July 2013
Portland Brew, Nashville, Tennessee
I’m terrible at saying no. To be fair, I’m terrible at a lot of things, but saying no might be at the top of the list. In fact, I have come to realize that if I say to myself, “You absolutely cannot have/say/do that thing,” I tend to end up seeking/saying/doing it. Whether I promise myself I won’t share about the text message a cute boy sent me and then immediately tell someone, or whether I’m trying to decide if I should stay in or go to a concert, even if I have to be up early the next morning — you better believe I’m at the concert — because I just don’t like to say no.
But brave people learn to say no.
Most people wouldn’t think of saying no as a quality of someone brave. Saying yes is certainly the more heralded option, but sometimes saying no can be the tougher choice by far.
I’m overweight. I don’t like talking about it. It has been a fact since the fourth grade, it’s something I struggle with pretty much every day, and if I talk about it, it makes it more real or a bigger deal or something. I don’t know. I just know it makes me sad and mad.
I’ve been on a diet, or wanting to be on a diet, since I was in the sixth grade. For those of you who keep calculations at home, that is approximately twenty-one-plus years at this point. More than two-thirds of my life.
Gosh. That’s staggering to realize. What a waste.
In 2003, I was diagnosed with polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS). Among some other really lovely side effects, PCOS makes it difficult to lose weight, process insulin correctly, and have a regular period. In fact, according to the website WomensHealth.gov, as many as one in ten women could have PCOS, so you may be sitting next to someone in class or church or passing someone in the grocery store aisle who is struggling just like me.
If you’re in the grocery store, she’s the one wishing her cart was full of muffins instead of veggies. Look into her eyes. You will know.
I spent most of my adolescent years thinking that because I was treating my body badly, it didn’t work right in many areas. But it ended up I had a disease working against me as well.
Don’t get me wrong; I also didn’t eat well. It was a fairly regular Friday night in tenth grade when I would go to Arby’s with some football player friends and managers (I was a manager . . .), and I would order — get ready for it —
1. large roast beef sandwich with liquid cheddar
2. large curly fries with more of that liquid cheddar
3. large Coke
4. medium Jamocha shake
And no kidding, I thought nothing of it. The more shocking truth? It is only the tiny shreds of self-control I possess that keep me from still thinking that meal would be a good idea. Would it taste good? Totally. Would it ruin my soul? Possibly.
(Just kidding. Sorta.)
Speaking of my soul, I thought food fed it. The places that felt empty in me, I filled with food. Lonely? Eat. Sad? Eat. Celebrate? Eat.
Yes, yes, yes. Never say no. Never deny yourself. Eat, eat, eat.
Why not just say no? Why not just eat less and move more? Why not just up my discipline and lower my intake?
I just was never good at it. That’s the most honest answer I can come up with. I tried and failed and tried and failed, and because I wasn’t diagnosed with PCOS as a teenager, I would try and fail, and the cycle of doing all I knew to do and it not working at all made for lots of frustration.
Repeated failure can really make you skittish to try again, can’t it? It’s true in relationships; it’s true in American Idol tryouts; and it is true for me in healthy living.
It seemed that no matter how hard I worked in high school and college to lose weight and appreciate my body, it never worked. It just plain never worked. And so I lost the courage to try again.
What for? Deny myself delicious treats for long periods of time to still wear the same size pants and still dislike my form? Yeah, no thanks.
Being diagnosed with PCOS felt like a light at the end of the tunnel. So this is why I can’t get skinny, I thought, and this is why I hate my body. And yet for years after this diagnosis, while God changed my heart toward how I felt about myself, my habits didn’t change. My eating didn’t change. And my body didn’t change.
I only cared about me and what I wanted. I wanted to say yes to all the things and no to none of the things, and I didn’t care that it was hurting my body.
You see, the biggest side effect of PCOS is infertility. And guess what? I’m not sleeping with anybody. I certainly wasn’t sleeping with anybody in hopes of procreating. So I didn’t care that poor eating habits and lack of exercise were contributing to PCOS continuing to rage against my systems.
Yeah, I was unhealthy, but I had tried and tried to diet, always failed, and hated saying no to myself and the things I wanted.
Until January 2013.
The girls and I got up early on a Saturday morning and headed to a new (to us) brunch spot called Garden Brunch Café, located in what some would call the “less attractive” part of Germantown. We sat at a table for six and ordered mimosas and coffees and soda waters all around.
Looking over the menu, it didn’t take me long to zero in on bananas Foster pancakes. I have a thing for pancakes and bananas independent of each other, so the idea that they would be combined was a blessing I did not know how to prepare for.
Our food came, and I surveyed the table. There were a variety of meals served, including other pancakes (amen) and grits and omelets and sausage and fruit. On the opposite end from where I was sitting, Kelley had ordered salmon. For brunch.
I shook my head in a “bless her heart but I’m glad I don’t live like that” kind of way. As I dove into my sugary, fruity pile of beautiful carbohydrates, Laura asked Kelley why the salmon.
Kelley started into a story I hadn’t heard before. I knew she had multiple sclerosis, and I knew the severity the diagnosis carried. But then she began talking about her progressing symptoms and how her fingers and toes had been becoming numb more often than ever before. She said she had changed her diet, saying no to a lot of things at her doctor’s recommendation in hopes that cleaner eating would heal her body.
And it had.
The symptoms and numbness had subsided.
You know in Acts 9 when it talks about something like scales falling from Saul’s eyes and he realized he saw Jesus and believed? Yeah, that happened to me.
I had a God-given moment of clarity when the scales fell from my eyes and I realized all the yeses I was saying to unhealthy food were inadvertently saying noes to the things I wanted more in my life — like a healthy future.
Right there, hovering over a plate of bananas Foster pancakes (which I practically licked clean because I knew things were about to change), I decided to say the brave noes that had always scared me.
Saying yes to feeding my body the foods it needs meant saying no to feeding my body the things it craved, and if you don’t think that took courage, you have never dealt with addiction or seen me at a buffet of pastries.
I think one of the biggest mistakes Christians make while reading the Bible is forgetting that none of the characters, except Jesus, knew how things were going to end. So we read about Noah and immediately picture the rainbow. We focus on the fact that Jonah got puked out of the whale while forgetting he didn’t know that was coming. We think of the disciples and the miracles they saw, like the feeding of thousands of people with just a little bread and fish, and forget they didn’t know that story would turn out so awesome.
It did though, didn’t it?
I try to think a lot about how much the people in the Bible didn’t know. With that filter in place, we can identify courage much easier in the face of the unknown.
I am deeply moved by the story of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego in Daniel 3. These dudes were Israelites who were captured as slaves when they were mere teenagers and taken to Babylon with Daniel.
We see them say no to meats and rich foods for ten days in Daniel 1, and at the end of it, they are honored for their strength, especially in the face of eating much less than the other soldiers in training. Later, they are honored by King Nebuchadnezzar, who gives them important roles in his service. The king likes these guys. He thinks they are smart and strong and beneficial to his kingdom.
Years later, our boys are administrators over all of Babylon, and Daniel is serving at the royal court. (Quite a move from being captive teenagers, huh?) King Nebuchadnezzar builds a massive gold statue — ninety feet high, nine feet wide (Daniel 3). That’s like what? A very skinny seven-story building? Gracious. And then he decides that everyone in town has to bow to the statue and worship it whenever the music plays, and anyone who doesn’t will be thrown into a blazing furnace.
So. He’s an extremist. I get it.
Our guys — Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego — worship the one true God and have no interest in bowing to anything else. They say no when the rest of the people say yes. They don’t bow when everyone else does.
Can you imagine that courage? To stand when everyone else bows? Knowing the result, knowing who you are and how much you are respected and yet choosing to go against your boss, namely, the king, in a life-threatening way?
That’s a major no that risked everything.
But that’s not the part that moves me.
When they are tattled on for not bowing and are brought before the king, he is furious. Like, whoa furious. Like, “You are my top dudes and you gotta do what I say” kind of furious. Like when the oldest kid in a family doesn’t follow the rules and it makes the parents extra-mad because the younger ones are seeing it? Yeah, that.
Let’s pick it up in verse 13 of Daniel 3.
Furious, King Nebuchadnezzar ordered Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego to be brought in. When the men were brought in, Nebuchadnezzar asked, “Is it true, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, that you don’t respect my gods and refuse to worship the gold statue that I have set up? I’m giving you a second chance — but from now on, when the big band strikes up you must go to your knees and worship the statue I have made. If you don’t worship it, you will be pitched into a roaring furnace, no questions asked. Who is the god who can rescue you from my power?”
Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego answered King Nebuchadnezzar, “Your threat means nothing to us. If you throw us in the fire, the God we serve can rescue us from your roaring furnace and anything else you might cook up, O king. But even if he doesn’t, it wouldn’t make a bit of difference, O king. We still wouldn’t serve your gods or worship the gold statue you set up.”
DANIEL 3:13 – 18 MSG, emphasis added
Even if he does not.
Even if God doesn’t rescue us from this, we still say no.
They say a brave no; the king says he is going to kill them. They still refuse. Oh, I want to see this scene played back on the big screen when we get to heaven. I want to see their faces and hear their voices. I wonder if they shook. I wonder if they were shoulder to shoulder, pressing into each other for strength. I wonder who actually spoke up.
And whoever said it said the thing I hope I always have the courage to say.
I know what God can do, but even if he doesn’t, I still won’t worship idols. I will still worship the one true God.
The boys didn’t question God’s character or strength. They didn’t serve God because of what he did for them; they served God because he’s God. They were brave because of who God is, not because of what he could do for them.
I know God can heal my friend’s illness, but even if he doesn’t . . .
I know God can fix relationships, but even if he doesn’t . . .
I know God can provide a husband, but even if he doesn’t . . .
I know God can provide for me financially, but even if he doesn’t . . .
I know God can answer this prayer, but even if he doesn’t . . .
I know God can help us get pregnant, but even if he doesn’t . . .
I know God can rescue us, but even if he doesn’t . . .
I know God can heal my body and make it possible for me to have children, as I feed it what it needs and say no to the things that make me more sick, but even if he doesn’t . . .
Right? EVEN. IF. HE. DOES. NOT.
Can you say that? Can you say it and mean it? Can you say the hard no, knowing it may cost you a lot? Knowing that God can change everything but may not?
These three said it, knowing their lives were on the line, and they never looked back. At least, they didn’t look back enough that it was told to us. Who knows what was going on inside their souls, but outwardly they stood there.
And really, isn’t that all that matters? They kept standing? They said no and didn’t falter? They were brave. They said no. And even when the voices of fear must have been whispering to them, they didn’t listen. They stood there in their no and believed that God is still God.
And for it, they were thrown into the furnace.
That’s the choice they made, the no they said. It was brave, but in the moment when the road split and they could go left or go right, they took the road that said yes to God but no to the easier way.
Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;
Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,
And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.
I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I —
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.
ROBERT FROST, “THE ROAD NOT TAKEN”
All the difference. All the difference.
The road is always going to split. There is always going to be another option or another map altogether. There is always going to be a no that may be expensive but right.
I think about Jeff, the young man I liked for most of my college years. Had I stayed in my college town, where he still lives, I totally think we would have ended up together. But saying yes to Nashville was saying no to Athens, and, as far as I can tell for now, that was a no to Jeff as well.
One of the hardest days of my writing career was ending my relationship with my first agent. He’s a good agent, but we weren’t working. Too many time zones between us and too many communication issues. I’m a talker. I want to meet and talk and be in the same place and be successful. We were none of those things.
But saying no to continuing our relationship meant what? It meant my career was over. He was the only one who had ever expressed interest in my work, and he was all I knew. To end us was, in many ways, to recognize that my dream of being an author might die along with this partnership. I called him. It was a longer conversation than I expected, but I had to say “No, this isn’t working for me” and “No, this isn’t going to continue.” And we walked away. For ten months I thought this career was gone forever.
A lot of courageous noes make for some beautifully brave yeses. And I guess we never know which ones come first until we are standing at the crossroads, right? It may be easier to determine the yes route, knowing it means saying no. Or maybe it is the no you are sure of, so that tells you where to say yes.
And I’m just not sure you are going to get it right every time — saying the right yes and the right no. I don’t get it right all the time. But courage doesn’t equal right; courage equals stepping out and trying. Be brave and say yes. But also be brave and say no. Jump on the float. Walk into the furnace. Stand up. Sit down. Get on that flight. Say the thing that courage asks you to say, even if it’s the word no.