“Do not neglect the gift that is in you, which was given to you by prophecy with the laying on of the hands of the eldership. Meditate on these things; give yourself entirely to them, that your progress may be evident to all.”
I Timothy 4:14-15 NKJV
I didn’t write yesterday. The weekend flew by and my routine was running to catch up any way it could.
Writing fell off the side.
Today unveiled a similar pace and I felt mentally pulled in every direction. While I didn’t accomplish the meal prepping I had anticipated, I wanted to make sure I wrote something. Anything.
James Clear said that skipping a habit once is bound to happen, but it’s when you skip it twice that it becomes harder to get back on track. Ain’t that the truth.
I skipped strength training for over a week and today hardly made it through 9 working minutes without quitting. My body feels sore now as I am feeling the effects of the slide. While I don’t feel strong today, I am somehow motivated to get back into lifting and working my muscles more regularly. I know that the strength will follow the discipline.
I recently took a break from sugar… And today I broke that habit. My usually-quiet stomach is talking as much as my children! Will I skip my habit of not eating sugar tomorrow? I sure hope not! I want my quiet gut back!
I also don’t want to skip writing. I’ve committed to posting each day and I intend to keep at it.
On the unseen-routine side are my evening quiet time, morning prayer time, going to church on Sundays, taking my supplements, and doing school with the kids. When I skip any one of these once, I really suffer the next day.
When I skip my evening journaling and Bible-reading, I wake up unrested. Like the day I didn’t close has followed me into a new day and I have two days of cares to carry.
My morning prayer time and church on Sunday both are the time to choose where my heart is facing. When I skip either of those, I am focused on myself and my own efforts to be in control. When I go to church and start my mornings with prayer, I know I am aligned with where I truly desire to be: with God the Father. He spends time with me and speaks to me during these times and I have endless benefits from those minutes a day, and hours per week, that I take to go be with Him.
Taking my supplements may have helped me today. But I forgot. So my gut is in double-whammy mode and telling me all about it! I hope that correcting my course with supplements and without sugar is the answer to my gut feeling like itself again soon.
Doing school with the kids: I wish it was easy and predictable and had a natural flow where everything gets finished and no one pushed against it, but it isn’t always like that. While those days do happen, they are the exceptional ones. Standard days are not predictable. My own waking time is also not predictable. Maybe those two correlate? I know they do, I’m just stubbornly ignoring that at the moment! But when I do wise up and decide to make a different course of action my reality, I know things will fall into place! (Sometimes I wish I didn’t know myself so well!!)
I know that when I skip something, I cut off God using it as a blessing that day.
I am blessed by prayer, going to church, and my daily quiet time in the evenings.
I am nourished by not eating sugar, taking my supplements, and lifting heavy things.
I am greatly benefitted by waking up before my kids, doing school at the same time each morning, and – though it hasn’t been mentioned – staying off of my phone as much as possible, especially in the mornings!
I am fighting perfectionistic tendencies: I know I’m going to slip up. But I am trying to be aware of the line that skipping twice becomes a slope that I don’t want to fall down.
So I am here. Writing. I skipped once, but not twice. Tomorrow I have another chance to prove that I can stop the slope with the other things, too.