Submission

"Now if you are going to win any battle you have to do one thing. You have to make the mind run the body. Never let the body tell the mind what to do. The body will always give up. It is always tired in the morning, noon, and night. But the body is never tired if the mind is not tired."
- George S. Patton

I'm in the process of training for a half-marathon that is to be run in August. It's a ten-week training schedule and I'm on the second week of it. I was scheduled to run three miles on Monday, but since I elected to run in the hottest part of the day, I quit at two miles. I was supposed to run four miles today, so I waited until after 9:00 this evening to run. However, for whatever reason it was, I only completed three miles.

I feel a battle going on between my body and mind each time I run. I've lost this battle twice this week and am feeling discouraged by this. It makes me think of what Paul said: "I beat my body and make it my slave so that after I have preached to others, I myself will not be disqualified for the prize." I think one of Satan's greatest strategies is whispering into our minds when we're vulnerable. When I'm starting to breathe hard while running, I want to quit, so that's what I've done on my last two runs. When I put off getting into the Word until right before I go to bed at night, I justify skipping out on reading and lose the battle once again.

All this to say that it's tough bringing my body to submission. Therefore, I'm going to take a baby step and do this: For the next four days, I'm going to get up 30 minutes earlier in order to read the Word. Furthermore, I'm going to follow my running schedule closely and run three miles tomorrow and five miles on Saturday. If I can look back on Sunday and say that I beat my body into submission, I'll be a living testament to that verse.

A Good Year

Why is it that we always gauge a year of progress or a year of distress from the beginning of January to the completion of December? I know the obvious answer: because it's a calendar year. However, does it have to be that way? I want to break the mold, though, and I give each of you permission to do the same. I'm going to reflect on the previous year beginning one year ago today. Here's a list of major (and not so major) events that have happened in my life in the past 365 days:

1. My beautiful son, Jackson, was born
2. My beautiful son, Jackson, was kept in NICU for nine long days while his lungs matured
3. My family and I sold our first house and made a nice little profit off the sale
4. My family and I bought a house with one-and-a-half times the square footage and one-and-a-half times the mortgage as well
5. I (with some help from the father-in-law) knocked out a wall in the new house
6. My marriage went through a trying time with all the changes in life that had recently occured
7. Amanda and I realized that after God, we should be each other's number one priority
8. I sold my Xterra and bought a gently used, fuel-efficient Jetta
9. I caused my first (and hopefully last) automobile accident
10. I gained a couple of very close friends
11. I drove through my first blizzard
12. I realized that life is much more enjoyable when you behave nicely instead of expecting others to behave nicely
13. I saw a movie that to this day still makes me laugh when thinking about it
14. I read a book that almost made me cry
15. My sister, brother-in-law, and niece moved to town
16. I pruned a rose bush
17. I heard God clearly

I've thought before that I wish I could visit with myself who is a year ahead in life to find out what's to come and how I can prepare for it. I've abandoned that desire, though, because I don't think that's living at all. Character is developed within each of us when we face every circumstance in life that comes our way, great and devastating. I find that life is incredibly fulfilling when I know to expect something great from God and I live my life in that sweet anticipation. My problem is that I want that greatness to happen within a week. Shame on me. My definition of great is often obscured, and therefore, when I'm caught up looking for something amazing to happen, I often times miss the great things that are actually happening around me, like learning to prune a rose bush and hearing Addison go to the potty.

Therefore, I'm incredibly grateful for each event in my list up above. Furthermore, I'm also grateful that I didn't have access to this list one year ago today. As I reflect on the list, I see that each of the events had to happen in God's time, and if I knew when they were going to happen, it wouldn't have fully been His time. So I'll pass on looking at this next year's list. You should too.

Here We Go

I like to write but I don't really like to talk. I find that I communicate best when I do it through writing. Unfortunately, as you will see, my writing skills are not the best and have yet to become completely refined. Therefore, don't expect the best here...just expect to find pieces of me.

I've been wanting to start a blog for about six months but have metaphorically put it under a the stack of to-do's beside the computer. Well, the stack got knocked over this morning and the blog thing emerged from the clutter on the ground. I'll try to be faithful in writing on this. We'll see what happens.