I recently wrote about my year of all things yes and how it nearly broke me. Picking up the pieces of my disheveled heart and staggering to the finish line of following through, last September was a month where I still felt like I was treading water deep at sea. I could breathe again and no longer felt like I was below the surface of life struggling for air but I was still treading in deep, dark waters. Afloat, but still feeling stranded between my yeses and nos.
And then, in one precious afternoon, I felt like I had been thrown a life preserver, pulled to shore and was basking in the sun on dry land.
For my 39th birthday Joel planned an incredibly quaint, intimate surprise party with friends who have walked with us through some of the best and most difficult seasons of life. He perfectly orchestrated my favorite things: delicious food, generous drink, deep and life-giving conversation. Ahead of time he asked each of them to prepare their favorite “Karli story” and a challenge or exhortation for me for the coming year. They are all couples we’ve asked to speak into our lives and help us grow, so the conversation was not just “tell us what you love about Karli for her birthday” but rather some lovingly candid words of prodding and exhortation. We laughed, shed many tears as they all shared their hearts and then we came to my husband’s words for me. He chose four poignant words that have challenged and changed me:
Find your “HELL YES!!”
Knowing my tendency to overcommit and say yes to a million good things, my loving husband’s exhortation was that I only say yes to things that are a “HELL YES!!” Not a “that could be good, yes” or a “oh sure, yes” but a “to-the-core-of-my-person, HELL YES!!”
I had learned how to say no and I had to begin learning to say yes all over again. Only hearty yeses without all the people-pleasing, high-functioning optimism that compels me to say yes to everything, because “sure, why not? I can do that.”
This new discipline of only saying “HELL YES” is hard. So much harder than I thought it would be. I’ve battled self-inflicted guilt and shame each time I have to tell someone I care about no. I’ve carried fear for relationships each time I haven’t been able to jump in to help or do more than I’ve already committed to doing. There have been so many good things that we could have said yes to in the past few months, but at the end of the day, “Is it a HELL YES!?” has become the decisive factor. There have been quite a few practical examples from buying a house to beginning to write again.
It makes life a bit more challenging when giving answers to people. It sounds nutty when you say, “everything looks great, sounds great, we don’t have any reason not to but for some reason, it’s not a HELL YES! so...no.”
Don’t get me wrong, this is not a license to watch Netflix until you’re really passionate about something. Sometimes doing the dishes and folding the laundry are a hell yes! Because that’s the next right thing for you to do. Sometimes letting the dishes soak and taking your kids to the park is a hell yes because the dishes will still be there tomorrow and time with our children may not be. Sometimes a hell yes is being willing to change things up so you have time to write, sometimes hell yes is getting out there and experiencing life so you have something to write about.
It has become for us, a way of thinking through things that will impact our family, especially as they impact our family calendar and budget. Half-hearted and obligatory yeses have become a great big no! for us, and for now, it’s working miracles on freeing my heart and our schedule to allow for spontaneous community, connection and care for others.
You may need to critique all the yeses you’ve already committed to and slowly, with grace and mercy, undo the “mostly yeses.” It may mean starting today and when presented with a new opportunity thinking ‘is this a HELL YES??” For this season, for this time in life, is it worth following hard after? Or even for this season, for this time, is it still what I’m supposed to be doing?
Give yourself permission to take a deep breath, a hard look at your heart, an even harder look at the One who fearfully and wonderfully made you, and then get after Him and all the dreams and hopes He has put inside of you.
Even if it means saying no…
Go. Find your HELL, YES!