"Nothing is more disastrous than to 

study faith, 

analyze faith, 

make noble resolves of faith,

but never actually to make the leap of faith"

Vance Havner

"Though the road has been rocky, it sure feels good to me"

Bob Marley

In my last post I talked about my revelation and execution of boy push ups.     I will be honest with you - those 10 boy push ups were the last ones I've done.    I've gone right back to girly push ups.    There is a twinge of shame when I do them too.     I'm not sure why, but I can't bring myself to do them again, and certainly not at the gym in front of people.     

Although boy push ups are a mountain I'm still navigating - I did have another small victory in my fitness world.....and I can apply the punch line of it to other areas in life.     

The assisted pull up machine.   I walk by it every time I'm at the gym and scoff at it.    I scoff at it because deep down inside I know that I'm not strong enough to do it....not only that, I scoff at people who DO do it.   How sick is that?     I won't even talk about people who can do real pull ups......not even going there - my mind is not capable of processing such feats.    For now, my scoffing is directed only at the assisted pull up machine.

So the other day, I'm looking at it....it's a perfect setup.    The evil machine in the forefront and some distance behind is my trainer, just standing there (I'm sure he was contemplating new ways of torturing people in his moment of standing still).    It was the perfect alignment of the planets.     I yelled out to him - but secretly hoping that he'd give me that, "I'm busy" look and run away.    Nope.   He came over and stood next to me at the evil machine.    And then, the words fell out of my mouth.

"Can I do this?"

You could see the wheels spinning in his mind.   He asked me a question or two and in all his wisdom perceived that I was starting to back down from the challenge that was before me.

"Well, you're going to try it now..."

Oh, seriously?   How do I get myself into these messes.   

Normally, I would feed off the confidence of my trainer - but honestly, I don't think he really knew if I would be able to do it or not.    The whole machine is intimidating to me.....it's tall (I'm vertically challenged, you know) and there's lots of things going on there - just craziness.    The only thing stopping me from getting on was myself and all my thoughts......I took a leap of faith and climbed onto the contraption.

I did 3 pull ups......I don't know what my trainer was doing, but I know that he was helping me in some way - I didn't care!!   I was ON the machine.....I was DOING the machine.....I was PULLING UP!!!

It was kinda cool.    But it didn't seem kinda cool until like 45 minutes later - I think I was sort of in shock for a bit.

What I've realized is that I can have victories even though I'm still stuck in some places.    The boy push up thing - it just boggles my mind.    The struggle of just doing it....and doing it in front of others.   But then being able to climb on the pull up monster even though I haven't totally tackled the push up thing.    I don't know, I hope I'm making sense to somebody.

If you are stuck in something - don't let that be an excuse not to go forward in other places.

This "rocky road" that I've been on does feel good to me - it's just right, and I know it.   It's not easy, it's not always fun and it takes alot of faith on my part.    I don't have it figured out.    But that's not really the point, right?     

Thanks for reading....