Do or do not

My favorite Yoda quote of all time is when he encourages Luke to do something seemingly impossible: raise up his space craft using the force.  Luke says “I’ll try” and Yoda says, “Do or do not, there is no try”.  Now, I don’t dig too deep into this and get hung up on semantics.  I think the spirit of what he is saying is “Go for it….and don’t hold anything back.”  Like being up on the high dive at the pool.  If you just “try” to jump you will never do it…you either do or do not jump.  And that is a bit how it feels right now with our adventure.

We were perfectly comfy swimming around in the pool but the thrill of the high dive caught our attention.  All our friends encouraged us to give it a shot.  “But,” we reason, “the water is so warm and it will be chilly if we get out of the pool”.  But the lure of the excitement won us over and we got out.  We started climbing the seemingly million ladder rungs all the while our friends are cheering us on “you can do it!”.  After we get to the top there is that LONG Wach (see what I did there?) out to the edge of the diving board.  Over the churning stomach, pounding heart, and impossible to swallow lump in the throat we hear our friends chanting “JUMP! JUMP! JUMP!”.

We unenrolled the kids from school; yesterday was their last day (until Fall).  The renters are expecting to move in on Wednesday.  And I’ve committed to pouring more of the good Lord’s financial blessings into fixing my #!@*$%& truck.  All that is left to do is JUMP!

And so that is my word for 2016: JUMP.  Last year it was TRUST.  And it was a good word.  I learned a lot about trust in 2015.  But as much trust as I can say that I have, in order to show trust it takes action.  A leap of faith. A JUMP!

Taking it further I want to make moments where I jump for joy…not figuratively, but LITERALLY JUMP FOR JOY!!  The bible is chock full of verses where people jumped for joy.  John the Baptist jumped in his mom’s womb when she heard that Mary was pregnant with Jesus.  King David went out into the streets dancing and jumping for joy when the ark of the Lord came to town.  Check it out yourself, there are quite a few!  So, be on the lookout for some pictures of me in mid air!!

I’m still scared as all get out.  Mostly that the truck troubles are not over.  So, if you are a prayer warrior, please pray for (a) our safety and (b) that fear and worry is driven away.  Because my answer to Jesus’ question here is “no”; “Can any one of you by worrying add a single hour to your life?” Matthew 6:27.  And, to bookend this post with another of my favorite Yoda quotes,  “Fear is the path to the dark side. Fear leads to anger. Anger leads to hate. Hate leads to suffering.”

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