Watch ye and pray...

It's official.  I am a slug.  My worst nightmare is realized- I am a slug.  The term "slug" is used endearingly in my family to describe someone who is lazy.  I hate being a slug.  I am truly happiest when I am energized and productive, but sometimes the sluggy-ness overwhelmes me and the thoughts of productivity and energy feel so far from me.

Yesterday morning the sluggy-ness reared its ugly head.  It was once again Monday, once again 27 degrees outside and I was tired.  I couldn't get out of bed and go to the gym.  I thought, I'll go after school- and I DESPISE going after school.  Well of course, by the time my heated seat got ahold of me during the ride home, I bypassed the exit for the gym with the intention of doing a DVD at home.  I don't have to tell you that an episode of Law and Order SVU (why, oh why do I keep watching that show?), a conversation with my mom, two with my sister, and a few episodes of How I Met Your Mother later, the most exercise I had accomplished was walking back and forth to the fridge four times.

Of course, my Lenten journey has nothing to do with physical exercise, and in fact before Trash TV Marathon I did my Bible reading for the day (I am completely enjoying it- but more on that later.)  It is just the overall desire to give up living with passion- not because I don't enjoy living that way- I do- but because I am tired.  I feel like Jesus' disciples who couldn't stay awake while He went to the mountain to pray.


Then He came, and found them sleeping, and said to Peter, Simon, are you sleeping?  Could you not watch one hour?  Watch ye and pray, lest you enter into temptation.  The spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak.

I don't know if my spirit is willing.  I hope it is.  But I know that my flesh is weak.  Lent is only two weeks old and the old instant gratification bug is making me itch.  Six weeks should be nothing!  God is not asking that much of me in this sense and yet I am so conditioned to think that I should have earned something by now.

I have been on enough health/fitness programs to know that if you regard the program as a means to an end instead of a lifestyle change that you are sure to fail.  I need to start regarding this with the same philosophy.  And to that end I do not need to fall deeper into the pit of slug-dom by binge eating and glueing myself to the couch.  When Christ is acting as your personal alarm clock, it's time to wake up.