Just One Sentence

It's been just about two months now since signing off the good ol' Facebook land. I think my zeal for no longer being a slave to the site has now settled. I do a few less cartwheels out of excitement, and haven't actually had a conversation about not being on Facebook in a little while now. I like this point. I feel like a weird chapter of my life has closed. I kind of went to battle to work on that part of my life and I feel good about where I'm at. Not a prideful good, just a peace if you will. It's like the desire is just gone. Thank you Lord.

I got a text last night from a friend of mine and it read: "ok I have officially followed in your footsteps... no facebook for me either!" She chose to get off Facebook for many of the same reasons I did. She told me that she was done with being a slave to it. That was the perfect expression. That's how I used to feel. So I stole her line for the beginning of this post. I love it when I see people make changes. I think change can be absolutely awesome and I wish her the best on her new journey.☺

Onto another subject, last weekend the pastor of my church, yes here I go talking about church again, did an awesome sermon as we are continuing to study the 10 commandments. Just so you all know, if you think the 10 commandments are outdated, oh man, I encourage you to check out a few of the sermons online from the past several weeks. I can certainly attest that they are in no way outdated. Anyways, a good portion of the sermon last weekend was talking about the idea of what our lives bear witness too. My pastor used a great example and explained that if you were to ask your five closest friends what your life bears witness to, or what you were all about, what would they say? Kind of like the question of when we die what is the one sentence that will sum up our lives. Wow. Not something I think about everyday.

My pastor encouraged us to decide on a truth and base our life around it. Kind of like write out that sentence now and make the choice to live to achieve it. I thought that was such an awesome idea. I love setting goals and achieving them. I think it goes back to my days growing up as a competitive gymnast. I had a coach that was all about goals. We had to write them out, I believe monthly, if I remember correctly. At first the process seemed tedious, but I grew to like it. When I coached high school gymnastics I also had my girls do this. I had them write short term and long term goals and at the end of the season I would always pull them out and remind them where they had come from. Ever since then I've always set goals for myself. Maybe not always in writing, and definitely not monthly, but I've always felt if I didn't have a goal or an idea of what I was working towards then what would be my purpose? Now those things have changed from learning a new skill in the gym to growing closer to God, helping others, bettering my parenting, being a Proverbs 31 wife (haha got a LONG way to go!) among others.

So I did write down my sentence. It was kind of scary in a way because an underlying fear in writing goals is well...what if we don't achieve them? Then what? Are we a failure? I remember in gymnastics I would feel silly writing a lofty goal down at first. I almost would even talk myself out of it! You can't do that... who do you think you are? That's WAY too hard... you aren't strong enough.. etc. The lies can go on forever and as soon as we start putting our faith in those lies it's done.

The same coach that made me write goals, I also remember for another very interesting activity. He made us all write down on a piece of paper "I CAN'T." The whole team put all of our I CAN'Ts in a shoe box and we had somewhat of a ceremonial burial. Yup, we buried the box of I CAN'Ts. From that day forward we were not allowed to use the words "I CAN'T." We could replace them with, "I'LL TRY," among other positive things. I bet that coach had no idea that 15 years later I would still remember that incident.

As I think over the I CAN'T burial, I remember something my parents told me as well. They will be happily married for 30 years at the end of this month and you can be sure that I will be using things they have taught me over the years many times in my posts. My husband and I just hit 4 years and we were so excited, but 30 years.. amazing... In our society, that's a darn good record. Growing up, whenever we got on the subject of them being married for so long and what made it work, they of course mentioned that the marriage had God at the center, but they also mentioned that they made a decision long ago that they would never use the D word. Divorce. I found that fascinating. It's like at the beginning of their marriage they buried that word. I absolutely love that idea and gladly stole it from them. ☺

This reminds me of the passage in Luke 6:45 that reads: "Out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks." If we give breath to these words like "divorce" and "I can't" it will be so much easier for them to become truths. 

Speaking of goals, I have another little goal that I set at the beginning of the year...well, my sister half way set it for me, but we decided to sign up for the mud run in June. Let me just tell you that I have never been a good runner. No matter how many back handsprings I can still do, I have never been able to run. I honestly don't think I could run a mile right now if you told me I would never have to do another load of laundry again if I did. Okay, maybe I could if I honestly never would have to do another load of laundry... but I think you understand what I'm saying here. haha. Notice I am carefully writing this as to not say "I can't." haha. Endurance has not ever been a strong point for me. There. That sums it up. Anyways, this little mud run in June is a 10K. Once again as I told my sister I would do it I laughed at myself a bit because wow, that was one lofty goal. I had 6 months to get ready. Well, let me just confess that the closest I have done to starting to train for this race is by downloading the Couch To 5K app on my iPhone. Yup. Ran my fingers around a bit and that's it. Oh, and didn't I mention this is a 10K, not a 5... haha. Gotta start somewhere.

The race is set for June 5. Exactly 3 months from tomorrow and I am determined to be ready. This blog post is me writing my sentence. Now I have every reader out there to hold me accountable. Yes, I'm scared, but I'm going to choose to not let the thoughts take me captive that I am totally crazy. I thank you for reading and keeping me accountable... and I encourage you to ask yourself.. what truth are you basing your own life around? What is your one sentence? ♥