Like Carrie

Carrie is a good person. I want that stated first lest you think I am somehow running her down. Carrie has a prayer life that in part consists of getting up early in the morning and spending time with God. She reads. She prays. She meditates.

One morning at a prayer group she shared her experience with us, and it truly was awesome. A friend of mine in the group decided to adopt Carrie’s approach to prayer.

Betty, my friend, was pumped. She was ready to pray like Carrie. The first morning all went very well. The second it was good. By the third Betty noticed that instead of being in the Word, she was more asleep than awake. “I kept waking up going, ‘What’d that say?'” By the fourth morning she was angry with herself. Guilt and self-judgment conspired to throw her confidence in the plan down a sink hole.

She said, “I just kept thinking, ‘Carrie can do this. Why can’t I?'”

The answer may be as obvious to you as it was to me; however, I challenge you right now to look at your life and see where you are doing the same thing. Where are you bashing yourself because you can’t do it just like so-and-so?

Of course the reason you can’t do it like that person is because you are not them! You are you, and knowing that, you have to take the desire in your heart and find what works for you.

I know many writers who plot an entire book from the first page to the last. They know every plot point and surprise before they ever put a word on paper. And the truth is, that works for them. But another truth is that it doesn’t work for me. It drives me crazy.

If I can see the whole book before I write, what’s the point of writing? For me, I have to write and let the plot points fall where they may. Neither approach is good or bad, right or wrong. They are just different.

One morning Betty got up and got real. “This isn’t working. I have to find a way to make it work for me.” That’s when she let go of being Carrie and started being Betty.

Instead of getting up and starting prayer time immediately, she began getting ready for work first and then having prayer time. She said, “When I do that, I’m more awake, and I get so much more out of it.”

The really awesome part of all of this is God doesn’t require us all to do it like Carrie. We can be Carrie and Betty and Staci… And it is as it was meant to be.

Let go of being someone else. Be you. That’s all God asks.