The Law is On Your Side: how to get where you really want to be

Ever have one of those days when all you want to do is stay in bed?

This winter has been one of those days.

My grandma and B's mom, Dixie, they made quilts.  Pink and green wedding rings, a red eight-pointed star, and a fairy ring made out of polyester scraps that wears like iron.  Ain't no cold getting inside those layers, baby.  I've got a warm spot right here and I'm not comin' out.

An object at rest will remain at rest unless acted upon by force.

Newton said it and I imagine his voice big, booming, and bold laying down
THE FIRST LAW OF MOTION.

The winter was cold and I moved less and less and my body began to stiffen.  We know good and well our hearts, minds and souls are like that too.

We pull in and stiffen a little more each day.

According to Newton, we aren't going to start moving without a reason, without force.

Maybe that force is a friend, perhaps something you need and really can't do without.  Maybe a child drives you out of your warm spot.  Maybe your soul is dug in deep and the only thing that can move you is faith. Maybe you are the force.

Great thing about a universe intelligently designed, there is great balance and there is more to Newton's law:

An object in motion will remain in motion unless acted upon by force.

And there it is, the way to turn the laws of nature to our advantage.

Wherever you want to be, just take a step in that direction.

An object in motion will remain in motion unless something tries to stop it and even then, even then it will resist being stopped.

As spring approaches and I begin to wake up to sunlight, the light fuels my emotions and emotion fuels my energy and faith forces me forward and I become an object in motion.

An object will resist changes in its motion.  We keep heading the direction we are already going.  That includes you and me, for good or bad.  Unless we are acted upon by force.

If you need to change where you are going, change what you are doing.

Find a reason, a force, and start the ball rolling toward your chosen destination.

Decide where you want to be.  Use your brain to figure out which behaviors will naturally result in the consequences you desire.

If you want to be on time, get up and leave earlier.  If you want to change jobs, be a great employee where you are and actually apply for the job you want.  If you want to be fit, move.  If you are already exhausted and want your energy back, adjust your diet and go to bed.

I've had to quit whining about the cold.  I've had to get out from under the covers and move and when I did, I found myself surprised by where I could go.

Action breeds action.  Productivity breeds productivity.

Maybe it is as simple as making the bed.  Once that is done, the dishes take only twenty minutes.  A walk at the park, that task you avoid at work.  The bills are paid and there is still time for your favorite things, a long book, a run, maybe a precious hour to paint or play games with your family.

You don't have to save the world today, lose five pounds today or even be perfect today.  All you have to do is decide where you are headed and take a step.  Today.

It's the law.

The law is on your side.

on my way,
m

more like this?
Bloom Where You're Planted
Take the City (if you need a little, well, force!)
Double, double, toil, and trouble (or redeeming a major fail)

What I learned in June...

Emily at Chatting at the Sky is hosting a blog party inviting readers to post what they learned in June.  By the way, this chick has a great blog, definitely worthy of your email subscription.

Please comment on what you learned in June, then share or forward.  We'll call it a party within a party...

Here are just a few things that I learned in June:

• Life is not, in fact, boring.  Sometimes things get wild.  Just when I think that I am going to be crushed under the sheer repetitiveness of cleaning this house and driving to the grocery store again, God grabs my whole basket of life and throws it in the air.  I have no idea where the pieces will land.  They will probably land exactly where they started and I learned in June, that I will NOT take that for granted.  Actually, I will probably will take it for granted, but not for quite awhile.

• Sometimes it feels kind of good when your basket of life is in the air.

• I glow.  This June, while our entire basket of life was in the air, my husband said I had a glow about me.  It's adrenaline.  I am not stressed by the pieces of my life careening around my head, landing who-knows-where, but I am awake, alive and aware.

• Sometimes God is like a freight train, fast, loud and powerful rolling right through your life.  You can run alongside and grab on or you can watch it go by.  This has happened to me before.  I LOVE IT WHEN HE IS LIKE THIS.  LOVE IT!  Just grab the train and hold on.  It is one of the few things I do well and I encourage you to grab the Train next time He comes by.  It will take your breath away.  It will make you glow.

• Running can be fun.  This is revolutionary.  I am a walker.  Two weeks ago I would tell you that I hate running.  My daughter and I started Couch to 5K.  It's fun.  I am embarrassed to admit that I  look forward to the three days a week that we run.  Seven weeks to go and we will be "runners" able to go three miles any time we want.

• I can still surprise myself.  (I didn't say confuse myself, that happens every day.)  Forty-two years old and starting to run.  After a lifetime of faithful Dr. Pepper drinking, I now prefer Coke.  Goodbye 30 years of Hershey's with Almonds, my favorite candy bar is now Milky Way.  Maybe it's early menopause.

• Don't take your local farmers' market for granted.  Their stuff really is better.  The weather here in NC is messed up this year though.  We had about three weeks of strawberries instead of six.  The blueberries and tomatoes are not here yet.  I miss my berries.  Next year I won't mess around. I will eat local strawberries because local strawberries taste like candy and store strawberries taste like cardboard unless you sprinkle sugar on top.  Then they taste like cardboard with sugar.

July may well bring the landing of the basket of life, most likely right where it was before.  But maybe not...

gotta go, there's a Train to catch,

m

Other posts you might like...

my favorite post...the identity of Superman

maybe the scariest day of my life...The Slidin' Chevy

when my kid taught me a lesson about giving...Nathan and the Bell Ringers

Happier than a pig in Mud...

In January, 10 months ago now, my husband and I decided to improve our physical fitness by creating a training and meal plan that would enable us to increase our strength and stamina while...never mind, we started counting calories and moving our backsides because we wanted to stop gaining weight and get in shape.

Being 40-something with three kids does not, in fact, doom a person to a life of going downhill...at least not coasting down at high speeds.  If I am going down, I am doing it with two parachutes open and the brakes on!

Soon after, my husband discovered a worthy motivation.

THE TOUGH MUDDER.

This is an event where you pay the organizers to let you run miles and miles stopping only to crawl through, jump over, climb under, hang from, get shocked by, or freeze in whatever obstacle they have set up.  Oh yeah, the proceeds benefit Wounded Warriors.  Your thanks for completing the course?  An orange sweatband and a beer. (Oh don't get all worked up, just don't drink the beer if you don't want to...its okay to be the salt you know...)

So, my husband trains and I walk. We write down calories, a surprisingly easy and cheap way to alter your eating for the better, and I lose a size and my husband loses 30 pounds.  *sigh*

The day arrives and we drive down, all five of us, the kids are crazy excited.  They have done lots of "training" with him (health, it's not just hereditary but contagious, yes?) and they are ready to watch some funky monkey (monkey bars) and the kiss of mud (crawling through mud under barbed wire) and other obstacles with slightly edgier names whose double meaning was lost on the kiddos.  (I just used some of the less conservative elements as a springboard to brainwash the kids with my own point of view.)

Look at the hands on the right edge of the pic above, those hands waiting to help a stranger up.  When was the last time I helped anyone up?

This is not a commercial for the Tough Mudder but a commercial for the world around you.  I had forgotten that people are not just mankind but uskind and we are loved, if not always by each other but by our Creator.

Everyone was so nice, participants, volunteers, family members, everyone.  Some of the costumes were skimpy but really, we saw the same amount of flesh in a fast food restaurant the night before.  There were signs encouraging determination, reliance on--wait for it--OTHERS, doing your best and getting back up when you fall and above all, HELPING OTHER PEOPLE WHO ARE DOWN.

You see, in my insulated little world, I fear I have lost my saltiness.  I admit to you that I stand apart when I venture outside my circle of family and church.  I don't know quite how to handle the world at large because I seem to be rarely in it anymore.  And considering my faith, this makes me quite useless.  So I was really encouraged to see what potential we have to impact the world around us.

I saw people at the Tough Mudder wearing their faith, talking their faith and walking their faith and these real people and the others there who were having fun on behalf of a noble cause, these should be some of our heroes, not the folks on TV who are paid but the ones who have paid just to help someone else.  A worthy model, don't you think?

The Tough Mudder Creed

As a Tough Mudder I pledge that:
I understand that Tough Mudder is not race but a challenge.
I put teamwork and camaraderie before my course time.
I do not whine, kids whine.
I help my fellow mudders complete the course.
I overcome all fears.

Now, with your permission, I would like to editorialize...

Abba Father,

I understand that life is not a race but a challenge and the goal is a race worthy of a "well done" from you, and certainly NOT to finish first!
I put love of you and love of my neighbors before MY chosen course.
I do not whine but try to be thankful in all circumstances because You are God and I am not.
I help my fellow mudders complete the course, enough said.
I overcome all fears only through You who strengthen me.

And another thing, this event was physically and mentally challenging.  We need more of that in general.  Let our men and boys, many of whom were made to be warriors, let them have challenges and do hard things and fail and try again.  Let them test and exert themselves. Spiritually, can you imagine how salty they could make an event like this if they were to come in droves?

And for your girls, what an inspiration.  My daughter watched a beautiful young woman cross the monkey bars (these bars, about 20 of them, followed the inclined roof line going upward, peaking and coming down), with the guys in her group cheering her on.  We were so impressed because those fitness nut guys cheering, they had fallen from the bars into the muddy water before that girl crossed.

Events like this are springing up all over now.  Test them to make sure the cause is worthy but we are inspired to action.  The boy, 9, watched his daddy cross "the monkey"and said out of the side of his mouth, "How old do you have to be to do this?"

Trying to be worth my salt,
Michele