I am continuing to learn what it is to stay with the truth of today, and to allow tomorrow to be what it will be.
It is so easy, isn't it, to get caught up in what everyone else is doing, whom everyone else is seeing? And as my eye slips sideways towards others, I lose quickly my ability to be in the truth of my own life, I lose my sense of focus and of being anchored in my own reality.
Take exercise as an example. I have the habit of choosing an online program to do at home (I'm a big fan of Beachbody programs). These programs have a prescribed length - they might be intended to be completed over a period of 3 weeks, or 3 months, by doing a certain number of workouts each week. Clearly then, the program has a beginning, a middle, and an end. In the beginning, you are getting used to the moves, the trainer, the challenges of the program with its particular focus. In the middle, while you've made progress and you're feeling stronger, you haven't yet achieved the full benefit of the program. And by the end, you are able to see that your body has changed, you have muscle definition where you didn't before, you have built stamina or perhaps lost weight.
The point is, that you simply don't experience the same benefits by choosing a workout from whichever program you fancy, depending on the day. You hear that one friend is experimenting with yoga, so you do that for a week. Then you catch a bit of Wimbledon, so you get a tennis coach for a couple of weeks. Later that summer, you watch the Tour-de-France and pick up cycling for a bit.
Don't get me wrong, all movement is good! But in terms of making progress in a particular direction, you need to pick a program and follow it through. The trick is to hold your focus while you are in the process of becoming.
It feels to me that there is something to be learned here. As everyone's lives switch gears, their calendars fill up and their posts on social media offer a window into the people and places they are seeing, can I keep my focus on my own process of becoming?
Whatever God has been about in me during the last 10 weeks, he didn't just stop because we reached this point and now I can get out and about. So first, can I articulate what have been the invitations to me over recent weeks? I have heard people talking about realigning priorities, about pruning unnecessary growth from their lives, about identifying the values they want to live by. My sense for my own life is of the need to hold my focus on that invitation and to continue to respond. That continues to be the homeschool program by which, in this season, God has invited me to be trained.
I've found it's much easier to keep clear about our personal priorities when we are obliged to stay at home! It is much more challenging as we begin to fill up our lives again and, most especially, as we face the temptation to compare ourselves with other people's lives and activities. To what extent will I train my gaze so I that I can stick with what God is inviting me to learn or to develop?
Needless to say, I don't want to stay here forever. Just long enough!
No comments:
Post a Comment