The challenge with beating down your inner mind all the time is that sometimes your body is really telling you something important! Like maybe you have an infection that has set in your lungs! Here I am running in the early hours of the morning, in the rain, and pushing myself even though “I feel tired.” I am sluggish, things are moving slow, my legs feel like lead and I cannot seem to get a good breath of air.
My reaction? Suck it up loser. Get back out and get it done! I suppose this is an admirable trait, but as I learned today sometimes you better listen.
All this thinking this week about “surrendering to God,” had me really thinking about taking time to really ponder what God might be trying to tell me. What should I be doing right now? Here I am trying to do all these things, and do I really believe that I can trust God with the outcome? Well if that is the case, maybe I should listen now and then carefully. Perhaps there is a prompting that could get me to do something different, that could help me improve my outcome. Something that I did not think about. That by myself, I would not have done. Well, I listened. Guess what I heard?
Go to the doctor.
I smugly thought, yah, I will just go there and talk to them. They will find nothing wrong and pat me on the head and tell me to get rest and drink water and all that. Nope. Turns out my primal brain has been screaming at me for the last two weeks for good reason. Turns out that God was right. Hard to accomplish your objectives when you are fighting an infection that has set in your lungs. Luckily it is not that bad, easily curable with the right anti-biotic treatment. I think they call it walking pneumonia or something like that. Anyway, what would it have been like if I plowed through another 30 days of “sucking it up?”