Multifaceted Monday
What a Monday! It wasn’t a groaning, complaining, sulky, exhausting Monday. No, it was filled with choices and, ultimately, goodness. Walk with me…
When I found out we were pregnant and I wasn’t getting enough sleep, I decided to stop setting a morning alarm and wake up when my body woke up and was fully rested. I was blessed to be able to shift my hours at work to make that possible. However, it’s been 18 weeks today since Zadok was born. It’s been 18 weeks that I’ve been no longer pregnant. In the last 18 weeks, it was helpful while grieving deeply; that’s an understatement. But there came this point where my mornings were no longer for healing the depths of pain I once felt. Though I miss him, I wasn’t lying in bed thinking about Zadok and mourning him no longer being in my womb. I’d gotten comfortable with getting to sleep in and take my time in the mornings, reading/listening to my devotional, browsing Facebook and Instagram… plucking my face–cause let’s be honest, that’s a lot of my daily morning and evening ritual… eyebrows & PCOS pluckidge (no, it’s not a real word, but it sounds like a good one to me). In the mean time, God’s called me to more. He’s called me to do things that require me to better steward my time, things that require me to set an alarm in the morning.
So, that brings me to today. Monday. I set my alarms last night and when 7:00am came around I was ready… And by ‘ready’ I mean, I was out of bed by 7:15am. Now, it helped that I had a chiropractor appointment at 8:45am, but I was up. Day 1 of setting an alarm and getting up and going: check.
I woke up with my right knee hurting, so when I got in for my adjustment and she asked how I was feeling, I let her know. She adjusts my back, neck, and pelvis, and tells me if the pelvis adjustment doesn’t help my knee, I’ll need to call back in for an appointment for a “New Condition”. “K byeeee” is about how that went. Left praying it would go away and I wouldn’t have to worry about it.
I get to my office around 9:30am after my appointment, and jump right into filling my boss in on last week’s traveling for our grantee conference. I got reporting stuff done and got caught up on clients and services provided while I was gone. Then, I left work just after 5:00pm and went to my spin class.
I walked into spin hydrated–unlike last week which made it a real struggle–and tired; I was close to just going home after work to write and go to bed. But I didn’t. I have yet to write a blog about this spin class I’ve been attending for the last several weeks, but that will come. I will tell you in brief, this is not yo momma’s spin class. This is spin meets therapy meets combat on the battlefield of your mind. You walk in ready to fight, to fight your thoughts, your mountains, whatever it is. So tonight, I walked in first fighting tiredness that was sure to be defeated during the first sprint.
Tonight, I fought for me. I pushed me. I didn’t let me backdown. Yes, that is grammatically incorrect, but it was on purpose. I pushed myself harder and further than I have before. At the beginning the instructor told us to set a goal, how many miles we wanted to reach. I said 10 miles. At some point, something in me switched and where I’ve never reached passed like 125rpm sprinting, tonight I reached 148rpm. By the end, I’d made it to 11.4 miles. A whole nother level of determination happened tonight and it felt good. The post-cycle sea legs was a little much, but the cleansing feeling of a good sweat after you showed the bike who’s boss… totally worth it. AND what knee pain? Psshhh. Gone.
THE PART I ACTUALLY WANTED TO GET TO…
After spin, we wipe down our bikes and weights (cause yes, we use weights during spin class… unlike yo momma’s class). So one of my friends had come with me the last 2 weeks, but they had some financial things come up so she wasn’t able to come with me today. The instructor asked where she was, and I told her essentially that. I suppose one of the other girls overheard me. She brings me a blank class punchcard with my friend’s name on it and tells me, “Will you give this to [friend’s name]? I really want her to be able to be here; she’s always so encouraging when I see her work so hard. I just want her to come.” Y’all. The level of excitement my heart felt to be witnessing this was unmatched. “Absolutely, I will!! I’m gonna hug you for her, too! I’m seriously gonna drive to wherever she is right now and give it to her!!” I couldn’t wait and texted her to see where she was as soon as I got in my car.
I got to where she was and gave her the card. She didn’t know what to do! I told her what’d happened without telling her who it was from, as they’d requested. My friend of many words had none… well, aside from “Who’s this from?!” “Why?! They don’t even really know me!” So I told her why. Because she’s loved. Because when you’re a part of the body of Christ, you’re siblings. Because Jesus loves her, this we know. Because He knows her needs. Because He’s seen her faithfulness and her sacrifice. Because He’s faithful. Just because He loves her.
Friends, I absolutely LOVE community. I love my immediate communities of co-workers and church friends and Moms in the Making. But even more than that, I love my Body of Christ community; my community of fellow believers. First Corinthians 12:12 says, “For just as the body is one and has many members, and all the members of the body, though many, are one body, so it is with Christ.” It further goes on to expound on the body and it’s members,
14 For the body does not consist of one member but of many. 15 If the foot should say, “Because I am not a hand, I do not belong to the body,” that would not make it any less a part of the body. 16 And if the ear should say, “Because I am not an eye, I do not belong to the body,” that would not make it any less a part of the body. 17 If the whole body were an eye, where would be the sense of hearing? If the whole body were an ear, where would be the sense of smell? 18 But as it is, God arranged the members in the body, each one of them, as he chose. 19 If all were a single member, where would the body be? 20 As it is, there are many parts, yet one body.
21 The eye cannot say to the hand, “I have no need of you,” nor again the head to the feet, “I have no need of you.” 22 On the contrary, the parts of the body that seem to be weaker are indispensable, 23 and on those parts of the body that we think less honorable we bestow the greater honor, and our unpresentable parts are treated with greater modesty, 24 which our more presentable parts do not require. But God has so composed the body, giving greater honor to the part that lacked it,25 that there may be no division in the body, but that the members may have the same care for one another. 26 If one member suffers, all suffer together; if one member is honored, all rejoice together.
27 Now you are the body of Christ and individually members of it.
See, what I love about this is we are all a different part with a different role of the same body. When we are operating in our renewed nature, we are able to be a well-oiled machine. What I love is that we are always to be the heart of God, but I love when I get to be the arms and embrace others in love… but I also love when I get to be the hands receiving a blessing for someone else and passing it to them. That’s what I felt like I got to be tonight; I got to be the deliverer of blessings! The passer of the Jesus Love Note from one believer to another! AND I didn’t have to feel like my role was threatened or that my needs were any less seen because the role in blessing I had was just to see it through.. to hand this punch card to my friend. That blessed my heart more than anything! So many times we get sour-faced and envious when we see God blessing someone else when (1) their story is not our own and (2) we would never try to clock someone else’s lap time on a race we’re both running… we would never get to the end of a race and try to claim someone else’s award for ourselves. In time. In due time, we will reap, if we do not give up (Galatians 6:9). I have financial needs of my own; I could have chosen to be envious with a “Why wasn’t that for me, God?!” But what good would that have done?! And what a missed opportunity otherwise! I love what Proverbs 11:25 says in The Passion Translation,
“Those who live to bless others will have blessings heaped upon them, and the one who pours out his life to pour out blessings will be saturated with favor.”
Another thing I love about community within the body of Christ is that we’re all one body with countless subcommunities within from who God has brought together and connected. This girl who bought the punchcard for my friend has no clue what that would mean to my friend. She doesn’t know the status of their finances. She doesn’t know what she and her husband have been working on faithfully to be better stewards of what God has given them, but I do cause she and I are in community together. Sometimes all that connects us is each other… and the same heart that provides the blood that brings life and flows through our veins. We are all so beautifully interconnected.
SO. All that to say, this from multifaceted Monday:
When God calls you to do something, make time for it. There’s purpose for what He requests of you even though you may not see it’s importance or impact just yet.
God cares about little things like little knee pains that sometimes get resolved through simple prayer and working through it. Would the little pain have gone away if I just babied it? I don’t know, maybe. Or maybe I needed to go through it. Apply that how you will…
Fight for you. Don’t give in to too tired, too weak, too {fill in the blank}. He’s made you stronger than that! He’s equipped you for battle, so battle the thoughts, the lies and the anti-truths, the little foxes that spoil the vines. Conquer mountains and uproot lies. You really can do all things through Christ who gives you strength (Philippians 4:13).
Believers, whether you cooperate or not, we are all one body. It’s such a beautiful thing when we accept to this renewed nature (the nature of the Spirit) we took on when we invited Jesus into our hearts. It’s such an ugly thing when reject the ways of God and resort back to old nature and sinful habits and live unsurrendered. It looks like a chaotic body… one person attempting to go in all directions. Looks crazy in your mind, doesn’t it?
Community. There’s no greater gift than my community. My tribe. My elephants and oaks (another blog for another day). When God said “it’s not good for man to be alone”… He meant it. He created us to need Him and to need one another. I know you’ve been hurt by relationships before; who hasn’t? Isolation only gives the illusion of being safe with no one allowed close enough to hurt you. But who can fight alongside you when you’re isolated? Don’t fight the love, y’all! Life is better together!
It’s a blessing to be a blessing to others. When your friends receive the answered prayer that you’re still waiting on, when they receive blessings you need too, rejoice with those rejoicing (Romans 12:15) and keep blessing others… and remember, friend, He does see you (Genesis 16:13).
This life is filled with the beautiful unexpected and opportunities to choose how we will respond to this adventure we’re on. There’s One who encourages and empowers you up the mountain, equipping you with all you need when you need it. And there’s an enemy who constantly tries to convince us we’re not capable of enduring such hardship, distracts us by trying to get us to look at and compare our journey to someone else’s, and then feeds lies to make the journey more difficult and daunting. It sounds simple in words, but, you, my friends, get to choose with whom you will adventure on.