New Years resolutions often bring a new workout plan. Goals for a new and lean body....my plans went deeper than that this year. I have watched my own body change after having three babies, and creep dangerously close to the forty year mark. And with those changes have come aches and pains and creaking joints in my body that are only a result of a sedentary lifestyle.
Earlier this year, I went for the major cardiovascular workout....cardio kickboxing. It was lots of fun, and I certainly saw some changes in my body....although none worth the insane amounts of energy I was putting into the workouts. I was watching my diet, working out at least five days a week, and still....only minor body changes.
Discouragement was setting in. Then I ordered a new program. By the same creator of the cardio program I had done, but this one was a super intense, 3 month phase, strength and weight training program, based on the solid fact that "muscle burns fat".
I scraped all my money together, bought the program and some weights, figured out the eating plan that came with the program....and dove in! I just finished my first week....and OH MY GOODNESS!!!!! I moaned in bed this morning as I tried to roll over and all the muscles in my aching rear end (from all the weight laden lunges) screamed at me! Every day has been that way, my body fighting against the pain....and loving it at the same time.
Chalene Johnson, the creator of this workout program, often says, while we are working with gritted teeth to push up one, painfully slow repetition of weight...."Your body LOVES muscle!" It is true....my back pain is gone this week, I feel stronger and taller, and amazingly in just a few short days, I am seeing muscle tone!
And as I rolled out of bed this morning...I pondered what in interesting irony that the very thing that seems like it is sooooo hard, that wants to defeat us, that would be so easy to put down and escape from....is the very thing that makes us stronger. This year of refinement and struggle in our family has shown me that. People have known it for ages...."that which doesn't kill you, makes you stronger." Yet somehow, this morning, it kind of sunk in to my soul on a very tangible level...as my aching body reminded me that I am not dead, but very much alive....and stronger.
Oftentimes, the refinement comes in waves. Not just one difficulty, but a whole plate of things that seem overwhelming and crushing. Kind of like adding metal weights onto my dumbells....on purpose. I smile as I think I can't lift anymore, and Chalene says, "go heavy or go home baby!". And so not to be outdone, I add another weight....making the reps just that much more difficult.
Chuckling this morning, I look back over the year, and even still a little now....and see the hand of God, gently and deliberately adding another "weight" to my life. To my already struggling life, weighted with pain or grief, or struggle....He says....how about just a little more?
And yet, as I am beginning to understand my physical body and the way that extra little weight, and the super slow repetitions tear down the muscle and cause it to rebuild stronger, I can see that the little "extra" situations in my already difficult struggles, are what make all the difference in the spiritual process for my soul as well.
Sure you can lift lighter weights, and do tons of repetitions....but the really amazing results come from heavy, heavy weights and fewer, painfully slow repetitions. And contrary to popular belief...it doesn't cause abnormal bulking up. It creates, lean and beautiful muscle and physique.
And so in the Spirit, I wonder if God doesn't do the same work in us. Sure He could give us a few little struggles here and there, and keep them going and going and going. But the truth is He knows that is ineffective. And so He pours it on instead, one after another, after another, until we think we are going to die under the strain. We even "weep for the night", but indeed JOY comes in the morning!
As Christians, we have learned to rebuke the "attack" from the Evil One. That somehow anything bad that happens to us can't be from God. But I truly am seeing for myself that it is a matter of perspective. Just as I look down at my ugly, metal dumbells...they represent pain and anguish for me. Nothing in me WANTS to pick them up and cause the pain and ache in my own body, but I do it for what is on the other side of the pain.
I could "rebuke" them and put them aside, choose a different path....of ease and comfort. But sadly that path, that choice leaves me about 20 pounds overweight, flabby and miserable. Comfortable to be sure....but miserable in the end.
And so I welcome a new morning of weights and painful lifting, because I know that in three months when the last phase is completed, I will be stronger, taller, more confident, and so much closer to the "me" that I was created to be.
I have been in about nine months of intense personal fire and refinement...and yet today, I am not in agony over it. I can see that in walking through it, and embracing it....in enduring the pain and letting it do it's work in me....I am changed.
I only wish we could take Spiritual "before and after" pictures as easily as we can physical ones. To SHOW the change, to SEE the inner transformation.
And even though this season of refinement feels like it might be drawing to a close for now, I know that it is only a season...and that heat will return. I smile a little, not because I look forward to more refinement....but for the image of God in me that comes on the other side of those fires.
I willingly submit.
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