An Analogy

An Analogy

Getting back in spiritual shape.

It occurs to me that the efforts to return to spiritual disciplines and spiritual well being are similar to getting back in physical shape.

Eating more than my body is asking for and needs is so delightful. I love and enjoy eating food. Eating food brings me pleasure and comfort. So it was easy to let myself in times of stress have this pleasure and comfort. Not challenging my body with movement and exercise was also easy. While I love to hike/walk, camp and canoe, running and hard consistent exercise has never been something I actually enjoy. My previous job had me sitting in front of a computer for 8-14 hours 5-6 days a week. My laziness and my tiredness convinced me to not do much else (at least not often nor consistently). So I have this aging body that isn't in the shape I need or want it to be. I am making efforts to get it healthy again and re-train my thinking and habits to keep it that way. It's a real struggle. It still want the pleasure of eating just for pleasure. And the activity part is really really hard. It's much harder having spent months not eating healthy and over a decade not being physically active. It much harder than if I had made the effort to maintain a healthy body with healthy eating and activity.

This morning as I reviewed my plumb-line scriptures it occurred to me how out of shape my spiritual life had become. Strong in someways but weak in others. While I have maintained and grown as a servant leader (lay teacher and coordinator) in ministry, my personal disciplines at home have slipped out of consistency. I'm finding that, like getting back into physical shape, that the effort is much harder to re-establish the disciplines that keep me and my home spiritually healthy. Life got super full, and while I never stopped doing the work of ministry in the midst of a demanding work life and full family life. It would have been hard to keep my consistency and fervency with home bible study and prayer time from waning. But I didn't apply that extra effort and I recognize now that my consistency and fervency have waned significantly. This has impacted more than me. It has impacted my home and family. Which is really sad. Now I'm having to apply even more effort to re-establish consistency, passion, and fervency in my at home daily spiritual disciplines.

I hesitate to share that I'm working on these things again. What if I disappoint others with my current roller coaster progress with both my physical and spiritual health disciplines? But I encourage myself that for every failure I just have to re-determine my efforts.

I am recording this here as a personal journal. I re-read my "thoughts" from time to time so I am hopeful that by putting it in writing I am pressing in to these goals, and speaking to my future self to keep pressing too.