Podcasts, self-awareness, and responsibilities

“We show our fidelity to God not in our feelings but in our commitments.”

When we travel with the camper, I usually listen to podcasts.¹ I try but I’m just not great with audiobooks. I’m not a good auditory learner and I get very distracted when I listen if I’m not doing something with my body. I have the audio book for The Creative Act by Rick Rubin and Rubin reads it himself. His voice is so soothing that I normally go to sleep.² When we traveled for Christmas, I flipped back through the That Sounds Fun podcast by Annie F. Downs, which I only occasionally listen to, and found her series, AFD in NYC. These short entries chronicled the two months that she moved to NYC, leaving her normal life in Nashville. I’ve never even been to NYC so it was fascinating to listen to her describe how she walked everywhere and how much she loved her body there. She talked about the bagel places around her temporary home and how much slower her life was because she couldn’t jump in her vehicle and rush from place to place. 

Annie has been forthright about her desire to get married and have children. That desire remains unfulfilled and that’s part of the reason she had the freedom to move to a different city for two months. This is not a comment on what’s better or what we do with our desires or painting silver linings around our pain. However, I find myself in a very different season and I have to acknowledge that or I’ll trip myself up. 

This self-awareness is not just needed on the internet. Last Sunday, I went to lunch with a couple who lead a group at our church. They are young and delightful and it’s a gift to know them. They are not tied down with much right now and actively are considering moving to different, exciting-sounding places. I loved listening to them and before we finished lunch I told them to do as much as they could now while they are free to do it. 

I’ve watched multiple friends’ marriages crash when they’ve been married over a decade, maybe even closer to two. I have no desire to cast blame or look down at others or pretend I know the depths of the problems. However, it seems that years after we make choices we can find ourselves resenting the commitments we’ve made and seeming to believe that we can do whatever we want—damn the consequences—and all will be fine.³ Of course it’s not all fine. I believe that God can bring redemption from many ashes and I’ve watched God do that, but at the same time, I’ve walked with friends through a lot of pain and suffering that they shouldn’t have been forced to endure. I don’t want to inflict that kind of suffering on the people around me so I’ve been considering how I hold my commitments well, how I stay faithful for the long haul, how I keep growing and delighting and becoming softer instead of harder. 

I’m convinced that part of it involves the awareness to recognize my own season of life. I can’t fly off to NYC for two months with any amount of planning, not because there’s anything wrong with doing that, but because I have children who need picked up from school and taken to therapy. There are many other reasons as well and, also, if God called us to do something like that, it would work out. That’s not what I’m talking about though. I’m talking about the temptation of hearing Annie discuss how she was able to do that and then deciding that I should be free to do it as well. If I fostered feelings of jealousy over the freedom of our young group leaders to imagine an exciting, new future,⁴ I could erode my ability to enjoy my own life. 

Last year, I labored through Sacred Fire by Ronald Rolheiser at the advice of a coworker. It’s not an easy read but, slowly, I’m realizing how important it is. Toward the beginning of the book he writes, “One of the demons that we must wrestle with after we have made lifelong commitments is the powerful temptation to experience yet another honeymoon.” A few pages later he says, “Mature Discipleship provides us with a lot more stability than excitement.” I can accept that and give my life away, which is his premise, or I can wreck my life. At the least, I would settle for less than life should be. I will need to deepen my inner life. I feel myself convicted and compelled to step deeper into the disciplines that have marked followers of Jesus for generations. I will need to quiet my mind and protect the time to pray, to sit in silence. I want to learn to fast, because it is easy to justify doing whatever I want because I have so many responsibilities and commitments and don’t I deserve it? That is a terrifying mindset to imagine continuing in. Here’s what Rolheiser says about our refusal to make space for our inner life, specifically in learning to pray. 

“And so we end up as good people, but as people who are not very deep: not bad, just busy; not immoral, just distracted; not lacking in soul, just preoccupied; not disdaining depth, just never doing the things to get us there.”

Depth is on my prayer list for myself once a week. And depth will involve all those parts of my life that other people never see. Or shouldn’t, though the internet would allow me to display them. I must commit to the quiet, the unseen. 

Developing spiritual disciplines is not super exciting. It takes a long time of doing something that doesn’t appear to be doing anything to realize that it is doing something after all. Prayer will be boring. Fasting will seem an annoyance. Solitude will be consumed by thoughts of the things we could be doing. Silence will remind us of the many things inside that we keep stuffing down instead of bringing into the light. As someone who has begun practicing these things, I can confirm that they can be as exciting as reading that list was. As in, not at all. Instead often they are painful. But they are what will help move me toward where I want to be at 80. Those practices, and many others, will make the space in my life for God to work. After all, the practice isn’t the point. The practice makes space and God is the point. 

I’m going to do fun stuff this year. At least, that’s my aim. None of this means becoming stuffy. Following Jesus should lead us into more joy than just satisfying all of our wants. I want to enjoy life and rest and play and continue to notice all the tiny delights of my day along with carrying the weight and responsibility of being an adult. But it is my hope that the fun becomes fuel for my commitments. That instead of resenting this reason of my life, I lean in. I want to allow God to transform me through these responsibilities. 

1. Friends, I know it’s MLK Jr. Day. This post is not about him because I’m terrible about paying attention to the calendar when I’m writing. BUT I’m taking a class on the theology and ethics of MLK Jr. and I’m pretty sure he was a genius. What a gift to our nation. If you have time, read this.

2. My husband would tell you that I normally go to sleep in the vehicle and Rubin isn’t the issue.

3. The terrifying truth about marriage is that we can’t control what the other person chooses to do; we only have the agency to choose for ourselves.

4. My future can be exciting, but I do hope that large parts of it aren’t new. I’d like to keep this husband, raise these children, continue in my vocation.