Week 3 Recap: No light at the end of the tunnel
I’m officially more than halfway through my 40 days of Christianity. I committed to myself to write weekly updates and I wrote maybe four versions of this post I ended up trashing because they weren’t honest or they were honest in a way that was gonna catch me more opinions than I wanna hear about this week. The truth is I don’t have much I can share right now other than I’m struggling a little. Not any kind of way where someone needs to worry. I’m fine. I’m just getting fatigued with this experiment.
It’s a familiar feeling to a lot of times I’ve entered the back half of a challenging process like making an album or film or building project.
The first couple weeks are usually easy and fun because I’m inspired and energized and optimistic about the project. Then somewhere around the middle it’s like a feeling of having dug a tunnel halfway through to the other side - you’re tired of digging and it’s harder to tell where you're going to land when you finally break through the ground on the other side, if you even make it through before the whole thing collapses. Note: in this analogy there is no "light at the end of the tunnel" bc you’re the one digging the tunnel and the first light you see is when you’re exiting the tunnel.
That said, it’s also a feeling I’ve always connected to faith. If you're going to keep going, you gotta have faith that the process is taking you somewhere worthwhile, regardless of how you feel in the moment. It gets harder to keep the faith when you’re tired and uncomfortable and it’s been long enough that sometimes you forget why you started tunneling in the first place (and you got a few dozen people in your ear telling you you’re tunneling wrong and you need to tunnel more like them or else you may as well be tunneling straight to hell ;). But when its hard like that is when it’s most important to hold onto your faith.
Anyway, Imma keep going. Taking it a day at a time and figuring out what it looks like for me to keep the faith.
What's Ahead
I have a lot of meetings on the books this week to hear faith stories and a few more books I plan to read, but I aim to slow down in those arenas. I’ve hit the books and the conversation pretty hard and can stand to devote some energy to other aspects of faith.
I want to focus this second half more on processing everything I’ve already taken in, and developing my prayer life and maybe some faith-centered creativity.
Here’s what I took in this past week:
- Gospel of John
- Paul’s letter to the Romans
- Augustine’s Confessions (Book 6)
- Traveling Mercies by Anne Lamott
- The Deep End w/ Taylor Welch podcast with Jamie Winship