This morning, I met a friend for a morning run.

Neither of us is a beginner runner, and as we started, we talked about how our running has been going lately. My friend told me the lessons he had learned during his recent 30-mile run.

Yes, you read that right. He got up one day to see if he could run 30 miles. As it turns out, he can.

I picked a strategic downhill part of the run and shared how my running has been so far this year. I started the year with a goal to run 100 miles in January and then increase the mileage by 5% each month. It’s the end of May, and I’ve hit my goal each month.

At this point, I was blown away at his 30-mile run, and he was blown away at my monthly mileage.

Funny thing about runners, though. Give us enough time, and we will absolutely begin to compare what we’re doing with what someone else is doing.

Case in point? By the end of our run this morning (which my friend killed, and which almost killed me), we were both rethinking our training strategies.

I run 5 times a week, and because this morning’s run seemed harder than I thought it should have, I was wondering if I should run less times each week. I mean, my friend doesn’t run 5 times a week, and he just ran 30 miles!

Ironically, my friend was wondering if he should increase his weekly mileage because the last few miles of his 30-miler were so hard (I mean, shouldn’t they have been???). Maybe running more would help him be more ready if he tries another ultra run like that again?

Lost in all of that comparison is what should be celebrated: he completed the 30-mile run, and I’ve run more miles each month this year. We’re both arguably in the best shape of our lives and feel great about where we are.

Comparison is a rabbit hole, y’all, and if you take it, you can find yourself so far off course that you don’t know how to get back to where you should be. Not only can it rob you of your unique purpose, but it can rob you of the joy that comes in the pursuit of that purpose.

One more thing: my friend and I both have a goal in common (but that’s for another time and another post), which means that even though we may train differently, we’ll have opportunities to celebrate at least one accomplishment together.

As long as we stick to what works for each other while celebrating how the other one works, we can each enjoy the fruits of our labor.

Even when, at least in my case, the runs actually feel like labor.

The running kind, not the birthing kind. Thankfully, nothing I do in training will ever compare to the birthing kind. 😀

For the longest time, FOMO was a thing. I think it was starting to not be a thing when I finally found out that it meant the Fear Of Missing Out instead of Frying Onions Makes Odors.

I cringe when I think of all the times I used it incorrectly, which is actually a pretty good segue into FOMU, four letters that represent a couple of fears that may be more common than FOMO.

I meet people every day who suffer from one of two FOMUs.

Um, I think adding an “s” to the end means I just experienced the first one: Fear Of Messing Up. Clearly, typing “FOMUs” would make that Fear Of Messing Ups, which could just be anxiety about a practical joke played on a UPS driver gone wrong.

But I digress. The Fear Of Messing Up is a widely held dread that keeps us from trying anything new, or anything that we don’t feel like we have mastered. But if we don’t try something because we might mess up, then we’ll forever be stuck only attempting to repeat the same mediocrity that we’ve lived with to this point.

Not only will we never develop any more excellence; we also won’t ever know the power of God. In case you’ve forgotten, God doesn’t struggle with FOMU because He’s actually pretty good at bringing messages from messes. As a former and sometimes current mess, I’m thankful that His ability to use my messes actually sets me free from the fear of making messes. If you’re following along, that would be FOMM, another less-popular way of expressing our first FOMU, and one that doesn’t exactly roll off the tongue.

I love the truth expressed by the Lord through the prophet Isaiah:

To all who mourn in Israel, he will give a crown of beauty for ashes, a joyous blessing instead of mourning, festive praise instead of despair. (Isaiah 61:3 NLT, emphasis mine)

There’s a second FOMU, and I believe this one is more prevalent and more dangerous than the first. It’s the Fear Of Measuring Up, and the reason this one is so deadly is that it’s a strike from the enemy at who we are. The first FOMU paralyzes our activity, but this one seeks to paralyze our identity.

It’s one thing to be afraid that we won’t do enough; it’s another when we fear that we may not be enough.

Comparison is a killer, and every time we do it, we miss the miracle that is true about all of us: God knit us together in our mother’s wombs, and even though we messed up, He still sent His Son to remind us that we measure up because of Jesus.

In the letter Paul wrote to the Romans, he was barely getting started before he wrote a truth in verse 7 that we can’t afford to overlook: he addressed the letter to those “who are loved by God.”

We are His beloved. We are His handiwork. We are His masterpiece.

We are the trophy of grace that He proudly displays for the world to see, and when His light shines through us, all the cracks and crevices that came from the first FOMU reveal the grace that He poured into those places. Our messes amplify His message.

It doesn’t mean that we should just go around messing up, but it does mean that we don’t have to live with the fear of messing up because our Father loves us, even the messiest among us.

So, here’s to the messes! The ones who are afraid of messing up, measuring up, and yet keep looking up to the Father who still calls us His own.

To Him be the glory forever and ever!

Amen.

Photo by Allen Taylor on Unsplash

Reading Time: 4 minutesFor many, Easter doesn’t have a dark side. But for me? Well, let’s just say that I was introduced to the dark side of Easter a mere 7 months after we planted The Gathering, the church which I founded and pastor.

And like most bad relationships, my meeting with the dark side took place online as I scrolled through my Twitter feed just a few hours after we’d turned out the lights and locked the door on our first Resurrection Sunday.

It started innocently enough. We had just set a new mark for record attendance (by 3!), and I had come home busting to tell someone – anyone – about it. I logged into my social media accounts, and before I could post anything, I started to see it: post after post from other churches about their Easter crowds. Stories of packed sanctuaries, running out of chairs, salvations and baptisms that numbered more than the total people we’d seen in 7 months at our church!

Suddenly, my post about having 138 people in a coffee shop that should have only held two-thirds of that didn’t seem quite so incredible.

What had been an amazing morning now seemed average, and when I should have been enjoying the light of the resurrection, I began to feel the familiar darkness of a place where I had spent many of my earlier years: the tomb of depression.

Growing up, I felt invisible and unnecessary. No matter how many times I was told the opposite, it didn’t change the feelings. I became convinced that I would never be good enough and as a result of that, I believed that I would never be able to do enough. Those 2 beliefs were powerful fuel on the fires of depression and anxiety, because they ensured that I never felt like I was truly accepted, and that was all it took to allow isolation to become my home.

Over time, I’ve come to understand that feelings are more indicators of where we are than identifiers of who we are, and I’ve also learned that I can celebrate what God is doing in me without exaggerating it so that I can compete with you. Comparison and competition are depression feeders for me, and a big step away from the dark side of Easter for me has been learning to be okay with what God has called ME to do.

I love the simplicity of Galatians 6:4:

Pay careful attention to your own work, for then you will get the satisfaction of a job well done, and you won’t need to compare yourself to anyone else.

Depression is, in many ways, the exact opposite of satisfaction. Depression is never satisfied, never convinced that what we’ve done is good enough or will ever even be enough, and it seems to always keep discontentment on a low boil. That’s what got me for so many years about Easter. I couldn’t celebrate what God was doing in other churches because I couldn’t celebrate what He was doing in mine (or in me!).

So, some tips for those of us pastors (or anyone else) who struggle with the dark side of Easter:

Stop comparing

It’s funny how quickly we fall for this one, but the comparison trap is real, and it’s the quickest way to fall back into the darkness. As the verse above says, we can only do what God has asked US to do. Faithfulness in that is what leads to contentment, and when we’re content in OUR calling, we’ll be more content in the success of another’s calling.

Stop exaggerating

There can be a temptation to inflate the numbers and the stories of Easter (as if the story of God dying for us and being raised victorious isn’t amazing all on its own!), and one of the best antidotes to depression is a real, authentic commitment to integrity, even if it means my story doesn’t seem as grand as yours. In fact, the quickest way to enjoy God’s favor is to be true in the secret place about the numbers. That’s a big deal to God, who made sure that Jesus talked multiple times in Matthew 6 about honoring him in the secret place more than being honored by men in a public one.

Start celebrating

It’s hard to enjoy the season you’re in when you’re comparing yourself to or competing with the season someone else is experiencing. The best way to fight that is often simply by celebrating the season you’re in and honoring the people who are in it with you!

Proverbs 12:25 tells us that anxiety weighs down the heart, but a kind word cheers it up. What I’ve learned over the last handfuls of Easters (and Mondays after Easter) is that the kind word works both ways: sure, HEARING a kind word can cheer us up, but SAYING a kind word  often does even more to lighten the heart and release anxiety!

So celebrate! I’m celebrating not only the highest Easter crowd we’ve ever had, but also a number of other churches that I’m honored to be in networks with who also had huge days! I’m reading over and over again the text thread that recounts numbers that our church may never attain and reminding myself that they are doing what God is asking of them, and that’s what I’m doing, too.

When it’s all said and done, faithfulness will always lead us to contentment where we are and away from resentment about where someone else is.

And faithfulness – by us or others – is something that God always celebrates. We should, too, and when we do, His light will break through the dark side of Easter.