Januarys' Promise

 She emits five sighs that once were beeps. The Cuisinart brewer breathes out letting me know the coffee is ready. My wife on the other hand grabs the carafe before the beep. Forcing the cycle, trying to get that thirty-second jump on the day. I’ve never been a fan of mornings, preferring to unfold into the day slowly. Morning feels like the friend in Proverbs shouting, “Rise and shine!” It’s a curse not a blessing.

January feels like morning to me. A slow, cold start to the rest of the year. I choose a favored coffee cup for the morning brew. We have fifteen but I prefer about five. Generally journalling or reading a devotional and a brief Bible passage. Too much lately I reach out for Instagram. Going to try limit that this year. The cold provides an easier excuse for vacuity.

January is the jump-start for the year. The life calendar eases up providing windows to look forward and back. Fortunate enough to be able to envision hopeful dreams for the upcoming year. We’ve seen wrecks in the rear-view but not as bad as some. Set some personal goals. Martin Luther King weekend the wife and I escape town for marriage inventory. I have a list of questions pulled from another author: If the last year could be summed up in one word, what would it be? What new territory needs to be explored spiritually, physically, emotionally? What are some things that MUST be done in order to move my life forward? What could I do to make you feel more understood? It’s still early morning in January though; hard to know what God will allow as the days warm up.

Going on five cups of Arabica I still want to crawl back under the covers. Cold world, cold January, cold morning. Goal setting is the little ember lighting my fire. The thing with feathers, as Emily’s prone to say. Caffeine kicking in, undeterred by the draw of the comforter, January holds promise.

Photo by Boshoku on Unsplash

Stagnation Is Easy. Satisfaction Takes Work

“One does not surrender a life in an instant - that which is lifelong can only be surrendered in a lifetime.” --- Jim Eliott

“In the end, you won’t remember the time you spent working in the office or mowing your lawn. Climb that goddamn mountain.” ― Jack Kerouac

The mountain top and the therapists chair are lonely places. Places where baggage is left behind or stripped away. That avocado green Tourister with the extendable handle and Teflon wheels for instance. The angry self-protectiveness that stems from---where?  The crowd isn’t clamoring to give up the perception of safety. Not hungry enough or hurting enough.

The lie is this; satisfaction will come easy. A glimpse of a thing is not the thing itself. The river is beautiful seen from valley’s edge, but you can’t taste it.  Beautiful but it won’t slake your thirst, clean your face, soothe your feet, shake you awake. Have we always been so naive?  Feeling ‘in love’ isn’t the core of marriage; spilling semen isn’t sex. Rendered skin deep we call it beauty.

Time and self are difficult to give up. Deepening relationship requires both. Stagnation is easy. For now the mountain is a picture on your desktop. Personal growth hurts and leaves hollow. Reward seems nebulous.

We commit to the not-yet tangible. Remind ourselves. Short ascents where we push hard, feel shale and smell pine. At home we’re willing to have those deep, tough talks; play and wine with the mate. We do the difficult work. Sit in the lonely places. Listen in the lonely places. Stagnation is easy; satisfaction takes work.

“In a sense everything that is exists to climb. All evolution is a climbing towards a higher form. Climbing for life as it reaches towards the consciousness, towards the spirit. We have always honored the high places because we sense them to be the homes of gods. In the mountains there is the promise of… something unexplainable. A higher place of awareness, a spirit that soars. So we climb… and in climbing there is more than a metaphor; there is a means of discovery.” ― Rob Parker

Five Steps To Refocusing Your Life

Determined or drifting?  Those are our two choices.  Life will throw curves.  We either re-calibrate or we drift.  Drifting is; at face value, easier.  Going along, reacting, coping.  If you are on track, then you can coast a while; that’s not drifting because you are heading toward your desired goal.  Drifting implies aimlessness.  Determination implies a stated target you are aiming at.

The Dillo household is re-calibrating.  We’re in process---don’t know if it’s a day, a season or a year.  We face aging and sick parents.  Work issues (tension and stress) are beyond normal this year; so that they bleed into our normal outside-of-work living (having to work to 10 pm; classroom with large population and beyond-bell curve behavior issues).  We left our church family of ten-years after communicating our concerns.  So we ask ourselves questions.  We wrestle with answers---take small steps.

Here are five small steps that may help you when refocusing your life:

1) Question. Ask yourself questions.  Have friends ask you questions.  What are you looking for?  What works?  What ignites the fire in your heart?  When deciding to leave our church we kept asking questions: What’s personal preference?  What’s scriptural?  What do we feel we’re missing?

     2) Get feedback from your community.  Vacuums suck.  Don’t make your decisions by yourself.  Get other people’s perspective.  Ask friends for input.  Ask enemies for input.  Get input.

     3)Set goals.  Brainstorm if you have to; set a bunch of goals. Soon you’ll recognize the ones that don’t apply. 

     4) Make the goals measurable.  There are a bunch of great techie tools to measure progress; word counters for books, heartbeat monitors for workouts.  I’ve found Strava to be a great training tool for solo workouts.

     5) Recognize the process.  Wrestle.  The answer probably won’t come overnight. I’m still trying to prioritize actions I take and activities I chuck.  Give yourself grace.

A Better Story For 2014

H/t to James Clear for the format for this post….


The goal in development this last year is taken from Donald Miller’s A Million Miles in a Thousand Years: the idea is to edit my life into a great story. In reviewing the past year and concurrently setting goals for 2014 the significant questions are:

1. What was accomplished in 2013 that makes for (or leads to) a good story? What went well?
2. What chapters would I leave when I looked at 2013?
3. What accomplishments will be additional good chapters for 2014?

Chapters In A Good Story

Writing: This was my 2nd year of consistent blogging and page views increased significantly! Though I can not measure it I feel that my writing is more concise and my personal editing is better than previous years.

Travel: Mrs. Dillo and I stepped out of our comfort zone and flew into Guatemala. We spent nine days with missionaries that we’d never met. We went into small villages and were embraced by God fearing Mayan’s. Mrs. Dillo ran vision clinics and I helped with construction—both areas skirting the line between comfort zone and total lack of skill/experience zone. The family visited the Sequoia’s and San Diego. As a couple we took a trip to Temecula and toured the wine country.

Cycling: I Participated in a number of rides including The Mile High Century, a 105 mile ride in Lake Almanor, California. It was great to accomplish a ride of this distance but my overall time to complete the ride was slow and disappointing.

Spiritual: Our annual men’s retreat took place in November. By default I ended up point-man on the planning committee; not a goal accomplished but an achievement. During said retreat I was challenged to pray consistently. For half of November and all of December I stopped on the way home from work, read Psalms and prayed. The result has been dynamic in both my attitude and through God’s responding.

I led a number of men’s Bible studies; Ephesians, Galatians and two sessions on forgiveness.

Finished reading The Gulag Archipelago.

What Didn’t Go Well

Spiritual: I attempted to read through the Bible in a year and I’ve read through a small chunk of the Old Testament. Prayer and reading were inconsistent at best.

Bicycling: Didn’t train well for the level of rides I did. Speed training non-existent. Not certain how hard I want to push and train in cycling this year.

Employment: Work is still a struggle. I had plans to research what’ out there and work toward making changes. None of that happened. In the current economy I think I’ll stick it out and wait to hear from God before making a move.

Finances: Still a catastrophe in 2013. The wonderful wife’s perseverance finally paid off and she landed the desired position. This should help getting us back on even keel in 14.

Good Chapters for 2014

Writing: I will resume blogging three times a week. The desire is to push myself with different styles and be willing to risk more. This means some blog posts will be edgier than some may appreciate---the joy of honing the skill will be worth the risk.

Nanorimo: November is National Novel Writing Month so I will be writing a novel.

Photography: My desire is to reacquaint myself with my camera. I am reading some excellent books on lighting and exposure. The challenge will be to find the time and place to shoot more with life and schedule already full.

Spiritual: I will continue to stop and pray on my way home. Will start a journal of prayer requests and answers.

Travel/Training: Beyond the usual summer trips we are committed to attend the Storyline conference this year and work through long range life planning.

Finances: Will pay off THE credit card.

In broad brush strokes those are the main goals (I’ve purposely left off family oriented goals such as time with wife and child) for this year. The hope is that God will reward as He is sought for “without faith it is impossible to please Him, for he who comes to God must believe that He is and that He is a rewarder of those who seek Him.” May the reward be a life and a story that is worth the telling.