IVP

I’m here to walk this path with you, showing you what I’ve both learned and then unlearned. Helping you—so you don’t have to repeat my mistakes.

breathing is an invitation to live.

our lives are sequences of invitations and our responses to them.

It hurts to live after someone has died

much of what is fundamentally shaping our existence is happening unconsciously.

This is really useful in general, but it has downsides. First, if we’re acting out a bad habit—one that reinforces an addiction, perpetuates a harmful pattern of thought, or encourages mindless submission to a technology that is designed to attract our attention and sell it to the advertisers—we don’t have much power to fight back.

As philosopher James K. A. Smith argues in his book You Are What You Love: The Spiritual Power of Habit, the habits we play out day after day are not tangential to our worship but actually central to it.

Wake up exhausted again, because I never get to bed on time.

I am not a creature; I am infinite. My body will be fine. I am a god.

Look at work emails on my phone before getting out of bed.

I can miss a quiet time, but I can’t miss a quick response. Unless I’m well regarded in the office, I’m not worth anything.

If a manager asks for something late in the day on an unrealistic deadline, always say yes. If a social invite comes up, always go for it.

I will become the best version of myself by expanding my options, so I can’t say no. I may be tired and busy, my family may be exhausted by my unpredictability, but if I don’t preserve choice, I can’t be who I really am.