Starting all the way back at the beginning of our journey in the hotel just outside Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport in Atlanta, I made a commitment with myself to maintain my fitness habits in whatever way I could, no matter the location. I knew making this commitment would sometimes be difficult, as finding places or even time to exercise will occasionally seem impossible..but I did it anyway. I enjoy working out. I enjoy the grind. Staying disciplined in it was a priority.
There wasn’t a gym I could go to in Paris, so I ran stairs at a massive park down the road from our place. Across the street sat a smaller park with small blacktop soccer court in the middle of it, so I used the goalpost bars to do pull-ups. Along with walking the Camino in Spain, which was exhausting in and of itself, almost every day I used the swing set bars in local parks to get a few sets of pull-ups in. Down a side-street at our place in Morocco was a small, dirty basement gym filled with old, worn out equipment. “It’s perfect,” I told the owner through Google Translate. (He let me work out there all month for free.) While exploring the little town in Cyprus where we were staying we found a random outdoor fitness area thingy. Yeah, this’ll work, I probably thought. Our home in Beirut had 10 flights of stairs and the unfinished building across the street was engulfed by scaffolding (perfect pull-up material). I found a cheap gym in Bethlehem and ended up walking back to our hostel with a Palestinian who was wondering why I was working out for so long. I dug holes all month in Egypt. Our hostel in Azerbaijan had an ACTUAL pull-up bar mounted on the wall. I joined a gym in Kazakhstan for the month, and now our place in Kyrgyzstan has a small hybrid weight set. Whether I’ve been exhaustively teaching English, hanging out with local college students, working on a vineyard, walking 2 hours to and from Tbilisi every day, or whatever busyness and stress is thrown at me…I still exercise consistently.
So, what’s the point in telling you this?
The point is that if there’s something you enjoy doing or someone you enjoy being around, no matter how busy your schedule might become, you’ll make time for them. Always. Oh, your best friend wants to grab a bite for dinner and see the next Avengers movie? Your crush says he/she is going to the football game with some friends on Friday and they want you to come with? I bet 99% of the time, you’re dropping everything you’re doing. I know I would.
Are we the same way with the Lord? Is spending time with Him in his word and prayer so important and crucial to our day that we’ll do anything to do it?
Well, in my case? No. Sometimes it is not.
Some weeks I have infinitely better discipline getting to the gym than I do getting on me knees.
But why, though?!?! I don’t want it to be that way! “How sweet are your words to my taste, sweeter than honey to my mouth! Through your precepts I get understanding” (Psalm 119:103-104). I find myself pleading for the Lord to bend my heart to these words, to make me love his word more than the air I breathe or food I eat. I know it’s truth is like milk to the bones and meat for the muscles, but some days it’s as if I completely forget that. Although I’ve slowly regained my knowledge of this truth this year, it’s still something that bites and tries to work its way back in.
Now, does that make my almost obsessive discipline in exercise bad? Should I quit viewing the fitness lifestyle so highly in my life? No, not necessarily. But if you spend more time working out than with the Lord it means you enjoy it more than Him. That’s not true either. If that were the case, then every believer who works 40 hours a week, 50 weeks a year needs to spend at least 40 hours a week, 50 weeks a year with the Lord. Whoa. What if you have kids and hobbies? When would you sleep?
“Whatever you do, work heartily, as for the Lord and not for men.” — Colossians 3:23
“Let the favor of the Lord our God be upon us, and establish the work of our hands upon us; yes, establish the work of our hands!” — Psalm 90:17
I don’t know, just a few thoughts I’ve been wrestling around with so I figured I’d tell ya’ll about it!
Only two months remain on the Race!! I cannot believe it. Oh and yes, I’m still exhausted. But who says that’s a bad thing? No days off baby! Let’s go!
Love and miss you all!
