I am beginning a new journey for the next three months. A three-month challenge to take me through the summer and build what I consider to be a foundation in my life.
In the part of the country I live in, our soil is what they call “gumbo.” It is kind of a clay-type soil that expands and contracts with the amount of rainfall we receive. During extended dry seasons, this tends to create a lot of problems as the soil shrinks and shifts. Water main breaks become common around town and the foundations of our houses shift. The foundation repair businesses here stay busy. It isn’t that the foundations were poorly made, but that the stresses of the changing soil have caused a few cracks, and the foundation is no longer level. When that happens, you begin to see signs of the foundation problem primarily in cracks in the walls.
Repairing the cracks in the sheetrock is easy. Just fill in the cracks and repaint. Everything looks good again. But if the foundation is not repaired, the cracks will be exposed again and eventually become larger, and more cracks will begin to appear. If the foundation is left unrepaired, bigger issues will begin to show up, like plumbing and sewer problems. If you focus on fixing the symptoms of the problem, this will become a never-ending battle. The only way to solve this is to repair the foundation and make it stronger and then go about fixing the cracks in the sheetrock and other problems.
The same is true in our lives. We see the “cracks” that we need to fix in our lives, and we tend to focus on filling in the cracks and painting over them. For the most part, we are a very task-oriented society and when we see a problem, we want to fix it and move on. If I have an issue with my weight, I want to find a quick fix and move on. If I am having problems with my boss or a relationship, it is easier to change jobs or move on to another relationship. If I can’t afford my lifestyle, just take out a loan or put it on the credit card. We are always looking for a quick fix. Whatever struggle I have, I want to focus on that struggle and move on. The challenge is, often we are focusing on the wrong thing. We are focused on fixing the cracks in the sheetrock so everything looks good while the foundation remains unrepaired.
At some point, we all need a little foundation repair. Maybe you are feeling like you are a little stuck and no matter how hard you work and what you do, nothing ever seems to change. Maybe you have a specific issue in your life that you have been trying to overcome, but you don’t seem to be making any progress. Maybe everything is going well at this point in your life and you don’t feel like you need any help. If you are planning to expand your house, it will put more stress on your foundation and, unless that foundation is strengthened, it will begin to crack. More success tends to bring out our true character and even the smallest crack in our foundation becomes more evident. No matter what stage you are in life, we all need to be working on repairing or building a stronger foundation.
Over the next three months, I am challenging myself to repair and build my foundation. I have shared this with my family and some have decided to join me on this journey. I am sharing it with you so you can join me, as well. It is not necessarily a difficult or time-consuming challenge. If it is too difficult or takes too much time, it becomes difficult to continue and complete the challenge as life throws its little surprises my way. If it takes too much time, it is not sustainable in my already very busy life.
The three-month challenge will focus on two main areas, spiritual health and physical health. I will be sharing short daily devotionals and some additional reading suggestions to begin building the spiritual foundation. I know each of us are at vastly different places in our physical health. I know in my own family, some (like me) are woefully out of shape, and some are on the complete opposite end of that spectrum and everywhere in between. I will share some of the things that I am working on, but I encourage each of you to find a program and exercises that work for you.
The physical and spiritual health of a person are tied very closely together. When one is a little off, it has a big impact on the other. That is why I have decided to focus on the spiritual and physical at the same time. When I am physically healthy, I have more energy and am able to think more clearly. When I am spiritually healthy, I feel like being more physically active and taking better care of myself. Our foundation is built on both the spiritual and the physical.
While my focus will be on building my spiritual and physical health, there are some projects that need to be completed, as well. Life goes on and things have to be done. Some of the tasks that need to be completed have arisen out of poor habits. My desk at home is cluttered and piled with a few incomplete projects. I have a few other projects that I have promised to do for other people that remain incomplete. I have some projects on my to-do list that were on my to-do list last year and the year before that. While my focus for this three-month challenge is not to complete these projects, a few of them need to be done. But the focus of this challenge is my physical and spiritual health to build the foundation on which these other projects and more will be completed. I have a list of unfinished projects because of a character flaw, a crack in the sheetrock, that can only be fixed by repairing and building my foundation.
In our task and accomplishment-oriented culture, it is easy to focus on the projects and the tasks to get as much done as possible and we continue to repair the cracks and get really good at sheetrock repair while all the time our foundation is continuing to fall apart. Then, seemingly without warning, we begin to have water leaks and other major problems because we have continued to focus on getting very good at doing the same thing we have always done, hoping and praying that one day we will stop having cracks in the sheetrock and start to get ahead in life. When the house begins to crumble, it seems easier to just give up on the house and quit. Sometimes we try to rebuild an entirely new house on the same old foundation. But there is always hope in building a better life, but that has to start with a good foundation.
I hope you will join me on this three-month journey to repair and build a stronger foundation for my life, and that you will be blessed with a stronger foundation for your life.
