Intentional Passion

Have you ever had a time in your life when you felt like a you were surfing a wave of momentum that made you feel you were just along for the ride? Or, maybe in speaking of your spiritual life you would say you were experiencing a spiritual "mountain top" time in your life. It seems that during these times life is much more focused and clear. Maybe you get motivated to start getting healthy and you get some small victories under your belt and you are excited that change has finally arrived. I love those times....when you are rolling along and the tide is going your way.

And then..... Life Happens. The day in and day out grind of life life slowly takes your momentum away. Maybe you go through a time when work is stressing you out, the kids aren't behaving, and the car needs expensive repairs...and all of this this happens at once. 

You try and push through and muster up the will power to keep your recent victories and goals in focus but you start to lose vision. Man...I really want to be a passionate guy but it seems like in those times real passion looks a lot like perseverance and consistency. You see, I am an emotional guy and I can get deeply moved by various things. When I watch movies like Braveheart some of those scenes connect with deep places in my heart. But...emotion does not always mean passion. Let me explain. 

You know...one of the phrases that my Mom and Dad always told me growing up was that "marriage is hard work". I so appreciate that nugget of truth. When I got married I knew that we would have to work at our marriage in order to have a healthy relationship. We would need to live with intention in our relationship in order to make it thrive. I was not surprised when the emotion was not there and it was time to roll up our sleeves and work to really Love each other. Emotions come and go. I think that real Passion...is the Passion that will persevere in trial with determined consistency. 

Do you realize that the Latin root of the word Passion is pati which means 'suffer'? We can all sprint for a while....but the reality is that we are in a marathon called life. We can all fall in love but maintaining that passion comes with daily intentional choices. That is true to relationships, work, dreams, creativity, and whole variety of things. 

And this is why I am writing this blog post....during this last year I lost my passion for writing and communicating. I didn't feel I had anything to say. I felt a lot of negative emotions and I did not have the desire to even start typing. But then I remembered that true Passion is not an emotion. It is an intentional consistent persevering action. 

So here you go....this is my Passion. I may not be feeling it right now, but I did it.