you've got the power

After four days away from the gym, I changed into my work-out clothes today and spent my lunch hour on the elliptical and on the mat doing ab exercises with the CorBall.

Every time I go to the gym, I watch the people around me. What is their heart rate? How fast are they moving on the elliptical? What exercises are they doing? Sometimes I try to incorporate their habits into my work out. Other times I think to myself that they are doing this or that wrong. Every now and then I recognize that they are more fit than I am. Then I store their moves into the back of my mind with the intention of utilizing it once I am more physically able.

The internet allows us to have all information at our fingertips. You simply type something into google.com and suddenly you have endless information available to you. Some of the information is repetitive, and some of the information is anything but helpful. But it's all there.

There's this need and desire I have for things to follow a certain order. I want to know what steps I need to take. How do I achieve fulfillment? How do I go about settling on a career and then moving my way up and through that career? What steps do I need to take in order to successfully lose 100 pounds and then maintain that weight loss?

I could find all of those answers and more with a simple search. I could also walk through the aisles of a bookstore and find a book on every topic. Some of those search results and aisles might yield helpful information. But that's all it is. It's just information.

No one can tell me exactly how to go about losing 100 pounds. There is the idea of cutting calories and increasing activity. And that works. But exactly how much do I cut calories? And how much activity is too much activity?

The answer is different for everyone. Just like the path a life takes is different for everyone.

I find myself at a crossroads almost everyday. It's a crossroads about what I want to do and who I want to be. It's a crossroads of wondering how I should go about standing out or if I should just try to blend in. Sometimes I mention my questions and thoughts to other people. Other times, I remain quiet and pensive.

This evening, I finally moved the laundry off of the washing machine and dryer. I dropped it on the foot of the bed and set about my least favorite chore: folding and putting away the clean (and now wrinkled) clothes. The whole time I considered this need to have a plan. This desire to know exactly what I have to do to lose weight or land my dream job.

There is no plan I can follow directly. Life is not a straight line. It's a series of twists and turns. Every decision impacts where a person goes next. And while I do believe God has certain hopes for us and intentions for our lives, how we land at those points is completely up to us. It's why we have free will. Because He could just make every decision for us and allow us to follow a completely straight path. But He would rather us figure it out on our own.

That in itself is a blessing. Yet I so often turn that blessing into a curse and mutter about how I just want to know what is going to happen next. I just want to know when I will finally figure out exactly what my life is supposed to be.

At 26, I don't need to have it all figured out. I shouldn't have it figured all out. If I did, what would I do with the next 40 or 50 or 60 years left in my life?

It's easy to think about the now. How each decision impacts my current state. It's also easy to ignore the now and think about only the future - how I will do this or that once I reach a certain point in my career or once I have a certain amount of money in my bank account. Really I can't just concentrate on the now or the future. I need to open myself up to both. My life is meant to be lived in the present but with intention because I want the present to lead to an even better future.

And it's not just about me. This life and these decisions. Yes how I treat myself is important, and yes it is my life to live. But I want my life to be so much more than just my life.

Someone might stumble upon my blog with a question about how to lose 100 pounds. Or a statement about wanting to love themselves and feel beautiful. And I would love to give them every ounce of knowledge I have. I would love the opportunity to meet somewhere for coffee, especially a gingerbread latte with Christmas season at hand, and just talk. To hear their story and then also share mine. To understand how our lives interconnect and maybe to help them find their way. But I wouldn't be able to instill any true advice on how to live their lives.

My advice would come from my experience. The advice would be what I had learned on my journey. Maybe it would help for them to know they weren't alone. I know that helps me. But it would just be assistance. It wouldn't be the easy and clear answer they were searching for - the easy and clear answer I hope to find each time I search google.com.

I'm thankful for every result I find on google.com. I think it's imperative that we all share our stories. I think it's a gift to have the internet as a way of connecting and as a reminder what we are never alone in our struggles, our hopes, and our achievements.

But I also know to take everything with a grain of salt. I know that some of my questions will go unanswered. And I know that my life will never follow the exact same path as someone else. But that's a beautiful thing - the fact that we are all so different and yet to so similar.

So, if you ever see me in the gym watching you, just know I am intrigued. Know that your effort inspires my effort. Know that I love that I can get ideas from you. Know that you, and the story you are living, help me get back into the swing of things after four days away from exercise of any kind.

And if you are looking for answers and a clear path, just remember that you are not alone. And those answers? That path? It will all become clear for you in it's own time. And once it does, the wait will have been worth it. A reminder that is just as much for me as it is for you.

(title from "someone still believes in you" by mary beth maziarz)

for all these epiphanies

I want to be content in my life. In every aspect of my life. My job, finances, our house, my marriage, my friendships. This is something I have prayed for and sought after the past few months. Sometimes whole-heartedly but usually as a means to an end.

If I can be content with where I am, then maybe I will no longer have to be where I am. Maybe I can finally move forward.

Contentment is becoming harder to come by. It seems the more I think about it and the more I pray for it the less I have it.

My thought has been that maybe I'm not supposed to be content. That maybe I am supposed to be discontent until I find where the place I am meant to be. And so I have searched for lots of things that I thought might bring me contentment. All of the searching has done, though, is lead me back to where I started.

I mentioned this to a friend a few nights back. I touched on how frustrated I was and wondered on why I was struggling so much with being content. I even went so far as to ask if she thought my discontentment was because I wasn't supposed to be content where I was. Her response was simple, but it caused me to think on my life in that moment and has continued to make its way into the forefront of my mind since our conversation.

Maybe it's a test. Like when you ask for patience and all of a sudden everything tests every ounce of patience you have. Maybe the same can and should be said for being contentment.

I wanted to brush the notion aside and hold tightly to the thought that I was not meant to be content with where I am. But then I remembered how exhausting it is to focus on everything except for the present. And how it is so easy to miss all the good and wonderful things when concentrating on what comes next instead of on what is in front of you.

There are some things I should be discontent with. There are things I need to work through and past. Those are things like my weight and my eating habits. I should strive for better. I should seek to leave my current state and enter a healthier one.

But there are other things, more numerous things, that I need to be content with. These are the things like money, jobs, and our home.

During my lunch break, I spent time in the pool. I half-hazardly participated in aqua zumba. My muscles were sore from Monday's two workouts, and I was exhausted from a somewhat restless night's sleep. Instead of focusing on how high I kicked my legs or how closely I mimicked the dance moves, I concentrated on conversation with the others in the pool.

picture found here.

We touched briefly on jobs and more deeply on marriages. A woman ten years older than me told me that one day I would look back on my current life. She said I would laugh and wonder how I was ever that stupid or silly. She said my husband and I would reminisce on the decisions we made and ask how we ever ended up where we did. She said she knew this from experience.

It made me realize that I have been so focused on the future that it's impacting my present. I'm not quite sure if the impact is a positive one or a negative one, though.

I don't like to make mistakes. I also prefer for others to not make mistakes. And I am then terribly hard on myself and others when those mistakes were made. And I mean any mistake - not just a large one that results in s car accident or a hefty medical bill of some sort.

It's exhausting to live like that - to want to keep everyone from making mistakes and to feel a need to be so in control of everything that there are no mistakes to be made. It's exhausting to plan all of that out and to then decide on a way to execute the plan.

So maybe my discontentment stems less from the money, the house, and the job. Maybe it stems more from the exhaustion that comes from trying so hard to plan and prepare for every little thing instead of taking life as it comes and riding the waves or powering through the current.

On Sunday night, before turning off the light and maneuvering myself around the dogs, I searched for contentment in the Bible. The first verse I turned to was 1 Timothy 6:6-7. My hope had been for a verse that would detail how I could find contentment. What I got was another reminder that I bring nothing to the table, that everything I have is a gift and that no amount of effort (on my part) will keep life from happening.

As I search for contentment, I hope to move away from discontent and closer to an understanding that no amount of trying (on my part) will ensure that life follows the path I set. As I continue on a journey that has no specific end, I hope to focus more on the events on they occur and less on the end result I want.

And I hope to see the blessings that I have instead of only the blessings I hope to have. Because they are there - waiting for me to take notice - even if I refuse to acknowledge them.

(title from "hold on" by mary beth maziarz)