By Michelle (Graceful, Faith in the Everyday)
I can’t walk. Or climb stairs. Or bend to pick a shred of lint off the carpet. Or apply deodorant without groaning audibly.
Don’t be alarmed. I brought this misery upon myself.
Last Saturday morning I enrolled in my first-ever session of Boot Camp. The name, of course, should have been the first hint, but I figured I could handle it. I’m a runner right? How hard can “Boot Camp” be?
Yeah. Pretty hard. Especially when the instructor is the son of Satan. Seriously. Combine medicine ball thrusts, squats, lunges, jump roping, running, push-ups and the plank with suicide sprints, bicep curls with resistance bands and “burpees” (don’t ask), and then– if you’re me – when it’s all over return home and paint your entire bedroom. Not just a touch-up job, mind you – I painted the entire bedroom, on a ladder, with a roller…after Boot Camp.
Suffice to say, simply singing the hymns in church on Sunday morning made my abdominals sear. I’ve been less sore after completing a 26-mile marathon.
My husband Brad doesn’t have any pity on me, despite the fact that crossing my legs has become a full-body operation, with both arms required to hoist one leg over the other. Don’t feel badly or think he’s cruel. This is the man who has known me for 17 years. He’s seen this kind of thing before. He knows that moderation is not my strong suit.
I approach a lot of things in life like I approached my Boot Camp/Renovate the House day. Exercise, diet, work, blogging, faith, serving – I’ve tackled each of these with similar gusto and nearly identical results: I’ve either burned out entirely or come real close.
There was a time when I attempted a Boot Camp-style relationship with God. I started reading the Bible, joined a small group, took adult education and leadership classes at my church, read mountains of spiritual literature, volunteered for a number of local ministries, wrote devotionals. I immersed myself in all things spiritual.
And then I wondered why it didn’t work. Why didn’t I feel any closer to God? Why didn’t I feel a deeper connection to him? Why didn’t I hear him any clearer? Where were the results of all my hard work?
Over time I’ve come to realize that cultivating a relationship with God isn’t a results-based exercise. Sure I reap the benefits sometimes. But often I don’t feel like any “progress” is being made at all. And that’s simply because connection with God can’t be achieved via intensive training, even via Spiritual Boot Camp.
As the Benedictines say, this process is a conversatio morum, a conversion of life:
Conversion of life is a process where, again and again, we recognize that we’ve turned from God, we listen to how God is calling us back and we take action to return to living a gospel life. It’s a process in which the goal is not the self-focused goal of fulfillment. Our goal is Christ, a goal reached only by continual struggle.
Jane Tomaine, St. Benedict’s Toolbox
My approach to knowing God is less dramatic now. I plod. I embrace the moments when I feel his presence or see his work in my life. And I continue to put one foot in front of the other on the days I don’t.
Are you looking for a Boot Camp conversion – a quick-fix? An instantaneous connection with God? Or are you in it for the long haul…for life?
"Woe to those who say, 'Let God hurry, let him hasten his work so we may see it. Let it approach, let the plan of the Holy One of Israel come so we may know it.'" Isaiah 5:19
Michelle is a Christian wife and mother of two originally from Massachusetts now living in Nebraska. She is a part-time writer, editor and fundraiser for Nebraska PBS/NPR. Michelle loves to write about how her family illuminates God's presence in her everyday life, and on finding (and keeping) faith in the everyday. Michelle enjoys reading, running and writing. Be sure to go visit her blog, Graceful, Faith in the Everyday.