How To Exercise When You Are A Busy Homeschooling Parent!

/ Lori Lawe / Leave a comment

How do we become the kind of homeschooling parent with time to exercise?

Good question.

As discussed here and here, we throw our old identities of competent, non-butt-smelling parents out the window. Then, we think up a new plan that is dissonant with the parent we thought we would become. We embrace our inner loser.

And so, when I therefore stopped trying to be excellent as a homeschooling parent, the solution became apparent:

Let them rot their brains!

I decided, in my excess of homeschooling wisdom born from a recognition of my incompetencies, to begin each day by pouring into my children’s brains not challenging academic subjects, but . . . content dribbled from online devices straight into their beautiful little brains as they stared intently at screens!

I essentially bribed them.

“Look,” I said that morning as I pulled out their new to-do lists. “Do the stuff on the list this morning and then you will get to rot your brains with time online!” I promised them that big carrot held out tantalizingly close.

And so they finally got up, brushed their little teeth, put away the milk (one of their to-do items in that season), got dressed, combed their cute little hair, and then sat down to veg out on a device.

I let them watch anything they wanted from the RightNow Media app. I can trust what this company produces. And for a high-tech tip, if you triple-click your iPad or iPhone the kids can’t suddenly switch from the app of your choice to their favourite “Candy Plus Violence!” (or whatever) app.

We all won!

I got my sweat on downstairs on my elliptical machine for half an hour while they watched something that was loosely a morning character development program. (That was the rationale of the old “I must be an exceptional homeschooling parent” tiny voice remnant that still lurked in the recesses of my mind.) I got my sweat on, and the best thing was that I could find them all at 8:00 am, and they were ready to go!

When I sneakily put pencils into their hands in the last 10 seconds of their program, it was a transition they barely even noticed, from vegging out to doing math!

By 10:00 am every single day, I felt I should have won a homeschooling award. (I didn’t. No one cared. God does though!*)

So, lose your respectable homeschooling parent identity!

Let them rot their brains online early every morning instead!

You’ll feel amazing AFTER exercising! (Not before or during exercising – Let it be known). It feels pretty great (eventually) to shift identity, too. And so, how do we change our identity to the kind of parent who exercises?

1. All of our initial ideas about who we will become as homeschooling parents are kind of nut-so if we’re honest! Let’s toss those ideas with our huge egos and embrace mediocrity for our children instead! 

2. Our children may need their brains to rot a little so that this homeschooling journey is sustainable for all of us. So be it! 

3. Time for popcorn and a group educational video at 11:00 am, little family? We did something useful today! Let’s celebrate! We give each other a high five, and I have time for a visit with a homeschooling mom that afternoon. (While the kids build a mini-nuclear reactor or do whatever it is homeschooled kids do in their spare time). 

This homeschooling ship is on course!

When a mom’s long-term well-being matters EQUALLY as much as the (nut-so, unrealistic) goals we have for our children*, this homeschooling ship can sail into the future as long and as far as God calls us.

Well done, parents!

Love others as well as you love yourself

Jesus of Nazareth, a guy with tons of wisdom!

As you listen to this song below, consider asking the King of Kings, the guy who longs to pour love on you as your Father, what gifts He longs to put into the hands of His favourite child, you.

(Because we’re all His favourite child. Shhh… that’s God’s secret that He is whispering to you even now. Hear Him?)

Blogpost Footnotes

*That discussion is for next time – we are all works in progress!

The Best Solutions Suddenly Materialize When We Embrace Our Inner Loser!

/ Lori Lawe / Leave a comment

The problem I couldn’t solve in that season was, “How do I, a VERY busy, mentally fragile (We’re around kids a LOT) homeschooling parent, find time to exercise?”

I did, eventually, find a solution to this problem by embracing my inner loser. I hope this problem-solving method helps you find solutions to your biggest problems, too! Here’s what happened, which is a continuation of this post.

And yes, I realize this last post was useless without an explanation, which I didn’t have time to provide.

Now, where was I? Ah yes. Smelling kid’s butts. After the low of us parents becoming butt-sniffers, we hit an even lower low several months later.

Butt-sniffing became our accidental family culture.

Our two-year-old, who loved to mimic our behaviour, stopped next to me as I sat on an office stool and then had a sniff before she carried on with her other little tasks. I looked at her, startled and then smiled lamely at my husband.

How did we become THAT family?*

The point is, as discussed last time, the person we become is not always the person we aspire to be.

Not only did I find it convenient to assume the identity of a butt-sniffing parent, but I also found it convenient to shirk the identity of a homeschooling parent who has all of her ducks in a row.

Which brings me, finally, to embracing our inner loser so we can become a homeschool parent who exercises.

Before I started on this homeschooling journey, I, like you if you homeschool, envisioned myself as a particular type of homeschooling parent. This is not the parent I eventually became. I’m okay with that now.

But the shaky ground of this identity incongruence was a roller coaster ride.

I envisioned myself nicely coifed and looking like my favourite public school teacher in Grade Three, Mrs. Chamberlain. Instead, I very quickly became that parent still wearing a house coat and curlers in my hair at 11:00 am, downing my fourth coffee, and trying to find the kids so I could corral them inside. We began the day with our “Homeschool Morning Routine”, which, for us was trying to find our books or pencils strewn around the house and yard the day before.

A new problem also emerged: I knew my inconvenient, neglected body needed to start exercising again.

I couldn’t even figure out how to encourage, bribe or command my children to put the milk away after they finished breakfast (In fact, I still haven’t figured that out with one of my teenagers). How would I keep these little ones on their homeschooling tasks while I left their side to exercise?

The feat seemed impossible.

Until my new identity as an incompetent homeschooling parent thought up a solution.

Realizing I was – ahem- a BIT of a (whisper) homeschooling loser, once I stopped trying so hard to be an exercise enthusiast, and embraced mediocrity, the solution to my problem was obvious!

I’ll tell you specifically what that is next time.**

The point is, let’s embrace our inner incompetence!

Perhaps the solutions to your problems can be found there, too!

Since we’ve . . . proved that we are utterly incapable of living the glorious lives God wills for us, God . . . got us out of the mess we’re in and restored us to where he always wanted us to be. And he did it by means of Jesus Christ.

The Message

Once we accept our identities as people who are incompetent in so many ways, life suddenly gets much more manageable!

Time to stop trying so hard and embrace your inner loser, too?

You’re welcome!

Good luck!

Blogpost Footnotes

*See this post for a perfectly reasonable answer, thank you very much, okay?!

**Ah! I forgot to say something useful again!

Not Exercising? Try Shifting Identity To The Parent You Never Wanted To Become

/ Lori Lawe / Leave a comment

How do we develop an exercise routine we can stick to as parents?

We must morph into the parents we never dreamed we’d become.

And I mean to become the parent we feared we would become.

I’ll explain.

It all started the day I started sniffing my kid’s butts.

When I was a well-coiffed, austere young woman in my twenties, I wrinkled up my nose at those homesteading women with several children crowding around them as they made cookies and managed a beehive simultaneously. “Isn’t that disgusting?” my sophisticated friends and I whispered, and we looked away in horror when one of these busy moms lifted her toddler, sniffed around their child’s middle for signs of a “Number two” and quickly set them back down on the floor again. This mom then happily continued stirring cookies, unpasteurized honey, or whatever she did all day.

“I would never do that butt-sniffing manoeuvre!”

When my children were toddlers, I gasped my way to a mom and toddler’s event one morning, my hair dishevelled, unmatched dirty clothing thrown over my and my toddler’s forms. I was clinging to a half-drunk coffee for dear life as I sat next to a fellow mom and empathized delightedly with her. We shared similar tales of near survival, of these miniature beings often holding us hostage to their need.

Suddenly, I remembered that I should probably check the older daughter, who was not yet fully toilet trained.

I grabbed my daughter’s arm and yanked her away from her friend. My daughter morphed from playing contentedly to screaming like a fire truck. I nearly lost the battle of the wills but managed to stuff her into the change-room, where I opened her training diaper and

. . . nothing.

There was nothing there.

When I returned to my friend, she was already chatting with another dishevelled woman, and for the rest of that “mom’s time,” my two toddlers had incessant needs again.

So it didn’t take long before I happily lifted my toddlers when they were playing contentedly, smelled their butts, and set them back down again with a wink and a nod.

I continued my coffee and well-deserved amiable chat with other homeschooling parent survivors,

My identity had shifted.

And similarly, what kind of identity shift do we need to become the kind of homeschooling parent who exercises?

1. We realize that if we are going to stay in this game long-haul we’ve got to surrender our pre-conceived ideas of success as defined by this culture, or worse, by our expectations of ourselves.

2. Our identity must be firmly linked to those who are societally undignified. We delight in our identity as children of the king, not as classy members of a specific culture (i.e. of any culture).

 3. We have fun, dancing with joy with our two-year-olds because we finally figured out that when we are happy, our little ones are too.

Throw off your chains, captive daughter . . . ! God says, “You were sold for nothing. You’re being bought back for nothing.”

The Message

And it was this change in perspective, from “culturally respectable” to “daughter of the King,” that led me to be the kind of parent who exercises regularly, as well.

The link between a shift in identity and exercise will be discussed another time.

I promise to say something useful sometime! That is if I remember to finish this blogpost series on exercising when homeschooling. This post was essential to set the foundation for when we will dive into the nitty-gritty of the shift in identity required to exercise while homeschooling young children.

For now, the first step is to stop trying to be “respectable”!

It doesn’t work anyway!

You’re welcome!

Good luck!

New Proof That No One Cares About Hygiene Since Covid!

/ Lori Lawe / Leave a comment

The photo below shows undeniable proof that no one cares about hygiene now that the Covid pandemic has ended!

They put the baby changing station right on top of the water fountain!

The photo above is a REAL, unadulterated photo taken in Banff, Canada, at the Banff Gondola Interpretive Center, so that is ANOTHER reason to prove the validity of what is written in these blogposts!

(And the point of this blogpost? Laugh more! You know you need to.)

You can finally relax and have more fun when you realize that everyone is ridiculous, and you are, too!

In Your presence is fullness of joy

Ancient Text

You’re welcome!

Good luck!

Confused About Life? Have You Tried Advice From This Person?

/ Lori Lawe / Leave a comment

When we don’t fit in with the crowd’s way of living life

who can offer relevant advice for the unique challenge we encounter?

When the promises on bolded signs aren’t as enticing as anticipated

who is the one who will deliver more than expected?

When life is confusing

who do we turn to?

Wouldn’t it be amazing if someone we trust could suddenly appear in each of these circumstances, offer us their hand and point us to the best path?

Wouldn’t it be outstanding if that person never tired or gave up on us but offered grace and strength and sometimes even rubbed our aching feet as we rested?

What if this person offered us a cold drink, a healthy snack and a plan to follow?

Wouldn’t it be wondrous if this person was always by our side, could be leaned on when we lacked strength and helped to calm the chaos in our lives?

Any of us would give the world to find someone like this.

The substitute people that we esteem so highly instead, including movie stars, sports heroes, self-help experts and billionaires, eventually fall off their pedestals, and we trample them in our disappointment.

But wait . . .

Before we choose another human we highly esteem to take their place (someone with eventual skeletons in their closet, too), let’s pause and reassess . . . for just a moment.

Is there anyone who can be trusted, admired and in some ways, even followed?

Yep. There is. The grand unveiling reveals

the person your soul most longs to meet

He’s here entwined within the pages of this best-selling book.

Have time for a read?

Spiritually Asleep Again? How To Wake Up And See

/ Lori Lawe / Leave a comment

I woke up one morning and realized with a start that I was also alive spiritually. I poked myself to be sure I was awake. I was the same on the outside.

What had caused this inner transformation?

My circumstances were the same. I lived in the exact physical location as many years ago. But undoubtedly, something had shifted recently.

Like all births, the growth had begun unnoticed in the hidden places long before.

My story of waking up is a long story of twisting paths, walking in circles, and many falls.

Just like your spiritual story.

And I’m still walking.

(You? That’s good. Very good.)

This morning, my rear felt particularly sore from all the falls recently. Jesus held his hand to me again today, offering to help me get up.

I’ll start there.

I woke this morning in a cyclical funk created by my discouragement. I was spiralling down, ready to flush the new thing God had been stirring in my heart down the toilet of my despair again. Then I heard a quiet thought encouraging me.

You are in the fight of your life.

(Would I jump into the battle or claim immediate defeat, like usual, keeping my soul asleep?)

I was in a fight for God’s whisperings to be brought forth like a new babe into the world. But I had to surrender my half-eaten lunch. Would I obey?

God had been whispering, waking, urging my soul towards the new life he wanted to see sprouting in my heart.

Would I throw away my hope that God can grow something beautiful through the dry depleted soil of my life again today?

Would my discouragement win?

The question is not how big is our faith. The question is, how big is our God? I shrunk God, again, into my image.

And so I was asleep.

I awoke when reminded in a time of prayer this morning of this truth:

The impossible thing He whisperers that he wants to bring forth in our lives is easy for Him.

How exactly this discouragement transformed into hope is a story for another time.

But for now, suffice it to say that I was reminded that God made an amaryllis bloom after twenty years or more of bareness.

And He made a lilac bloom after ten years or more of barrenness.

And so He can make our lives bloom after seasons of bareness, too.

We begin to wake spiritually every day by opening our spiritual eyes.

Here’s how:

  1. We fix our spiritual eyes on God, the master gardener of hope, instead of keeping our eyes closed by focusing on our bareness.
  2. We open our eyes to the fact that harvest will come for every field, including that unwatered corner of our hearts if we allow the Master Gardener to work His ways within.
  3. We wait, not passively, but prayerfully, with anticipation, like a farmer planting seed in fertile soil.

This subtle shift in my thinking helped me soar on the wind of hope I found this morning. I picked up the hope. I carried it next to my heart.

For as the sky soars high above earth, so the way I work surpasses the way you work, and the way I think is beyond the way you think.

Just as rain and snow descend from the skies and don’t go back until they’ve watered the earth, doing their work of making things grow and blossom, producing seed for farmers and food for the hungry, so will the words that come out of my mouth not come back empty-handed.

They’ll do the work I sent them to do, they’ll complete the assignment I gave them.

The Message

God is standing next to us with seeds, a shovel and a watering can. He wants to dig deep, exposing old roots to create room for new growth. I want to get out of the way to allow Him to do his work.

You?

While waiting for life to sprout, consider praying along to this song.

This song begins like the prayer of a person who doesn’t honestly believe what they’re praying (like many of many prayers over the years):

You make beautiful things out of the dust.

The song ends in a loud declaration of the exact words, daring the soul to believe.

Time for a battle for you, too, as you pray along to this song?

What is He saying to you through the pages of His book, asking you to have faith to believe?

May your eyes be opened, your soul awake.

Destroy People’s Self Esteem To Help Them Feel Better (Eventually) In These 3 Ways

/ Lori Lawe / Leave a comment

“Wait, what are you doing right now?” he asked me.

I was melodramatically pretending to cry as the youth left the party.

“Oh, I’m just pretending I’m sad to see him leave,” I explained. “I made fun of him a lot tonight, and so now I’m building up his self-esteem.” The youth listened, mouth agape, staring at me.

As I’ve said before, my magnetism to youth is remarkable.

But unfortunately, we’re not supposed to make fun of millennials anymore. In fact, we’re not supposed to make fun of anyone anymore. So, at the next party, I tried to conform. 

I stuffed snack after snack into my mouth in an effort not to speak.

The problem is that if we really want to do this self-esteem thing right, we shouldn’t say anything true at all. Millennials, for example, have self-esteem that is 1/4 inch thick. If we accidentally blow the truth in their vicinity, they cry or get upset. “How dare you assault me with the truth?” they retort. “Don’t you know I’m sensitive?”

And so we apologize and cower to the needs of their egos.

“You’re doing great!” we assert, every time they look up from their iPhones or get out of bed.

“I can see you are trying to do some math! You get a star!”

“You ran in a race that you didn’t even train for? You get a medal! Everyone gets a medal!”

And with all of this self-esteem and encouragement, and “Well done!” floating around, you’d think our youth would be boyoed up by all this praise and floating happily on their circumstances in life.

Of course, we all know that youth depression and mental illness are at an all-time high.

So why not try another approach?

What if we tell everyone they’re losers?

It’s counterintuitive (like all my best advice), but we can finally let our stomach fat out and relax! We can stop pretending to be someone we’re not. We can get on with enjoying the party games, popcorn and time together.

“What are you talking about?” you ask.

Well, if we could relax and let our kids relax, I think we’d have a lot more fun. We don’t have to, in fact, shield our kids from the fact that they’re messed up and that we are, too. There is surprising freedom in realizing that we are all losers.

If we are at the bottom of the pit, there’s nowhere to go but up!

Since we’ve compiled this long and sorry record as sinners (both us and them) and proved that we are utterly incapable of living the glorious lives God wills for us, God did it for us. 

The Message

Hope abounds because things can only get better!

Once we stop showering accolades on each other, and accept that we are all dorks, lost on the ship we call life, the adventure can begin!

Anyone around here seen a Captain? We could certainly use some help getting cleaned up a bit, and figuring out how to work together to get all of our oars on this boat pulling in the same direction.

And so, how do we feel better? 

1. We realize we are a directionless loser.

2. We find someone to help clean us up a bit.

3. We follow this person and therefore, all grow together in the same direction.

He got us out of the mess we’re in and restored us to where he always wanted us to be. And he did it by means of Jesus Christ.

The Message

And life gets a little easier!

Spiritual people, for example, those who know that they are losers because they desperately need someone to clean them up, lead them and help them all row in a similar direction, tend to struggle a bit less frequently with their mental health.*

So stop building up people’s self-esteem! Trash them instead, knowing that this is the best way to build them up! They’ll (eventually) feel better!

You’re welcome!

Good luck!

Blogpost Footnotes

*Of course, many people within the church struggle with mental health, and research is based on averages.

How To Avoid Humiliation (Or Worse – Missing Out On God!)

/ Lori Lawe / 4 Comments

Our neighbour at the lake was working on his house.

He told us the story of running out of roofing screws. Now, where we live, we can’t walk or even drive 10 minutes to the hardware store to buy supplies. We must wait until the intense storm on the lake has passed (insert dramatic music here) before attempting to dodge large waves in a small boat to get to the other side.

(It’s not that bad most of the time – It could be a lovely kayak in sunny weather, but you get my point).

Anyway, THEN, you have to pay money to park your boat, or get the trailer and take it out of the water. Then there’s the 20-minute drive to civilization. Picking up supplies is a significant hassle. Being lake people, we share stuff.

So, I offered to share.

“Well, anytime you want a screw, just come on over,” I offered helpfully, smiling.

(Yep. True story. Anyway, back to the tale.)

The man and his grown son burst into laughter. My husband turned and walked away. The wife stared at me with her head cocked to one side, trying to discern if I had always had a significant head injury.

But the most facinitating part of this story was my inability to see.

I literally meant roofing screws, of course. And I rationalized all of the hints that I had said something askew. When the man and his son burst into laughter, I reasoned, “Must be an inside joke.”

When my husband suddenly left, I blamed him by assuming he was in a bad mood. When the wife stared at me, I internally rationalized that too. “An interesting bird behind me?” I reasoned, also looking over my shoulder.

I was seeking evidence that fit my worldview.

The point is that I couldn’t see the clues. I wouldn’t see the clues. How often I do that in other areas of life is the question that keeps me up at night.

Jesus said, “If you were really blind, you would be blameless, but since you claim to see everything so well, you’re accountable for every fault and failure.”

The Message

How else are we blind?

How are we worse than blind and UNWILLING to see the truth?

To avoid humiliating ourselves again, or worse, to avoid missing out on God showing up in our lives, consider three ways to prevent willful blindness:

  1. Notice the clues. Why did everyone behave strangely (a clue!) after my comment? Similarly, could God speak through the clues of another’s spiritual experience?
  2. Ask for help. My husband gave me the key that opened the door to a more nuanced understanding of my comment. Similarly, others sometimes hold the key to our spiritual growth.
  3. Expect the unexpected. Did I, the caricature of Ned Flanders from the Simpsons, speak with sexual innuendo to a random neighbour? Of course! Did God speak to you? Of course!

Holy Spirit, remove the blinders we construct, carefully keeping You out of our lives. Help us to BE WILLING to see the obvious, we pray. As I finally saw the truth of my speech faux pas, Jesus, help us finally see, with fresh insight, how You are at work in our lives today, we pray.

After a moment of quiet, considering asking God, “How am I blind?”

Need Solutions For 4 Problems? Laugh! (And Other “Real” Advice!)

/ Lori Lawe / Leave a comment

I know what your problem is.

Like a well-trained doctor who assesses your symptoms and states with certainty your sickness, I (though not trained in this stuff at all*) also state with certainty your malady:

You need to laugh more.

Come on!

Everyone around you is ridiculous!

Laugh at them!

You are ridiculous, too!

(Implications of this rationale are implied.)

And before we begin, I must start by saying I am well aware that, for some reason that I do not quite understand, when I give excellent advice on how to live your life, you say things like, “That’s funny!” And thus, sometimes you laugh at the wrong times or things. And yet, despite this blatant persecution, misjudgment and bullying (what’s the difference?) I will continue giving my sage advice.

To get your belly laughs warmed up, here are some unusual things my brain has noticed lately.

Advice #1: How To Rise And Shine With Enthusiasm Every Day!

I hate my alarm clock.

The little “chirp, chirp” sound startles me, so the last time I went camping, I found myself swearing loudly at 4 am at the little birdies chirping in the trees outside, thinking they were my blasted alarm clock. My cussing woke the other campers, who were still glaring at me over their thick campfire coffee brew several hours later. Why do they make “bird chirp sound” as an option on alarm clocks anyway?

If they REALLY wanted me to get out of bed quickly in the morning, they would make an alarm clock that makes the sound my dog makes just before he throws up beside my bed.

Advice #2: How to Enjoy Marital Bliss, Even When You Feel (Just A Little Bit) Like Choking Your Spouse!

Certified professionals, the ones that charge $160/hr – who knows why? Is it just because they have training?* – often say annoying things like “Talk about your problems.” That only backfires from my experience. How do you have marital bliss? Keep your mouth shut! Follow the saying:

“Keep your eyes wide open before marriage and half closed after that!”

So, for example, if your spouse keeps running out of gas (I speak in idioms – NOT that anyone you know would ever do this!), make sure that “gasoline” is one of those words that must NEVER be mentioned! Except when he runs out of gas next time, the word “gasoline” can be used as ammunition for why you should win the next disagreement! Trust me!

It works!

Advice #3: How To Be Attractive, Even When You Are Getting A Bit Older!

With back pain, showering or brushing your teeth can be difficult.

Yet, do this if at all you think you can!

(Also remember to take the laxative EARLIER in the day so that the house doesn’t smell as bad at night when you and your spouse are relaxing and enjoying a romantic evening at home together!)

Advice #4: How To Choose The Best Pet That Fits Your Family Perfectly!

How long does it take for the excitement of a new puppy, or bunny or pony, to wear off, and then the kids return to cratering their iPhones like a newborn baby while we entice our kids to PLEASE take poor Alfred for a walk and to brush his mangy hair! And yet, buying pets is what good parents do, and we want to be like everyone else!

So the next time one of our children wanted another animal, I surprised myself by confiding to the clerk at the pet store when my child was out of earshot:

“I’ll pay extra for a pet that’s almost dead.”

And the summary of this sage advice?

A cheerful disposition is good for your health

The Message

Translated, that ancient text could perhaps also read along the lines of:

Laugh at others! Laugh at yourself! We’re ridiculous, remember?

You’ll feel much better soon.

You’re welcome!

Good luck!

Blogpost Footnotes

*Does that matter to anyone anymore? We have YouTube!

The One Valuable Ingredient To Find God And Lose Weight

/ Lori Lawe / Leave a comment

I was shocked when the notification blared its announcement.

I was in the top 3% of users of a new nutrition app I was using.

The TOP 3%.

Everyone else (or 97% of people – whatever! – stay with me!) had already given up.

Now, I have to back up a bit to explain.

As you know, and have been forever changed by, I wrote a riveting blog post series last fall on weight loss. (To my editor: Why DIDN’T anyone read those posts, anyway?)

I have been (more or less) within the healthy weight range (basically – okay!) for my entire life, which has been no small feat.

However, when following my advice failed me, I decided to switch it up and buy a nutrition app. Truthfully, I am constantly trying new approaches and programs and learning a bit more about implementing healthy habits, which is the point of this post. But I’m not talking about that right now.

I’m talking about the notification that startled me.

I thought I was the ultimate failure in using this nutrition app. Check this out. The photo below is an actual graph of my progress over two months, showing NO improvement in achieving my ideal weight.

None.

There are normal fluctuations, but the graph of this line is flat.

Same, same, samers.

I immediately unsubscribed to the “encouragement” texts accompanying this app because so many people complained in a way I could not comprehend.

“I only lost 5 pounds this month!” they would complain.

Huh?

I hadn’t lost anything, so I could not relate.

But I kept going with the program.

And the results EVENTUALLY paid off. EVENTUALLY. I lost 10 pounds recently and feel a lot better.

And I believe the results would have also paid off for many, many other app users.

If only they kept trying.

And now, we’ll switch gears to talk about God, but it’s not changing gears, because the concept is the same.

MOST PEOPLE GIVE UP TOO SOON IN THEIR SEARCH FOR GOD

Is it annoying people that keep you away from your search for God? Get over them! (Get over yourself too, but that’s for when you are MUCH more spiritually sanctified and you realize that you are a loser too!)

Is God distant, just out of reach? You’re on the right path. God hides Himself as a critical component of his character.

God delights in concealing things

The Message

Why, you ask?

He is not a dictator, shouting orders and wanting us to go off somewhere and obey every minute detail of his complicated directives. He longs to walk WITH us on this journey we call life. He wants us to WANT to want Him.

And so, right now, He is bending down low but right next to you. Will you reach out, tag his back, and say, “Gotcha!”

Will you seek Him?

If we don’t give up, even though most people do, and keep walking forward, following where we last saw his footsteps and carving out time in our busy day to sit with Him, unhurried, if we read his word, and ask others what it means even when we don’t understand it, then we will find God.

He’s waiting for you right now, holding out His hand to you.

And so, what is the one valuable ingredient to lose weight and find God?

Perseverance.

There’s more to come . . . keeping us alert for whatever God will do next.

The Message

Keep walking, friend.

Hunger for Jesus attracts the manifest (felt) presence of His Spirit. Does your hunger for God outweigh your discouragement? He’ll help you up, point you in a new direction, lighten the weight on your feet, help you soar.

Don’t give up just before your breakthrough, friend.