So, I’ve basically fallen off the wagon.
It’s a pattern in my life that, along with a lot of other things about myself, I despise.
Six weeks ago, I was a determined fitness machine. I was eating decent 95% of the time, I was forcing the workouts three or four days a week, I was sweating. I felt good. I felt pretty good about my health. I got into decent shape and felt pretty good most of the time.
Then.
The past month has brought a lot. A thirty hour straight stint at work absolutely crashed my physical reserves and true fatigue set in. My schedule just doesn’t allow for recovery. Then my wrist rebelled. The wrist was injured in the same accident that broke my elbow, and although it wasn’t broken as far as we know, it will only take so much before it becomes a very painful part of my body. This wrist, combined with the fact that the elbow has some weaknesses, too, pretty much put a big old STOP sign in the way of my goal of twenty pullups by the end of November. (I don’t even know if I can still do ONE.)
Then something went crazy with my knee. Have no idea what, but it’s almost better. There wasn’t an injury; I didn’t do anything wrong. It wasn’t a muscular problem, and it didn’t seem to be anything wrong with the joint. It was almost like a hyper-sensitve nerve about a half inch under the skin – if I bent my knee and my pants pressed against the skin, or if I pressed against something else with the knee, the pain was just excruciating.
Needless to say, it’s hard to do even bodyweight squats in this shape.
Much is lost. I’m not giving up, but it frustrates me to have to anticipate “re-taking” all that ground.
I go through this kind of mess a lot in my life. I’ll be all gung-ho and determined for six weeks or so, and then something happens to bring me back down to ground zero.
It happens in my Christian life, too. It’s a really good thing that we, as Christians, are defined by what CHRIST IS DOING in us and through us rather than by our own determination, goals, or success. Because I’m usually off the wagon there, too. Some would accuse me of not being truly on fire, of not being sold out, of just not “trying” hard enough. I say that they don’t quite have it all together, either. It often seems that the harder I try, the more I find myself falling apart. I read the sign that a friend of mine has at his business which says “A Bible that’s falling apart belongs to someone who’s not.” That’s noble, but, technically, my Bible IS falling apart, and I’m still thousands of miles from even being what I want to be, let alone from being what God really wants me to be. (My Bible is falling apart more from bad construction than from excessive usage, is the point.)
There are fitness freaks that have no problem sticking with an exercise program for thirty years. I congratulate them. I bet they’ve got other problems that they hide.
There are Christians who probably read the Bible three hours a day and can spout verses like a fire hose connected to the Atlantic Ocean. I’m impressed, and I congratulate them, too. But I bet they’ve got other problems that they hide.
The “wagon” is a deceptive thing. Being on the wagon in one regard by no means makes us perfect in all regards, nor does falling off the wagon mean that we are useless to God. Falling off the fitness wagon should not destroy my self-confidence or my interest in being healthy (it DOES, but it shouldn’t…)
Off the wagon, but fully IN CHRIST.
Disclaimer – by no means am I proposing that we should avoid the wagon. But we need to focus on Christ. We fitness folk need to focus on healthy living, not on the next workout.
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