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Books in 2012: In a Pit With a Lion on a Snowy Day

Over black beans and rice with a side of Greek yogurt (which I threw out after a single bite) (note to self: check the Greek yogurt’s date before you eat the Greek yogurt) during my lunch break today, I finished In a Pit With a Lion on a Snow Day: How to Survive and Thrive When Opportunity Roars.

The book, by Mark Batterson – lead pastor of National Community Church in Washington, DC – is the twelfth I’ve read in full in 2012. The title is based on a story from the book of 2 Samuel, about a warrior named Benaiah who chased a lion into a pit on a snowy day… and killed it.

The point Batterson makes about Benaiah is this: while risky and perhaps irrational to chase a lion into a pit on a snowy day, having done it opened doors for him that otherwise would have stayed shut. And the parallel the writer points out is that sometimes, we are compelled to chase our own “lions” into “pits” on “snowy days” and a lot of the times, we just chicken out.

But, he wrote, Christians are called to be lion chasers. And he made some great points throughout the book. Here are some of my favorite excerpts:

On spiritual maturity: 

“Maybe we’ve measured spiritual maturity the wrong way. Maybe following Christ isn’t supposed to be as safe or as civilized as we’ve been led to believe.” -page 16

On stewardship:

“At the end of the day, success equals stewardship and stewardship equals success. But our view of stewardship is far too parochial. Sure, how we manage our time, talent and treasure is a huge stewardship issue. But what about being a good steward of our imagination? Or our medial ventral prefrontal cortex (the seat of humor, according to neurologists)? Or how about stewardship of our sex drive and competitive streaks? Stewardship is all-inclusive. We’ve got to be good stewards of every second of time and every ounce of energy.” -page 17

On prayer: 

“Too often our prayers revolve around asking God to reduce the odds in our lives. We want everything in our favor. But maybe God wants to stack the odds against us so we can experience a miracle of divine proportions. Maybe faith is trusting God no matter how impossible the odds are. Maybe our impossible situations are opportunities to experience a new dimension of God’s glory.” -page 24

“In his Letters to Malcolm, C.S. Lewis said, ‘If God had granted all the silly prayers I’ve made in my life, where would I be now?’ Lewis went so far as to say that someday we’ll be more grateful for our prayers that didn’t get answered than the ones that did. The reason for this is simple: Many of our prayers are misguided. We pray for comfort instead of character. We pray for an easy way out instead of the strength to make it through. We pray for no pain, when the result would be no gain. We pray that God will keep us out of pits and away from lions. But if God answered our prayer, it would rob us of our greatest opportunities.” -page 64

On fear: 

“What’s interesting is that psychiatrists posit that we’re born with only two innate fears: the fear of falling and the fear of loud noises. That means that every other fear is learned. And more importantly, that means that every other fear can be unlearned.” -page 47

 “The cure for the fear of failure is not success. It’s failure. The cure for the fear of rejection is not acceptance. It’s rejection. You’ve got to be exposed to small quantities of whatever you’re afraid of. That’s how you build up immunity.” -page 50

“One of the greatest things that could happen to you is for your fear to become reality. Then you would discover that it’s not the end of the world. Your fear is worse than the actual thing you’re afraid of.” -pages 50-51

 On seeking God with intensity: 

“There is no way (the disciples) could have predicted what was about to happen. You can’t plan Pentecost. But if you seek God for ten days in an upper room, Pentecost is bound to happen. Here is a novel thought: What if we actually did what they did in the Bible? What if we fasted and prayed for ten days? What if we sought God with some ancient intensity instead of spending all our energy trying to eliminate His surprises? Maybe then we’d experience some ancient miracles.” -page 83

On complaining: 

“Instead of complaining about the current state of affairs, we need to offer better alternatives. … As the old aphorism suggests, we need to stop cursing the darkness and start lighting some candles.” -page 122. 

– – – – –

Click here to read about all the books I read in 2012.

Click here to learn more about In a Pit With a Lion on a Snowy Day.

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Worst things first.

There are four things I must do over and over that I frankly (and ultimately inexplicably) hate doing.

1. Laundry. While I appreciate clean clothes as much as the average young adult, I am a far bigger fan of wearing one pair of jeans a lot of times. My disdain for doing laundry is not limited to the washing and the drying. Nay, friends — it is also the folding and the hanging and perhaps worst of all, the ironing (which is why I mostly only buy clothes if they seem like they’ll look the same after I crumple them). The first step leads to the rest of the steps, and I find all the steps tedious and boring. Which is why I can go two years without logging into Facebook but can’t go a week without running out of pants.

2. Filling my car’s gas tank. Fact: I have owned a car for nine years and I have never looked at a gas price (except for the time I accidentally pressed premium instead of regular and didn’t realize it quickly. You are not welcome, Mobil.). This is because I am irresponsible how much I am paying is irrelevant if “conveniently on my way to someplace else” is the answer to the following question: When and where am I getting gas? Because under any other circumstance, getting gas is worse than doing laundry.

3. Going to the bank. Let me preface this by saying I have never had a bad experience at the bank. I’m always easily in, always easily out. Which is why the dread that overcomes me when I realize a reason exists for me to drive there cannot be explained. I just don’t want to do it. Ever.

4. Unpacking. Because it always leads to [Please refer to point number 1 above.].

The point is this:

Regardless of the ease with which I could do it, I hate doing laundry and getting gas and going to the bank and unpacking. Which is precisely why, when one of those things is on my to-do list, it is always, as in, without exception, the thing I should do first.

When I decide to wait on any of the four aforementioned nuisances, I wind up realizing at, say, 1:14 a.m. on a school night, that I have no clean clothes, or I pull a Kramer in the car, or I owe a colleague a dollar for a year (I don’t own a debit card.) or I treat a very full suitcase like an ottoman.

Doing the worst things first challenges us. It feels unnatural to do what we don’t want to do. But many-a-time, I have learned the hard way that the following quote is so true:


“If you want to make an easy job seem mighty hard, just keep putting off doing it.” -Olin Miller

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Obstacles won’t stop you if you’re committed.

For those of you who are regular readers, you know what I think of Brene Brown and her work (that they are fabulous.). So should Brown stumble upon this post, I’d like her to know that, as well as this: Had it not been for the list on Brown’s web site of books that changed her life, I might not have stumbled upon the book I finished this afternoon.

The Dance of Fear: Rising Above Anxiety, Fear, and Shame to Be Your Best and Bravest Self, by clinical psychologist Harriet Lerner, is the tenth book I’ve read in 2012.

Lerner tackles topics the average American is apt to avoid: anxiety, fear, and shame. As a person who studeid mental health (and as a generally anxious person), I happen to enjoy discussing (and reading about) all three.

But you don’t need to work in the field of mental health to get something out of reading The Dance of Fear. It’s part practical advice, part true stories (about Lerner [like the time a pair of her underwear she didn’t know was stuck inside her pants slipped out of her pant leg and onto the street] and about some of her clients [like the woman diagnosed with a terminal illness in her early 30s]). And it brings up lots of points I think we all ought to know, including the ones from my favorite excerpts. See below:

Preach:

“We can’t stop bad things from happening, but we can stop our relentless focus on how things were or how we want them to be, and develop a deeper appreciation for what we have now.” -page 5

On avoidance:

“When you avoid what you fear, your anxieties are apt to worsen over time. … If you fear rejection, you may indeed need to accumulate more experience being snubbed.” -page 20

“Research demonstrates that the harder phobics work to avoid the things they fear, the more their brains grow convinced that the threat is real. If you’re not phobic but merely terrified, avoidance also makes the problem worse. … you need some experience with the very activity you dread, be it dating, driving, or raising your hand in a meeting.” -page 30

Keep the following in mind when you face what makes you anxious:

“I’m never going to transcend fear, but I needn’t let it stop me. I learned that survival is a perfectly reasonable goal to set for myself the first dozen or so times I face a dreaded situation.” -page 36

On authenticity: 

“Every human life is unique, and every human life has value. We’re not meant to be anyone else but ourselves. We all face the challenge of living the life we have, not the life we imagined having, the life we wish for or the life we are quite certain we deserve. So we need to do whatever it takes to let go of anxiety-driven judgments and comparisons. Life is short, and none of us really has that kind of time.” -page 70

On the cosmic countermove:

“Warning: The universe itself may send you a countermove if you make too bold a change! For example, you buy a house and the week you move in, the dishwasher stops working and your car breaks down. You say to yourself, ‘Oh, no! It’s a message that I never should have left my old apartment!’ Well, I’m suggesting another way to look at it. It’s merely the universe saying, yes, you are making a bold and courageous change! Here’s my countermove! Prove your commitment to making this change!” -page 88

Truth:

“…what we believe is most shameful and unique about ourselves is often what is most human and universal.” -page 127

“The extent to which you hide something important about yourself or another family member is a good barometer of shame.” -page 132

“But what is courage? In a world saturated with images of action-figure bravado, we may mistakenly believe that courage is the absence of fear. Instead, it is the capacity to think, speak, and act, despite our fear and shame.” -page 196

– – – – –

Click here for more information about the Dance of Fear.

Disclosure: This post contains affiliate links. So, if you click the links and purchase the products I recommend, I earn a little commission at no extra cost to you. And when you do, I am sincerely grateful.

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Body parts and celebrities.

As is also the case for many of my fellow bloggers, I really like to check my site’s stats. Using Blogger’s basic tracking tools, I get graphs like this:

And this:

I’m famous in India!

But the best bonus, I think, of having access to blog stats is the set of search terms that Google uses to send readers to my blog. In keeping track of what people search for that brings them here, I have compiled a list.

The Top Five Most Unlikely Search Terms That Lead Readers to My Blog:

[insert drum roll here]

– “enrique iglesias nose” 
– “enrique iglesias face” 
– “where to find wealthy men in tampa bay”
– “big boobs women”
–  “enrique’s penis” 

To the folks who found my blog by Googling any of the above terms, sorry to disappoint.

I think the moral of this story for all of us is that if you want a lot of blog traffic, you ought to mention body parts (such as BUTTS!) and celebrities.

In conclusion, JUSTIN BIEBER.

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“God can’t stand me” (and other lies).

One of my favorite defense mechanisms (to study) is projection.

Projection is “attributing one’s own unacknowledged feelings [or thoughts or behaviors] to others.” (1)

It’s sort of like saying “You eat too much…” to a friend (who may or may not actually be eating too much) simultaneously as you eat too much (without noticing that you are eating too much).

It protects us from the discomfort of acknowledging something negative we think, feel or do ourselves (and from the work of correcting it). We use projection unwittingly. With it, we draw attention to something negative we see (or fabricate!) in someone else — something we subconsciously recognize (and dislike) in ourselves. We do it because as long as we are pointing at it in someone else, we a) don’t have to address it in ourselves and b) can trust that no one else will notice it in us (or so we think).

It’s kind of like the time I stopped responding to an ex-boyfriend’s attempts to reach me, and in his 35th email to me in the first days after I cut off contact, he said, “You need to move on!”

Do you ever notice that we do this with God?

Like when we sin and then act like God thinks we’re bad and worthless.

The truth is that when we act like God thinks we’re bad and worthless, we are projecting how we feel about ourselves onto God. It isn’t how God feels about us after we do something we know we shouldn’t — it’s how we feel about us.

But remember:

God doesn’t love us because we are good. We are good because He loves us. And even when we aren’t worthy, we are valuable.

– – – –

1. From here.