Carpe Diem, or Something

I have some really talented and amazing friends.

I have full time missionary friends. I have artist friends. I have author friends. I have musician friends. I have friends who are wildly successful in their careers, I have friends who are planting churches, and friends who are raising the best kids.

I know people who can Carpe Diem the crap out of every day and people who are just YOLOing their brains out, all over my Newsfeed. I would have considered myself to be one of these people, doing what I could do to “live my best life now” and be the hands and feet of Jesus to everyone I encounter.

But here I am, in the middle of the day, writing a blog post when I typically would be out doing Great Work at my Very Important Job. For various reasons (which I won’t go into here because I refuse to be that personal on the Interwebs), I had to take a sick leave.

My life – which already felt like it was in limbo of sorts – is now officially on hold. I’m just waiting. That’s it.

I’m waiting on results from a whack of medical tests and specialist appointments. I’m waiting until I’m healthy enough to move back into my own apartment and waiting for my life to start up again. It hardly feels like I can go out and make great things happen when getting out of bed feels like a victory and a flight of stairs feels like Everest.

It’s been a recurring question on my mind this past month: how can I serve Jesus in radical ways when I am stuck at home? How can I seize the day when my best comes nowhere near the best of someone on my Newsfeed?

Thankfully, I don’t serve a God who compares me to people around me (one thousand hallelujahs!). He doesn’t love me any less because my body (and sometimes my brain) is broken. However, just because I can’t go out and feed homeless children living in the slums or lead thousands of people to Jesus, doesn’t give me an excuse to park my rear on the couch and give up. He’s still calling me to be obedient; the ways in which I am obedient just look entirely different than they did before.

These are my daily goals:
-Get out of bed
-Have a shower and get out of pajamas
-Commit to studying my Bible
-Write every day even though I rarely feel like it
-Read more often than I watch TV (I watched a lot of My 600lb Life at the beginning of this sick leave, you guys. A lot. This struggle is very real.)
-Eat regularly spaced healthy meals and snacks
-Let people serve me, even though it makes me feel like a big useless burden
-Ask for help

That’s it. That’s everything I can do right now. These things feel insignificant most of the time, but I’m realizing there is so much beauty in surrendering the tiniest things throughout my day. Obedience is obedience, whether it is a big crazy missionary adventure across the ocean or something seemingly as insignificant as getting out of bed. I’m just #blessed enough to be in a season where obedience looks like Carpe Diem-ing the crap out of things while wearing sweatpants.