You know that place in life where you know exactly what’s going on, you’re comfortable and relaxed, and it’s like burrowing deep in a warm, cozy blanket?  I think we’re all familiar with it.  It’s the Comfort Zone.

But here’s a theory.  Maybe it’s not so cozy.  Maybe it’s not really all that comfortable, either.  Maybe it’s getting too small, or too easy.  Maybe it’s not all you thought it would be.

There’s a reason why humans have progressed from first learning about how to make fire to the technologically advanced place we are now.  It’s because even though warm, cozy Comfort Zones are really nice for a while, desire and necessity keep us from living there.  God created us to be curious, to push limits, and to challenge ourselves to follow our passions and dreams no matter how difficult it might be.  He challenges us to step out beyond ourselves into something much, much bigger.

In my experience, there’s a couple ways to move out of a Comfort Zone.  One is when you feel the growing pains, you get a little courageous, and you make the choice to push out.  The other is when the walls shake and crumble around you and you find yourself booted out whether you think you want to leave or not.  Both ways can sometimes be scary, emotional, confusing, and even exciting - but whatever comes along with it, stepping out of a Comfort Zone is almost always UNcomfortable.

So far for me, 2014 seems to be The Year Of Leaving Comfort Zones.  Little by little, I have felt God calling me onward into new territory, and found myself being challenged to climb out of a few of my warm, cozy holes and into the somewhat scary Unknown.  And it's not like all the changes are bad.  Some, like building new relationships or going further with my music, are actually very exciting.  But as crazy as it sounds, even to me, I find that I am wary of even those ones.  My cozy burrow is what I’ve known for a while, and Out There there are no guarantees that things will go smoothly.  In fact, I’m pretty sure that, most of the time, leaving a Comfort Zone does NOT go smoothly.  But what a loss for me if the fear of something different keeps me from reaching out, learning new things while conquering old fears, and experiencing an even deeper trust in my Father.

So, I cautiously but deliberately walk to the edge of my Comfort Zone, take a deep breath, and make the choice to step over the line into Something New.  And it’s not a one-time choice, either.  Most of the time it’s a daily resolve to trust God in these decisions, and to keep pushing my toe further and further out past that line.  The only thing I know for sure is that, in the beginning at least, it’s pretty uncomfortable.  I may immediately fall flat on my face, or make a complete fool of myself, or get lost because nothing is familiar -- or all of the above.  But right now I’m willing to take that risk.  Because I can’t stay where it’s cozy.  I don’t want to be lulled to sleep and miss the wonderful things that I can learn and do in the Land of Something New.

If there are new things you are facing that you’re afraid of, I hope you’ll make the choice to step out of your Comfort Zone, too.  Heck, we can all make fools of ourselves or trip and fall flat together.  And then we can laugh (or cry if we need to), get back up, and resolve to keep going, while helping to hold each other up.

“Two roads diverged in a yellow wood.”  Most of us are familiar with that line from the poem The Road Not Taken, by Robert Frost.  What a wistful, beautiful, but almost painful poem that is!  It’s about choices, big and small, and how they affect our future.  It’s about where we’ll eventually find ourselves in time, and how we never really get the same choice twice, because paths just keep going, and splitting, and going again.  Away and away....

But sometimes the choice isn’t which path to walk, but whether we’re going to walk at all.

I have days where I wake up with my hiking boots already on - I’m ready to hit the trail, climb the rocks, and leap the scary potholes in a single bound.  Those days are awesome!  But those days, for some reason, are also few and far between for me.  Mostly I find I have to fight myself and my reluctance to walk anywhere, my fear of failure and of being mediocre, and the often unexplained heaviness that is waiting just outside my peripheral vision before I can even think of getting my hiking boots out of the closet, and by that time I’ve already lost half of my Umph.

So instead of it being about which road to follow, it ends up being about making the basic choice to either let today slide away into ambiguity again, or to tap into a Strength that is beyond me and just focus on putting one foot in front of the other.

Have you found yourself there too?  It’s not fun.  It sometimes makes me want to question whether what’s at the end of the road is worth the fight just to walk.  But you know what?

It’s worth it.

It’s worth it on the days when you feel like you have winged feet and it’s easy to visualize the End Zone.  But it’s also worth it when you can’t see through the fog and you just have to go on the faith that this road really does lead somewhere.  It’s worth it when the only thing that drives you is the hope that what’s up ahead is what God created you for.  It’s worth it when you’re tired and all you can hear is the continuous tromp-tromp-tromp of your shoes on the road, on and on and on.  It’s worth it when you get through the bracken and you catch a much-needed and refreshing glimpse of the reward ahead.

Don’t lose heart.  Please don’t give up.  Make the choice to keep walking.  And look for the little beautiful things along the way, even if you haven’t reached the fulfillment of your goal yet.  And if all you have the strength for sometimes is to keep walking with your head down against the wind, it’s ok.  Even if right now it’s lonely, or difficult, or painful, or discouraging, or tiring, it’s worth it.

God is molding you into a beautiful person, and every time you make the choice to walk the road, you get that much closer to the goal-line, which, really, is about becoming who He made you to be.  And it’s going to be beautiful.  It’s going to be so much more fulfilling than you thought possible.

It’s worth it.