Last March I made a decision to add a regular weight lifting regimen to my schedule. I knew it would take some doing to develop the habit (I had last lifted regularly in High School), and I knew that I would have to work through some significant pains to get into a routine (what was left of my chest I now displayed around my waist), so I petitioned a friend with a regular lifting addiction habit to take me on as a lifting partner.
Over the weeks and month I began to truly enjoy our workout times together. In an ideal week we rotate through workouts on back, chest and arms recording meticulously in our journals how heavy and how many skull crushers, overhead pulls, tricep pulls, alternating bi's, etc. we do. The journal serves as a de facto accountability log. It's a record of our time in his man cave, grunting and lifting, growling and sweating, encouraging and challenging each other.
If you were to look in our logs at the period of late July through mid-September you would see a significant slacking off in our workouts. Vacations, his mission trip to El Salvador, mine to Africa, the battle to overcome a persistent parasite that lingered long after the return to American soil, District Conference, volleyball officiating, counseling, meetings all took a toll. But in mid-September the workouts returned. But we paid a price for the loss of discipline. In every category, in every exercise, we lost ground. I was actually a little surprised by how much had been lost so quickly.
It hurt to lift less weight than we had before. This was both a physical and Psychological hurt. Muscles that had not been worked hard in weeks ached as we got back in the routine. But there was also the emotional hurt of realizing we went backwards. A part of lifting is going heavier or at least maintaining where you've been. It is never good to go backwards.
One evening as we were lifting, I told my workout partner, (who happens to read man in the window) that the Holy Spirit was speaking, teaching me as I lifted. I was having one of those leadership moments as we lifted.
Leaders know and develop habits and practices that define them as leaders, those habits make them strong, they keep them strong. Some of my habits include the time in his presence in the mornings, the reading of books that challenge my thinking, meeting with men who speak into my life, cultivating prayer that believes God for great things. Strength in those disciplines has been gained slowly over time. Lifting was reminding me of a huge truth.
When we stop the disciplines that define us, we lose ground, not just a little, we lose ground surprisingly fast. So we can either keep the disciplines or pay the price.
Leaders know we are defined by the disciplines we keep.
Thanks T. for lifting with me. Thank you Holy Spirit for teaching me even when I'm slinging iron.
the man in the window
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