Weekly Impressions - Rubber Meets the Road

Proverbs 25:28

“Like a city that is broken into and without walls is a man who has no control over his spirit.”

I knew it would come at some point.  That stage when the excitement fades and you just don’t feel like it.  The glamor of creating a blog and starting a new project has dulled, and that giddy feeling that helps to buoy my spirits is absent.  I’m more irritable and more easily set off.  This is why I am thankful for Discipline and Grace.

I created this blog as part of my defense against that feeling.  I knew I would need the extra accountability to continue to strive for a thankful heart.  I could get away with posting “rhetoric” - basically with faking it - and I have seriously fought that urge on some of my posts.  However, as I said in last week’s Weekly Impressions - Genesis, my job is to be honest.  Darn.

It really does help, though.  Accountability can be a strong motivator.  It helps to achieve discipline, and discipline helps when you don’t feel like it.  And for those times when you don’t hit the mark, there’s grace.  God loves me anyway.  Without that stress, I can continue exercising discipline.

The fall of feelings was at the beginning of this week, and as I’ve thought about how to be honest in my accountability, I’ve been able to dispel most of the irritability.  I may still not feel thankful very often, but I can exercise the discipline of ruminating on thankful things.  While my feelings don’t necessarily kick into the positive, they are less negative.

I still haven’t worked up my room lists of thankful things, though I have been trying to brainstorm what I can put on them.  That in itself has been useful.  It has been a way to fill my mind with good things (Philippians 4:8) rather than with garbage.  This is the habit I hope to get into all the time, rather than just in the rooms of my house - but one must start somewhere.  

So while I may not have experienced as many thankful feelings as I did last week, I am progressing.  Blogging has forced me to practice, and practicing has opened an avenue of strategy in every-day living.  What I am working on most right now is what I dwell on from moment to moment.  I need to keep control over my spirit and to “set [my] mind on the things above, not on the things that are on earth.” (Colossians 3:2)

What are you dwelling on?