Giving It to God
Praying over the City at Cathedral of Saint Paul, National Shrine of the Apostle Paul.
July 31, 2018
This morning I kept up with the “big” bikers! LOL! You know, the peeps with the bike shorts and the shirts that make them look like they are in a race. Yes, one of them with a kid trailer on—I guess he didn’t want to deal with taking it off just to put it on again (been there)—passed me, but I stayed the same pace behind him as well as the person who was about a block ahead my whole journey down Summit. In fact, yesterday I biked 15 miles to West Saint Paul and back again. The hills were killer, so was the heat, but my legs never hurt…my lungs did!
The human body is so resilient, and if we are willing, we can train it to do nearly anything. 5 years ago, I was a 200-pound smoker whose greatest exercise was walking the mall. The me of today was in there, but she was suffocated by bad habits (some of which are still there today…late night snacking, fast food, shortcuts at the gym…yeah…there are always new hurdles to master…). None of these changes happened overnight and they didn’t change all at once. God guided me by putting certain changes on my heart.
The first was smoking and good gravy, if you are working on being free of that one, it was the toughest of all. It took me over two years of trying and my motto became, I HAVEN’T QUIT QUITTING! I’d go two weeks, smoke over the weekend, and put myself through the hell of quitting again on Monday. I remember the “last” straw (e.g. smoke…ha!). It was Thanksgiving 2013. I’d gone a few weeks without smoking but was so stressed I asked a friend to pick me up some cigarettes. The first drag, I thought, “WHAT THE HECK AM I DOING? This is NASTY! I’m done.”
You’d think I would have put it out and that was that—done. Oh no…no, no, no. I finished that pack and my official quit date is December 2nd. I say all of this because change is hard. Even when we are committed, we fall back into the comfort of what we know, even though we “know” it’s NOT good for us. If you are working on change, cut yourself some slack. You’ll get there. Giving it to God makes it easier.
Heavenly Father, today we pray that you help us move closer to the people, the authentic people, you created us to be. Please take those habits you’ve been nudging us about and relieve us of the obsession to keep it up. The underlying reasons we might be doing any one of these things, we ask that you begin to heal it so that we are free permanently. Whether it’s smoking, a bad relationship, addictions, food, anger, etc., please hold our hand on the journey. These things kept us safe, but we now release them to You because we trust You.
Until tomorrow peeps—your prayers are with me. With much love, praying for the release of anything that might be holding you back from a freer you.