Once upon a time, before kids and before the internet (mostly before the internet), my husband and I watched TV. Whose Line is it Anyway? was one of our favorite shows. (If you don’t know it, it’s improv.) After a week of really sad stuff, last night I just needed a good laugh. Colin and Ryan did not disappoint.

So, we just got back from a trip to D.C. (which explains the lack of posts as of late). We saw some important things, you know, like the White House and other large buildings where a lot of highly-paid people hold our very lives in their hands. As usual, I spent my time trying to explain the significance of the places we visited and my children spent their time trying to tell me to just be quiet and could we please turn The Wheels on the Bus CD back on.

We also visited my brother who is glad to be nearing the end of his first year at the U.S. Naval Academy. The first-year students—”plebes” they call them—have a lot of rules to follow. My brother isn’t so stoked about the curfew of 10 pm and the mandatory bedtime of 11 pm. He often thinks about how he wouldn’t have so many rules if he had attended a “regular” university. But I say a curfew and mandatory bedtime don’t sound too bad, especially when (a) you don’t have to pay tuition, (b) you actually get a monthly paycheck for going to school, (c) you get a boatload of free stuff like a computer and lots of clothes that are tailor-made for you and given how hard it is for those of us taller than any normal human being (read: we cannot find clothes that fit us), tailor-made clothes are well-worth a curfew and mandatory bedtime…in fact, it would be totally worth a 6 pm curfew and 7 pm mandatory bedtime. Hmmm, 7 pm mandatory bedtime and a brand new, tailor-made wardrobe…suddenly I’m beginining to think I should join the Navy.

We went to the National Zoo too. The best thing about it was not having to pay anything to get in. Now, I do realize that the tax check I will send in tomorrow to the IRS is really my admission to the zoo, but still, I liked being able to walk through the front gates and that was it. Just walk through the front gates. (Now charging $1 for the zoo map is another story, but whatever.) And true to form, my children much preferred the ride to and from the zoo on the Metro than the actual zoo itself.

And oh yeah. Either I’m getting old, or the drivers in D.C. are maniacs. (I’m still processing this one.)

And I am compelled to mention that which was the pinnacle of our trip (OK, other than the visit with my brother). And that is of course, my beloved, my one-and-only, my oh-please-come-to-where-I-live, IKEA. Because anytime I am within a 50 mile radius of an IKEA, it beckons me. Oh, how I love thee IKEA.

And perhaps the funniest moment:

At one point, the kids and I were waiting in the car for my husband (who was attending a conference—thus the real reason for the trip). We had agreed to meet him at a certain time but his conference session went later than expected and everyone in the car started getting cranky, myself included. So I said, “WHERE. IS. DADDY?”

The question hung in the air momentarily until my 4-year-old son calmly replied, “Maybe he’s fighting a fire.”

I have a confession to make. I am a people-pleaser. I like people to like me. I don’t like it when people don’t like me—it gives me hives.

Now, I know this is not healthy. I know this is not good. I know this is not Biblical.

But hey, I have lots of issues I’m trying to sort out and people-pleasing happens to be about Issue #5923 and seeing as I’m only on Issue #297, it may take me a while to work through it.

So, yesterday. It was library day. Before we left home, I checked our library account online to see which items we needed to return. Unfortunately, I was 2 days too late. We had 56 overdue items. Yes, 56.

But that wasn’t the worst part.

The worst part was the notation on my account which read: “This account is delinquent.”

Delinquent. Me. Delinquent. Let me just let that soak in because, you know, I have never been delinquent on anything and now there it is, in plain writing, that yes, in fact, I. AM. DELINQUENT.

Do I need to mention that being delinquent on anything does not go well with my people-pleasing personality?

So, naturally, I do the one thing any reasonable, people-pleasing person would do in my situation. I panic. (And I want to throw up.)

I worry how my delinquency will affect my stellar library-borrowing status. I wonder if they’ll let me in the library ever again. I immediately throw every last library book in the car and rush to the library. I make the conscious choice to return the books via the drive-up dropbox as opposed to walking them into the library because I do not want to have to explain to any clerk or patron standing in, on, around or near the indoor bookdrop that the reason I am frantically throwing 56 books into the bin is because, well, I’m delinquent and I want to have a clean record once again. Because I’m a clean-record type. I am not a delinquent type. I am dysfunctionally overjoyed that there is, in fact, a drive-up dropbox because the person in charge of picking up my returned books on the other side of the drive-up dropbox cannot connect my face to my gargantuan (delinquent) pile of overdue books. Yet I still purposefully pause after dropping in about 10 books so that anyone watching 56 books come through the chute thinks 56 books are coming from 5 different cars and not from just one car occupied by one crazed, delinquent woman.

At this point, you may be wondering why anyone would check out 56 books at a time. Well, we’re homeschooling and using library books is one way we avoid paying for expensive curriculum.

Although, I am fully aware that THIS MAKES NO SENSE AT ALL WHEN I NOW OWE THE LIBRARY ABOUT $269 IN FINES.

But really, I can’t blame my delinquency totally on my children’s homeschooling books. Because there was one (just one) book of mine—a book I had checked out for myself, which, SO UNFORTUNATELY, I never took the time to read.

That book? Approval Addiction: Overcoming Your Need to Please Everyone by Joyce Meyer.

6-year-old: Will you play soccer with me?

4-year-old: Sure…but only if you pay me.

6-year old: Why do I always have to pay you?

(If you’re just joining us, here’s Part 1.)

Moving on with my stream of consciousness…

…let us strip off every weight that slows us down, especially the sin that so easily hinders our progress.

If we want to run a good race, there are two things we’ve gotta get rid of: sin (makes sense) but ALSO, anything that is not sin but slows us down just the same (not so easy to figure out). Or, to put it another way, we cannot run our best race if we are not consistently and consciously removing sin and anything else that gets in our way.

All racers, whether a 100m sprinter or a musher in the Iditarod are focused on one thing: the finish line. They know where they’re going and they plan how to get there. They choose all of their training, clothing, food, etc. based on whether or not it will help them run a better race. Note that training, clothing and food are not bad in and of themselves, but if something is not going to get them to the finish line quicker or better, they get rid of it or don’t do it in the first place.

So, what’s my point?

I think sometimes we wander through life, wondering if we’re on the right track and clueless about what to do next. We become a victim of our circumstances, thus rendering ourselves ineffective. We make choices that seem “good,” but then wonder why they fall flat. We’re frustrated, aimless, confused and sometimes hopeless. We do things we end up regretting and we don’t do things we wish we had done…and then it’s too late.

And why do these things happen? Because we’re not really sure where we’re going. We don’t know what the goal is.

As a Christian, Christ is my finish line. That is true. And it sounds great, but frankly, it’s a bit vague. I like practical. I like applicable. I like to know how something looks in real life. For me.

How, you ask, does one figure out their purpose?

Well, if I knew that…

I’ve been pondering Hebrews 12:1 & 2:

Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a huge crowd of witnesses to the life of faith, let us strip off every weight that slows us down, especially the sin that so easily hinders our progress. And let us run with endurance the race that God has set before us. We do this by keeping our eyes on Jesus, on whom our faith depends from start to finish. (New Living Translation)

Breaking it down:

“Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a huge crowd of witnesses to the life of faith…”

By “huge crowd of witnesses” he is, of course, referring to Hebrews 11, the chapter in which he describes a lot of people who were faithful. Much of Hebrews 11, though, is a description of all the great things these faithful people did. But I think the danger here is that we focus on their deeds. And if we focus on the deeds, we miss the point. If we focus on the deeds—as though doing good things alone is what we should aspire to—we’ll get tripped up.

Each time another faithful person is introduced in Chapter 11, it’s like this: “It was by faith that [insert notable person here] did [insert notable deed here].”

“It was by faith…” In other words, it was the faith inside of them that caused them to do something great. It wasn’t their great deeds that gave them the title “Faithful.” After all, some of (if not all) of the people included in the “Hall of Faith” did some pretty raunchy things too. Like, in Hebrews 11:11 & 12, we hear about Abraham and Sarah and how they believed that God was going to give them a son even though they were old and Sarah was barren. What we don’t read, though (in Hebrews 11:11 & 12 anyway; see Genesis 16), is the whole part of the story when they thought that poor God didn’t quite remember that Sarah was barren and they wanted to help Him along in this process of giving them a son, so they came up with this brilliant plan (NOT!) for Abraham to get Hagar pregnant.

Clearly the whole incident with Hagar was, well, sin. They screwed up (no pun intended). And yet they still secured a place in the “Hall of Faith.” Why? Because what they did wasn’t the measure of faithfulness; it was who they were. They sinned, yes. But then they repented and got back on the right track. Their overarching character was that of seeking after the things of God, trusting in His promises and doing their best to live lives that were obedient to His commands.

So it is with us. I would venture to guess that if Hebrews 11 was being written today, most people would like to be included as an example of faith. But if we’re trying to be faithful by simply doing the right things and not paying attention to the state of our hearts, we’re never going to succeed and we’d never be candidates for a modern version of Hebrews 11.

But, if we’re trying to be faithful by FIRST having a right heart, then we’d be a great candidate for a modern Hebrews 11.

And once our heart is right, guess what?, good deeds will follow because good deeds are a natural outflow of a good heart. (But that’s so beside the point.)

to be continued…