you closer to God-and closer to being the person he made you to be, then this book is for you. I'm convinced that if you pursue God, you'll experience a passion and a zeal for living while enjoying every dimension of your life like never before. You will discover the X factor, that rare, life-giving quality that we will explore further in the next chapter and it will manifest itself in everything you do.

In part 2, we'll look at some of the practices that helped me follow after God and escape the doldrums. Although these practices are not in themselves the secret to a changed life, I believe they are a means to access the power that can change yours.

Yes, it will require some changes, some discipline, and some perseverance. But if you stick with it, then you'll never have to worry about remaining stuck in the doldrums again.