Re-Construct

It’s all about deconstruction these days.  Take things apart, re-name things, breakdown structures and institutions.  Whether it be gender or marriage or family or policing, you name it.  These days destruction is king.  I heard a podcast recently that struck me: we want to all be the ones to take things apart, but who wants to do the hard thing of rebuilding?

When I think about this time of reflection for me, when I think about what I have been focusing my life on, it’s easy to think of the things I should do less of.  Take out some social media, be aware of influences, be careful what I read and who I listen to.  Remove the lies, put aside the thoughts, take it ALL out.  All of these things are simple enough to identify but when I take it all out, how do I re-build?  I was watching the famed “Hamilton” musical and one line hit me.  As George Washington is challenging Hamilton, “yeah, I know you want to fight, but to die?  That’s easy.  It’s living that’s hard.” 

Yeah, he’s right.  To do the very hard things, brick by brick, laying a strong foundation for each day and each week and each month.  Those are the hard things.   To get up early each day and read my Bible before I touch my phone.  That’s hard.  To spend that extra 20 minutes with my kids at bedtime to tuck them in and hear their thoughts when I simply want to do my own thing – that’s hard.  To focus my mind on things above, to put aside fears of the future, and all my planning and devising, and put aside time to simply BE with God, fixing my eyes on eternal things?  That’s hard.  Without intention, we get nowhere.

It’s one thing to take our life apart, but it’s another thing altogether to put in place what needs to be in place to hold us steady.  That takes consistency and discipline.  Let’s be honest, I don’t want to do the hard thing.  I tell this to my kids all the time when they are frustrated and not wanting to do the hard thing, “good thing that you can do hard things.”  Gulp.  I need to live that more than I need to tell them that. Resiliency is formed in the daily grind of doing the small, the right, the hard, the good thing over and over again in face of our own natural tendency to slide back into apathy and inaction.  We hardly need obstacles to make life hard, just our own human nature is hard enough to push against!  Actually, let’s be honest, we need a huge dose of God’s Spirit in us to have any bit of self-discipline.

What habits are you asking God to help you form now, in order to bring you to the place you want to be spiritually and emotionally?  What paths of resilience are you laying down?  What direction are you setting out towards?

Now’s the time to take the next step, and another step after the other.