Tag: goals

anxiety, change, encouragement, lessons learned, midlife faith, reinventing

Ditch the Baggage

Bethany LaShell

If you’re anything like me, you’ve made resolutions to lose weight, do devotions daily, save more money, be nicer to your family, and have a home-cooked meal on the table every night by 5:30. While there’s nothing wrong with those resolutions, if you’re anything like me, you’ve already broken at least one of them—and we’re only a few days into the new year!

Why do we do this to ourselves year after year after year? Good question! Let’s take a look at the top resolutions people make, why we break them, and what we can do about it.

Top resolutions

  • Lose weight
  • Exercise more
  • Get organized
  • Learn to speak a new language (or another skill)
  • Save more money/spend less money
  • Quit smoking/drinking/other addiction
  • Read more
  • Travel more

While there’s nothing wrong with any of those resolutions per se, chances are that they won’t stick longer than the time it takes for the list to float underneath the refrigerator.

Let’s think, instead of a different kind of resolution that is attainable. The writer of Hebrews encourages us to run the race of life well (even if we never sign up for a 5K):

Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight, and sin which clings so closely, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith.

Hebrews 12:1-2 ESV

Why Resolutions Fail

So, why do our best intentions at keeping our New Year’s resolutions—for sure this year—fail? They fail for several reasons:

  • They’re too vague or broad (get healthier)
  • They’re unrealistic (lose 50 pounds in a month)
  • You don’t plan ahead (the pantry has more chips than carrots)
  • They don’t include accountability and/or tracking (I can do this by myself)
  • You’re afraid of failure and self-predict failure (I never keep my resolutions)

How to Make Resolutions Stick

  • Make goals reasonable and achievable
  • Make goals specific
  • Make a plan and post your goals in a visible place; break your goals into smaller, actionable steps
  • Include an accountability partner and/or a tracking mechanism
  • Practice positive self-talk. Leave yourself visible reminders (on your bathroom mirror, steering wheel, phone lock screen)

Maybe trying different types of resolutions is the key to sticking to them. Here’s a helpful list.

Give Yourself Grace

These are all great ideas, but let’s be realistic here. We’ll all have days when we break our New Year’s resolutions—before breakfast even! So let’s learn to show ourselves a little grace.

Let’s resolve this year to let go of the mom/wife/friend guilt we carry around. Just think how much lighter we’d be without all of that extra baggage! When our healthy eating resolutions go out the window with the leftover Christmas fudge, simply resolve to make more healthy choices the next time.

When we hit the snooze alarm one too many times to complete our devotions before the kids clamor for breakfast, resolve to sneak in a little quiet time later in the day instead of giving up.

Let’s resolve that the occasional drive-through meal doesn’t mean the end of our homemade dinner resolutions.

As the apostle Paul reminds us:

But he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” Therefore I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may rest upon me.

2 Corinthians 12:9 ESV

Don’t focus on numbers (on the scale, on social media, in your bank account). Focus on feeling better and doing better, not perfection.

Deal? I’m in for less personal guilt this year, how ’bout you?

Drop me a line and let me know what your resolutions are for this year, so I can pray for grace for you!

change, devotional, healing, lessons learned, medical issues, midlife faith, reinventing

Behind the Mask of Health Mania

Bethany LaShell

As we begin a new year, we often make goals or resolutions to improve our physical health—lose weight, exercise more, eat better, cook at home more, cut out sugar, etc. But we often forget about those goals before the end of the month. While there’s nothing wrong with improving our physical health and nothing wrong with making goals or resolutions, perhaps we’d be better served by focusing on the state of our souls.

It’s all too easy to hide the state of our souls behind the state of our physical bodies. Many overly health-conscious people hide the imperfections of their souls behind the perfection of their physical bodies. We obsess over counting points and steps while neglecting our daily devotions. (Just me? I thought not.) We preen in front of the dressing room mirrors while gossiping behind closed doors. 

While we are definitely called to take care of our physical bodies as the temple of the Holy Spirit (1 Corinthians 6), we are not called to make idols of them. Sin takes a good thing and makes it the only thing; at the same time, Christians tend to take a worldly thing and give it a spiritual spin. 

For example, the premise of Daniel Fast is to eat just vegetables in order to lose weight; however, the actual reason Daniel chose to eat only vegetables was so as not to “defile himself with the king’s food, or with the wine that he drank” (Daniel 1:8 ESV). As a result of following their convictions to remain pure, God gave them favor so that Daniel and his friends were “better in appearance and fatter in flesh” than their counterparts (Daniel 1:15 ESV). 

What we see here and in other Scriptures is that being what we would call overweight or fat meant having enough food to eat during biblical times. Obviously overeating is considered gluttonous, but as in all things, balance is the key.

Another biblical principle concerning our physical bodies that often gets taken to extremes is the concept of athletic training. The apostle Paul often uses the importance of physical training to emphasize the importance of spiritual training. For instance, he talks about how only one person will win a race even though many people will train and participate in it. So, we are encouraged to run in such a way as to win. Of course, the point is to run our spiritual race in such a way as to win an “imperishable” wreath or crown (1 Corinthians 9:25). 

Along with the extreme of doing our utmost to win the prize, what can happen when we idealize perfection too much? We put down those who can’t achieve it, and they somehow become less than. Instead of embracing all people and abilities as God’s unique creations, we revile them and leave them in our dust. 

So our aim should be working to become more Christlike instead of focusing only on physical fitness: “while bodily training is of some value, godliness is of value in every way” (1 Timothy 4:8 ESV).

Another aspect of physical training taken to the extreme is exhaustion. Behind the mask of achievement and success lies a tired body with multiple invisible problems. We go and go and go while neglecting the rest our bodies need because our culture sees rest as laziness. But God designed us with a need for regular rest! Our need to be always on the go leads to drive-thru dinners several times a week that do not provide our bodies with the nourishment they need.

What’s the cure? When we’re so worn out that we don’t know what to do, Jesus invites us to exchange our burdens for his. “Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me … and you will find rest for your souls” (Matthew 11:29 ESV).

In the end, it’s all about balance! When we’re tired or hungry or on a sugar high, we can’t focus on God. Let’s take off our masks of physical perfection and busyness, so we can focus on our spiritual well-being and ask God what our priorities should be.

Call to Action:

Read and reflect on these passages of Scripture in light of this week’s sermon.

  • 1 Corinthians 6:12-13 (ESV)—“All things are lawful for me, but not all things are helpful. All things are lawful for me, but I will not be dominated by anything. Food is meant for the stomach and the stomach for food – and God will destroy both one and the other. The body is not meant for sexual immorality, but for the Lord, and the Lord for the body.”
  • 1 Corinthians 9:24-27 (ESV)—”Do you not know that in a race all the runners run, but only one receives the prize? So run that you may obtain it. Every athlete exercises self-control in all things. They do it to receive a perishable wreath, but we an imperishable. So I do not run aimlessly; I do not box as one beating the air. But I discipline my body and keep it under control, lest after preaching to others I myself should be disqualified.”
  • Ephesians 5:29 (ESV)—”For no one ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it, just as Christ does the church, because we are members of his body.”
  • Hebrews 4:10 ESV)—“For whoever has entered God’s rest has also rested from his works as God did from his.”

Questions for Reflection:

  1. In what ways do you find yourself masking your spiritual state behind your physical state?
  2. How have you taken a good thing and turned it into the only thing, which takes the focus off properly glorifying God with it?
  3. How can you create more balance in your physical priorities this week?
  4. How can you create more time for physical and spiritual rest in order to prioritize your relationships with God and your family?

*Note: This article was originally posted on my friend Tammy’s church blog, Beyond Sundays.

change, devotional, healing, lessons learned, midlife faith, moving on, reinventing

Out With the Old; In With the New

Bethany LaShell

So, maybe I’m a few days late to the game, but I’m still working on my vision for 2020. How ‘bout you? Or maybe your goals have already fizzled, and you need a reminder to reboot them. Here’s your invitation to keep working toward your 2020 vision!

Some of my goals feel so big and so audacious that I’m taking my time to break them down into smaller, more manageable chunks. I’m believing God for “a new thing” in this new decade. (Yes, I’m aware that some of you think the new decade doesn’t start until 2021, but let’s set that debate aside for now.) At the end of this year, I’ll be reaching a milestone birthday with a new decade of life. So, it’s time. It’s time to shed the past decade of hurts and hard stuff. It’s time to do something with the lessons that God’s taught me through all of the yuckiness of recent life events. 

Thus says the Lord, who makes a way in the sea, … “Remember not the former things, nor consider the things of old. Behold, I am doing a new thing; now it springs forth, do you not perceive it? I will make a way in the wilderness and rivers in the desert.” — Isaiah 43:16–19

— Isaiah 43:16–19 (ESV)

If my God can make a dry path for the Isralites through the Red Sea, make water spring forth from a dry rock, raise a dead man to life, and create something out of nothing, then he can give me a new lease on life this year! I’m on the lookout for his path for me through the desert this coming year. 

But here’s the thing: we can’t go forward if we’re looking back. We can’t make a new relationship work if we’re always bringing up the old one. We can’t hold new things if our hands are still clenched around the old things—physically or metaphorically. Dump out the cold coffee and brew a fresh cup, sister!

Together, let’s let go of fear, unrealistic expectations, old hurts, and feelings of inadequacy and insecurity. Let’s reach out and hold onto  faith, confidence, joy, and the expectation that God will do something new in our lives in 2020. Who’s with me?