Week 26, Day 5

Today our guest blogger is Dave Sandell. Dave is the assistant pastor at Evanston Vineyard, which is a church I've been attending on Sunday evenings for about the last year. Dave and his wife Verity are great people- I cannot tell you how blessed I've been to be part of the Greenhouse (name of the Sunday evening service) community. I've been connected into a women's small group, I've started a ministry that God has been using in some pretty awesome ways, and God has grown me in ways unimaginable through the Greenhouse ministry. It's been a breath of fresh air- just what I've needed. Dave challenges us to be who we truly are in community, and God uses him to teach and encourage the people around him. Have you ever met a person who upon 1 minute of talking to him/her, you know that you've met a truly amazing person- that's Dave! When you read his entry, I know you'll love it, so you can find Dave's blog at http://davesandell.posterous.com/, on Twitter at davesandell, or head to http://www.evanstonvineyard.org/greenhouse and check it out! So without further ado, here's Dave's post:

The Beginning of Something Bigger

In her poem, "When Death Comes," Mary Oliver writes an inspiring
personal manifesto:

When it's over, I don't want to wonder
if I have made of my life something particular, and real.
I don't want to find myself sighing and frightened,
or full of argument.

I don't want to end up simply having visited this world.

Amanda is ensuring that her life will be made of something real;
Guaranteeing that she isn't merely visiting our world. Each week as
she overturns some stone that most of us walk by, it feels like the
beginning of something bigger. To me, Seize the Week isn't about the
52 weeks, but about what comes after those 52 weeks. How does one
expose themselves to all sorts of new things and not become completely
transformed by the experience?

Amanda's adding all sorts of weapons to her arsenal: She's a
photographer, a poet, a graphic novel connoisseur. At some point,
inevitably, she's going to discover something about herself that she
didn't know, and from that place, her life will begin.

Recently I heard it said that fear establishes the ceiling of our
life. What are you afraid to do? I write a ton of poetry, but I'm
afraid to put it out there, feeling too tender and insecure to receive
the feedback that comes with creating something to be consumed. I
admire Amanda's willingness to fail out loud because she's re-written
the rules of doing something new every week. It's not about doing it
successfully or even being transformed by it. It's just about doing
it. For those of you who've read Stephen Pressfield's The War of Art,
you could say that Amanda is murdering resistance, one week at a time.

And at some point in the near future, she's going to stumble upon
something that will change the world, and she'll have so much practice
ignoring fear and uncertainty, she's actually going to step up and do
it.

As a follower of Jesus, something stirs up inside of me when I watch
Amanda go. This is what Jesus had in mind. Go change the world, free
of anxiety, without concern of where your own abilities end and his
abilities will have to take over.