I haven’t blogged in over a month. It seems like the things that have been nearly habitual to me have fallen to the back burner. Oddly enough, I’m not freaking out. I’m happier than I’ve ever been. I am doing really okay right now with not being perfect and not attempting to hold the world together.

Don’t get me wrong– I love this blog. I can’t wait to get back to regular posting. But my heart and habits have shifted a little bit in the last month and I’ve been using everything I’ve got to honor those shifts.

It was about a month that I was sitting with my therapist, once again complaining about how my book proposal is still not finished. (Side note: I am a huge, huge, huge advocate for therapy. You don’t need to be ill to go see a therapist. I see mine every two weeks– even though my depression is at bay– and it’s the best investment of my money that I could possibly make).

Back to the book proposal… I could not push past the rut, no matter how hard I tried. What was even harder was that it didn’t seem to matter how much I was kicking butt in other areas– I could only see my gaping failure in this one particular area. I traveled around for speaking engagements for two solid months, I opened a print shop, I completed my first two writing intensives, I was blogging regularly, and learning to make healthy lifestyle shifts. It didn’t feel like enough though because the one thing I wanted to be doing, more than anything, just wasn’t getting done.

Here’s the thing I’m learning though: it won’t happen if you don’t make it happen. The only way for something to be completed– whether that’s a book or a project or a workout– is if you push yourself towards it. You will face resistance, sure, but resistance isn’t a good enough excuse to not go after what you want. Anything worthwhile in life usually comes with a fight. There’s a fight to start something. A fight to forge a new path in the road. A fight to keep a habit going. A fight to continue. But, in the fight, we learn some of the most valuable things about ourselves. We learn how much capacity we truly have. We get braver. We figure out who are people are and how loud they cheer. More than that, we figure out how much cheer other people on and whether or not we are an asset to the lives of other people.

My therapist basically told me that in the amount of time I talked about the book proposal I could have very easily written the whole book. The next morning, as I prayed, I realized my therapist was right. I was stalling and it was actually making me a worse person. The more I rejected what I needed to be doing, the more I felt discontented and projected that onto other people. I was actively deflating myself and surrendering to self-defeat without even giving the challenge a try.

I needed to clear the space. I needed to get my priorities straightened. I needed to put what I knew I wanted– the hardest thing to walk towards– first. I needed to surrender my excuses to God and let him enter into my insecurities and fill out the spaces.

In the month that has followed, I’ve completed the book proposal and also written over 40,000 words worth of material for the book. That, friends, is a miracle. Up until the time I sat down and just decided to do the damn thing I was always making excuses. Excuses don’t add up to anything over time. They lose their luster. People eventually stop expecting things out of people who make too many excuses.

So maybe this post is a little late. I’m perfectly okay with that. I’m finally writing and I am here to report that still, one month later, it hasn’t gotten easier. The resistance has been there consistently each day. The liars still show up at the door. The thoughts of “I can’t do this” rattle in my brain. But I am doing it. I am walking towards what scares me. I am putting something I love first because I am afraid to wake up one day and realize I only watched but never participated.

It’s short, guys. We know this. It’s fleeting and it’s not really predictable. We can’t afford to be bystanders, especially if there is something in your chest that tells you that you were born for more than this. Pursue the workout plan. Pursue the book. Pursue 400 words. Pursue the person. Pursue the thing. You’re the only one who gets how much it matters to you. It has to matter enough though, enough for you to make a change, clear the space, and finally get to work.