I wake up minutes before the alarm – almost always. My internal clock is ringing far before my phone, aware of what’s to come from years of conditioning. Years of routine. I spring out of bed, stumbling to throw on my running clothes, grab my shoes, headphones, and head out the door.
These sentences lend a play-by-play testimony to nearly every morning of my last three years. This process became so rote it might have looked rehearsed. I suppose in some senses it was. Same thing. Every day. I became a creature of habit, and phrased in a more dramatic and perhaps honest way, a slave to routine.
Then I came on the race.
Prior to embarking on this 11-month-long journey I expected this routine would have to be broken. It was a reality I had come to terms with. However, here’s what they don’t tell you about the race. It looks a lot like normal life.
In many ways it doesn’t, but in too many ways it does. Ways overwhelming enough to make it nearly impossible to break a learned habit. The issue of putting “me first” followed me to Chile, to Argentina, to Bolivia, and so on. I have found that the fleshly desires that separate us from Christ do not vanish, rather they become more visible than ever. They are not left behind at customs. They bought a plane ticket and they are coming with. With that being said, temptation to retreat to a me-mentality was tangible within days of settling into life in Chile. Temptation to write what I desired first on the to-do list and pencil in what God wanted me to do somewhere between number two and everything else was as real as it had been in the US.
One morning in Calama I decided to give the Lord the platform to speak. I decided to spend ten minutes in complete silence and just wait. It is a typical World Race exercise that I once judged as problematic in its presumptuous assumption that the creator of heaven and earth would speak on command when we clear ten minutes of our time. However, as a side note, and as the race has continued, I have begun to accept that this “exercise” should not be confined to the ten minute slot we allow Him to speak, rather should be a posture we carry throughout the day, practical as n automatic alertness to what the Holy Spirit might be convicting us of or where He might be leading us.
Skeptical as I was, I committed to ten minutes of quiet. Predictably, Jesus was fully aware of my skepticism, and it was the very instant I closed my eyes that I heard the words, “Me first.” Following this was an exceedingly real conviction to commit to – regardless of my mood, level of exhaustion or schedule- spending the first thirty minutes of my day with the Lord, in the Word and praying, every day for the rest of my life. While previously, the first things I did in the morning were completely for me, in line with my own desires rather than His, I was now convicted of putting to practice what I had been preaching.
“You say you want to put me first, well why don’t you literally put me first? Every day.”
We are busy humans leading busy lives. The struggle to organize the day in a fashion that lends itself to the completion of that which we wish to complete is a shared experience. We have a seemingly insurmountable mountain of daily goals. The objectives that lie towards the bottom are typically left unaddressed, remaining dormant for days that soon turn to months, years and lifestyles, as they are suffocated by the weight of the ambitions residing at the top of the mountain. The organization of our mountain is typically a representation of our priorities. Those bottom goals- those boxes we genuinely desire to check yet cannot seem to accomplish- more often than not reflect our matters of unimportance. I have observed that the things we truly value, the things we genuinely desire to achieve will reside towards the top while that which is simply less essential – those “oh yeah we should get coffee sometime”s and other halfhearted promises whether to God, ourselves or others- remain where we put them. At the bottom.
I was simultaneously humbled and convicted by the words “me first” that I heard month one of the race. When the alarm rings, what is the first thought that goes through your mind? It could be an exposing indication of an idol. Examine that first thought. Does it line with God’s will for your life or your own? For me, every morning, that first thought fell in the category of the latter. It sometimes still does. I have been challenged to examine those first few moments of my day. Those moments when the voices of others are not yet overpowering and the tasks of the day are merely abstract. Where do my first blurry-eyed steps lead me? On a road towards Christ or myself?
As the race progressed, those words, “Him first,” began my personal mantra and lifetime goal. However, even in their simplicity and forthrightness, they have proven themselves difficult to remember. Thus, last month, I tattooed them on my body. Despite my lifelong fear of commitment in terms of tattoos and the scarring experience of a recurring nightmare in which I get a dolphin tattoo on my wrist that I attempt to scrape off my body when I severely regret it, I was never so sure about a decision in my life. I rationed that I could never regret a choice that is realigning in nature, pointing me back to Christ. And if I ever do regret it, well shame on me I suppose.
I am sad to report that I am still a human. This has continued to be a struggle through the race and even post tattoo.
But more on that later.
All I can say is Praise the Lord for grace.
