Just Start…Again – Day 33

It’s just a little over a month into this new year.  For us in Eastern NC, this has been an interesting start for February.  We are not accustomed to snow and below freezing temps.  This is unusual and can be a bit disorienting.  For business owners, we are having to decide when to open and when to stay at home for safety purposes.  For those who began a new routine for the beginning of the year – maybe going to the gym, running, eating healthy, or moving more – this likely throws everything off.  February is already a challenging time without this new obstacle.

It can be easy to give up our goals now.  We likely haven’t been able to keep up our routines.  Our habits have been interrupted.  Our healthier eating went missing when the snacks entered our home.  And who can get out to exercise or go to the gym?  So we could just give up.  We could just call it quits.  

Some of you are thinking – “this is why I didn’t start anyway…I knew this would happen.”  But if we don’t ever start, how will anything ever change?  It’s the wrong attitude to never start just because you don’t know what will happen.  It’s defeating to never take the first step because the following steps might be difficult.  

This doesn’t just go for our physical health either.  This goes for our spiritual health as well.  We start by doing a daily devotional and then our world goes crazy.  We begin reading the Psalms and then we miss a week somewhere along the way.  We start praying on a regular basis only to find we have missed more days than we prayed.  And we begin to think everything is conspiring to make sure we don’t do it.  So we give up.  It’s too hard.  

We can live defeated and just go back to our old routines.  Those were easier anyway.  We didn’t have to worry about what we eat because we can pick up drive thru.  We didn’t have to worry about where we will fit in a work out if we just don’t.  We didn’t have to worry about opening our Bibles or praying if we don’t ever try.  And we don’t have to worry about ever growing or becoming better or becoming more like Christ.

Nothing is accomplished by giving up.  We don’t become better followers of Christ by quitting.  We don’t have healthier bodies by eating whatever we want and not moving.  We don’t become better mentally by telling ourselves what a failure we are.  We change by getting back up and trying again.  Just start now.  It isn’t too late.  And today is a perfect day to begin.

You may not be able to get out and go to the gym or outside to exercise, but you can pick up your Bible and pray.  You can choose what you put into your body and into your mind.  You DO have control over that.  And tomorrow, you can make your way to the moving more.  You get to decide what this day looks like.  I get to decide what I do today that is good for me – body, mind, and spirit.  The choice is yours – the choice is mine – maybe we just start.  It just might be the change we need.