Have you ever tried to hold a streak?
I learned about streaks from the young people in our house who simply had to get on their phones and message a friend so they wouldn’t “lose their streak” (back in the day).
Of course, we were already familiar with the idea. The 100 Days of Practicing challenge had been a substantial help during seasons of piano practice woes.
While I recognize the value of tapping into the externals that get us going or nudge us to stay the course, I’ve also noticed that the pressure to keep something going can creep in and eclipse the deep down desire you have for whatever it is you are working towards.
This is life and we will figure it out along the way. We will reach a point where we can do the things we really want to do. And the things God has called us to do.
For years I wrote a blog—in my mind. My attempts to go public on internetville were hindered by a tendency towards procrastination and a tech learning curve so steep for me that I kept slipping back into ideaville.
I had long felt called to write—and deep down I really wanted to—but I simply could not find the discipline to do it. So, I prayed. “God, I know I’m suppose to write. I want to write. I don’t know how to help myself. I’m making this your problem. Please help.”
We might say that nothing happened for the next 10 years, but we’d be wrong. Looking back, I recognize many seemingly unrelated circumstances that gave me the grit to do things that seemed impossible.
For example: There was the basement remodel. Friends promised to come for a couple of weeks and help us knock out the project. So we gutted the basement—after which we learned our friends would not be able to come and we would need to shift to plan B. The only problem? We didn’t have a Plan B.
At that point in our lives, Ricardo’s job required frequent travel—and repeatedly, his absence coincided with last minute subcontractor availability.
I will never forget the night I stood on a table looking up at a soffit built to last forever and then down at the sawzall required to tackle its removal. Prior to the renovation I had never heard of this heavy-duty power tool with a sharp, serrated blade that jerked back and forth violently when you pushed the power button. When I saw Ricardo use it, I determined on the spot to never touch it.
But then came the night when I had no other option. The soffit had to be out by morning and all my calls to friends and handy-people had been fruitless.
I prayed for a miracle of some sort and then finally faced the fact that there was no avoiding this one. To my great surprise (and relief) I got the hang of using the tool without amputating any of my fingers. It took hours, but I got the job done.
A series of experiences like that strengthened me in subtle, but impactful ways.
Eventually I paid for an expensive blogging class and set up a website. While the teacher promised a path to a six-figure blogging business, Ricardo gently reminded me of my reasons for wanting to write.
“Earn your living with your P.T. job and write for the love of it,” he said.
This was pure wisdom, of course, but the prospect of paying off our mortgage by running a blog was rather intoxicating. Blog Teacher had so many success stories—you just had to follow her formula.
The problem was, I didn’t have a unique something to offer a specific niche. And I would need more than her pages of questions to discover “my voice” and what it was I had “to offer.” Not to mention that money has never proved to be a significant motivator for me.
The tech side of things was frustrating and turned out to be an easy distraction from actually writing. But eventually, it happened. I managed to put a subscriber button on my blog that people could click on to subscribe to for a weekly newsletter: the REST of the week.1
Commitment is a powerful motivator. I had promised to send out a weekly reflection so now there was no putting it off.
For a couple of years, as hard as the writing was, I made it happen—even if I had to stay up until midnight on Friday night to do it.
And along the way, I was unconsciously getting the feel of writing consistently. Also figuring out the difference between perfectionism and doing my best. I started to recognize my own voice and was able to stop and consider if the hours of effort to produce something so simple and short was actually worth it. No one, after all, was forcing me to send out a newsletter—I could stop whenever I wanted to.
It’s good to remember the things we have control over—and liberating to know we can choose. Freedom has a way of dropping one’s defenses and resistance.
Of course I really didn’t want to quit looking for invitations to rest in my day to day life. Neither did I want to stop extending those invitations through writing.
By the third year, I had sent several reflections out late and now, in the fourth year, it has become more of a “beginning the week” than a “rest of the week” newsletter. Unconsciously, I had shifted my focus to just getting it out every week rather than on Friday.
But then, last week I didn’t send the newsletter out at all.
We were in another country in the midst of meetings (as we often are) and I had scribbled notes and started to write several times. Not so ironically, I was writing about the work involved in rest—doing the hard thing now that allows for rest.
Around that time I received a reflection from my brother-in-law that fit the theme so well, I decided I’d use his words. But then I kept forgetting to actually send it out.
So now, 4.5 years in, I’ve officially lost my (loosely defined) streak.
This is life and we figure it out along the way. We discover that we can actually do the things we really want to do. And the things God has called us to do. And always, he is with us, helping in ways we might not even recognize.
Thank you for reading. It is profoundly comforting to know that I am not alone in this quest and that there are people who read and relate.
May your rest be sweet,
Alicia
If you had signed up back then, this is what you would have received:
Hi ($name),
Thanks for singing up at The Dwelling Well… (etc.)
You can expect me in your inbox each Friday with “the REST of the week”, an invitation for rest… (etc.)
Why Friday?
I got the idea from the Genesis story of creation where God spends the work week preparing the planet for Adam and Eve—who arrive on the scene at the very end—with no other job than to help name the animals. God calls it good, the sun sets, and he declares a day of rest.
Doesn’t that seem like a good beginning—to start with rest?
And isn’t it so opposite of how we tend to do life now, crashing on the weekend, overloaded and overwhelmed?
So often, we start with work, pushing our minds, bodies, and souls to the point that rest becomes a prescription rather than a practice.
Here’s to practicing rest…
A year in I switched from WordPress to Substack (halleluia!)—which is why the posts here start with #52. I attended a writer’s conference that promised 5 free books if we brought a book we had published, so I put those first posts into a publish-on-demand book on Amazon (Invitations to Rest—Right Where You Are.) There’s certainly a place for external motivation.