I’m a thoughtful person, and by that I mean I’m full of thoughts. Sometimes I think out loud and my husband suggests I may be over-thinking things. Sometimes my thoughts bless me, helping me live life better and sometimes they get going so fast, they make me dizzy. Or they go into a worrying dimension I can hardly find my way out of. That’s why I enjoy exercise that demands all my focus. It gives me a break from my busy thoughts and a little distance to decide if they’re helpful or not. I’ve chosen yoga because it takes such concentration, but I’ve heard horsemanship is equally consuming.
Well, last time I went to yoga, my brain kept taking off on tangents. I’d set that train of thought aside and back it would come, or another one, more demanding than the first. I’d set it aside as well and try to think about what I was doing. Eventually, I got focused. Looking back, I realize our arrivals aren’t always smooth. Like an airplane landing, sometimes it’s smooth and sometimes it’s bumpy. Either way, in the end, you land. I felt all fits and starts the other day—nothing graceful about it, but I still got there. Courtney Carver calls it, “Permission to be unsexy.” The world insists you need to remain sexy, no matter what you undertake. It’s a lie. We have permission (via grace) to struggle and be beginners and sweat and mess up.
I’m applying this lesson to my spiritual life. We have smooth times and we have fits and starts. I’m glad we can face plant our way into eternity because of grace. God planned for our fits and starts, our failures, our floundering. He’s taken it all into account and still promises to reunite us with Him, safe as can be, in the end.
I will come again and receive you to Myself; that where I am, there you may be also. John 14:3
