Just doing it

So, I started this little experiment before Lent and intended to try 40 days of intentional, spiritually guided, doing one good deed a day for others. When the 40 days was over, I decided I had to keep going. Not only was the project getting me into some good habits of being prayerful and quiet each day, but I was also making time to read scripture every day — which has been very nice. So I pressed on, and am now looking at a finish date of my 40th birthday in May...which I believe will be just a hair over 400 days of doing one good deed a day.

The other reason it was hard to stop after 40 is that I needed more time to make deeding a habit. I always heard that it takes a few weeks to make a habit out of something, and just a few days to break it. But making a good deed each day's priority is totally counterintuitive. It does not, and still does not, come naturally. The only thing that comes naturally is the guilt of not doing something, which encourages me to find something nice to do quick! Acting on that "urge" or, that nudge from God to "just do it" when it comes to deeding, however, is hard.

RB and I were talking this morning about that nudge that we get. It's when someone shares that they're going through something terrible and you say something nice, but ineffective like, "Do you need anything? I'm here if I can do anything for you." That is easy to say. I can do it all day long, and am quite comfortable with using those words! And it feels good, too — it feels like you're being kind and responsive, and at the core sympathetic and concerned. But it isn't, I repeat, IS NOT, helping. Helping, or deeding, comes when you JUST DO IT. RB said she ran into a friend who was in a challenging spot. RB asked if she could bring dinner over, and the friend said no, that she thought she'd be OK without it. But guess what RB's nudge said? "JUST DO IT! Just go buy or make some GD dinner and drive it over to her house!!! JUST DO IT! If she really doesn't need it, she can put that puppy in the freezer and eat it another night!" This deeding do-gooding experiment is teaching me every day that "what can I do for you" is something I should delete from my vocabulary altogether. Instead, I need to focus more on the mantra "just do it."

More later...I have other thoughts about being sincere in offers of help, and how that all works.