Committed

Today I did something I never imagined I would ever do. I committed to reading the Bible in 90 days. We're talking from "In the beginning"... to "Amen" and everything in between. Even the begats (though Pastor Becca assures me I can skim over those parts). People who figure out these types of things tell me that reading the Bible in 90 days works out to about 12 pages a day. I'll take their word for it - math has never been my strong suit.

You're doing what?
A brilliant woman I know suggested that I take this task on to challenge myself and to write about my experiences. So that is what I am going to do. From January 10 until April 7, I'll be reading the Bible and writing about my experience - what I learned & what impact it has on my life. Though I'm serious about taking on this endeavor, I plan to have fun with it and hope to see the humor in it too.

Why?
I did grow up in the church but I'm far from the Biblical scholar type. Sure, I served as president of the youth group while I was in high school, but I also was known to skip Sunday School by hiding out in the bathroom after my parents dropped me off. As you can see, I'm not exactly the read-the-Bible-from-cover-to-cover" sort of gal. So why did I decide to do it? That is a good question and one I'm still trying to figure out.

I am a competitive person. This is no secret. If someone I know has a convincing argument, I can surely come up with an even more convincing counter argument. If someone runs a 5k, I can run a 10k. And on and on it goes. (It's also been rumored that I threw the sand timer from a board game when my partner wasn't taking the competition seriously enough - but I refuse to confirm the validity of that story.) So when over 100 people at my church decided to take on this challenge, I have no doubt that spurred me on to consider taking on the challenge as well. After all, if they can do it, so can I.

Everyone who knows me (and even, apparently, those that don't) also know that I'm an achievement-driven person. My purpose in life is to achieve things. I'm not happy if I'm not achieving something. I don't like my life any other time as much as I do when I'm achieving something. See the theme here? I guess in my twisted mind, my self-worth comes from my achievements. So I guess that could be one explanation of why I decided to do this. But that caused me some concern. If I was taking on this task purely as a way of improving my self-esteem, of checking off some other thing as accomplished, would I get anything out of the experience?

Maybe I just needed "something" in my life. Maybe this is God's way of telling me to look closer at my faith. I've never really gone much below the surface level in my faith and I liked it that way. I went to church, I prayed, I worked with the youth, but I never felt the need to go much deeper. I don't know if reading the Bible will do that for me...but maybe it will and maybe it's time.

So I don't know if any of these are the reasons I've taken on the Bible in 90 days. I suspect it is probably a combination of all these and some things I'm not aware of just yet. But I guess that's the beauty of a challenge like this. Sometimes you don't know what you need until you finally find it.