B90X--Day 3...How Real Life and Passion Collide

Have you ever wanted to be a part of something soo bad that it hurt?

That it consumed your thoughts?

Your days spent thinking, planning, daydreaming of ways to make your dream happen?

I think most of us get that spark of all-consuming drive when we are kids... we fall in love with something and we live "it." For me "it" was music. I loved music. I loved listening to music...pouring over album liner notes, listening every week to the Weekly Top 40 and wondering who would be number one, rushing out to the record store when the new U2 album came out and racing home to listen until I had memorized every lyric...As I got older I forced my dad to teach me to play guitar. I would spend hours alone in my bedroom practicing the few chords my dad had taught me...struggling to work out the melody to the songs that I passionately loved. Most of my girlfriends were getting crushes on musicians. I wanted to be one! I wanted to hang out with the boys in bands, but not to flirt--to play! Somewhere along the way I lost my passion for that. I convinced myself that writing about music would be just as fulfilling as playing music. I abandoned my guitar and became a journalism major in college. I started flirting with the musicians rather than talking shop, and well, real life stepped in and before I knew it my dream of becoming a songwriter got cast aside for other goals, and the flirting must of worked; because I did marry a guitar player.

There are things in my life that bring me immense joy on a daily basis. I have a fantastic husband who loves me and three children who touch my heart daily. Life for me has turned out really well and if nothing else ever came of my life than being a good wife and mother I would be ok with that. Though a weird thing started happening to me this summer when I started going to church (well, I should clarify: when I started going to ONE church on a regular basis...You could say once again that Real Life (rather literally) stepped in)...I started feeling a strong passionate desire to be a part of something. A passion that I had not felt since I was a teenage girl sitting alone in my bedroom trying to work out chords to Beatles songs... And wow, did God lead me to a church where things are happening, where people are passionate. I began making a nuisance of myself. I started volunteering for anything and everything at my church. I even started volunteering Jason...I was a complete lunatic. I said yes to every opportunity that came my way involving my church. And over the course of the several months I've been attending Real Life, I have discovered a passionate side to myself that I thought had been abandoned a long time ago. The question for me now is what to do with that passion. I've always been great at feeling passionate, but never so great on the execution and follow through.

I asked my pastor today why he was doing this whole B90X thing...Certainly, he's read the Bible all the way through (gosh, I hope he has...haha) and he said for a better understanding. Well, I'm certainly hoping for a little understanding, but even more than that, I'm reading the Bible in 90 days because that's what I do when I get excited about something. I completely, and totally, immerse myself in whatever it is that I'm passionate about. I've been around long enough to know that the feeling of all-consuming passion is fleeting. I'm hoping to grab on tight to this one and not let it go, but I'm not naive. I'm definitely going to make the most of it while I have it and if it means being a little (ok maybe a LOT) obnoxious and annoying in my enthusiasm (sorry Mike Johnson)...well, I'm willing to do that for the greater good which to me, is serving an awesome God.

Day 3 of B90X mostly centered around the life of Jacob and his offspring. Not too much witty commentary to be offered, but I will say that I'm in it now, for sure. I will definitely finish the Bible in 90 days....something that a few years ago was never in my realm of interest and/or possibility. Funny how our passions change, but the fervor behind them thankfully, does not....Take care.