July 21, 2010 by Teri Frana.

There’s a subject that’s been on my mind a lot lately and that is physical fitness.  After seven years in the dark nights, I find that I let myself go quite a bit.

Seven years ago I was very fit, ate healthy, and exercised five to six days a week.  I loved the feeling of being fit.  I wasn’t skinny by any stretch - it was just no part of my body jiggled.  When I waved goodbye, only my hand moved.

When I entered into the dark nights, (you can read the series starting with this post), exercise was the first thing to fall off my plate.   It wasn’t because I wanted it to fall off, though.  Now I see that it was God who not so gently took if off my plate.  Injury after injury, illness after illness plagued my workout schedule.  Within a year, I could barely run any distance before I gave out.

Now I see that God took exercise away from me to show that my fitness had become a god (with the little ‘g’).  It was a source of comfort and pride to me that I was fit and trim.  It made me feel powerful.  God wanted to show me how something healthy and good could become something I desired more than Him.

Here it is seven years later, yeah - I’m not much of a quick learner, and God has finally led me out of the dark nights.  I’m thirty pounds heavier, addicted to sugar, and very out of shape.  Although I’m convicted to get healthy again, I don’t feel the contempt for my very untrim body that I did before.

Yes, I need to exercise and eat healthy again, but I no longer feel the desperate desire to fit back into my old clothes.  It no longer drives me like a crazy fiend anymore.  Being freed from the “gotta get skinny because I hate my body” thoughts is very powerful.

On the other side of it, I do feel convicted by God to get healthy again, but in the sense of being whole.  God wants us whole and healed.  I want to exercise and eat right because it gives me more energy and it is really good for the body God gave me.

However, I know my tendency is to make fitness a little god.   I’ve been praying for God to show me how to keep Him at the center of my fitness.  The answer is SO simple.  Make fitness an act of worship NOT the recipient of worship.  Yeah!

Here’s how that looks for me.  I get up about an hour or so before my five year old would wake up.  I do my daily devotional, the quick one.  So I can put something in my mind to ponder.  I start out walking and focus my mind on Jesus.  This is not easy for me, I have a very tangential mind, so I have to train my mind to focus.

For me, I start out to the rythym of my walk or run and think to myself, “Jesus is ….” and complete the sentence.  Jesus is my Lord.  Jesus is my friend.  Jesus is my God.  Jesus is my redeemer.  Jesus is my Savior.  Jesus is my protector.  Jesus is my provider.  Jesus is the intercessor.  And so on, until my mind is focused on Jesus.

Pretty soon, my mind relaxes into a good dialog with Jesus.  Some days my heart is aching and that’s all we talk about.  Some days I pray for the saints.  Some days I plead for my family.  Some days I simply listen for the still small voice.

Then I come back and stretch.  I used to dance and so stretching is very important for me.  As I stretch, I thank God for something.  I go through a “thankfulness inventory”.  Then I can sit down and be calm and focused enough to read my Bible and do a more in-depth Bible time.

This typically takes about an hour and some days I have an hour and a half.  But, you need to make the time work that you have.  For me, my fitness, worship, and devotional time is invaluable to my walk.  I make it a very high priority.  It costs me the TV time that most others take.  But, I haven’t missed it much.

I try to do something every morning but on Sabbath.  My Sabbath has become Fridays.  But yours has to work with your schedule.

For food, I take God along with me to grocery shop.  “What do you want me to have, Lord?”  Asking God what He wants you to eat is a good way to keep Him at the center of your fitness.  I also try to make eating an act of worship.  This one is harder for me because frankly I really like Taco Johns.  God wants me to eat Taco Johns, but not five days a week like I’ve been doing.

The weight is coming off and my fitness level is increasing.  Praise God.  But, more than that, my devotion to Christ is increasing along with my freedom from slavery to “I gotta be skinny” monster.

Here is another blog that speaks to the importance of fitness and discipleship.  May you spend some time and focus today making fitness an act of worship…

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May 10, 2010 by Teri Frana.

I read a post recently and watched the associated video that has been eating away at me.  In fact, I’ve lost some sleep over it.  It stirred something exhilarating in my heart but left me feeling frustrated at the same time.  Read the post here.

The challenges from the video and the post are causing me discomfort on many levels.  I’ll just focus on one right now.  For me, one of the biggest blocks to my creativity is TIME. I don’t know about you, but my creative juices don’t magically start flowing at the buzz from the alarm clock, nor do they respond when I command them to start juicing.

My creative energy is at its peak when I’ve allowed sufficient time and input to prime their pump.  I call it my “think time”.  I begin by reflecting on something.  It takes awhile to quiet the noisiness in my head first.  Then, I have to focus myself to look at it from all angles.  This can’t be rushed.  There has to be deep thought applied, ponderings, musing, questioning done before you have sufficiently unpacked the topic.

After it is sufficiently peeled in my mind, it needs to stew for awhile, cooking in my heart and soul until tenderized.   Once again, rushing this only succeeds in making it tough and chewy.  Only then can I begin to release it onto the page.

I can’t just sit down and command my fingers to type out something worthwhile.  Obviously.  I have so much to say, but find it difficult to get it out in any kind of meaningful form.  It takes TIME to create something significant.  It’s been a long TIME since I took the TIME to allow something meaningful to fall from the fingers.  When I am sucked into the busyness of life, I have to cut down that process into manageable, fast food sized bites of thought.

I’m feeling very rusty today, but as I force myself through this painful awkwardness, there is a glimmer of hope starting to glow in my heart - a  hope that there is something deep down there worth sharing, worth spending time on, worth laboring over.  It’s something creative and powerful - and just out of my reach now - but if I take enough time to think on it, mull it over, chew on it, and wait for it - it will come.

I contend that we all have that something within us - if only we took the time and effort to allow it to come out.  It may not be something we write, but there are all sorts of other avenues for this something significant to take shape.  Yet, I also contend the overwhelming majority of us will not take the “think time” it takes to free it from within us.  Most of us will stay in one form or another of busyness our entire lives and let that something significant die still locked up within us.

Time, space, and effort always come with a price.  For me, it means being faced with the choice of allowing that something significant within me to come out, or having a financially secure and comfortable life.  I am choosing to take the risk.  I choose to cling to the hope that there is something significant within me and when I allow it the time and space needed to come forth, it will be more satisfying than comfort or security.

There is something significant waiting to be found, pondered, cooked, and freed from within each of us - but, I’m very afraid that we will miss it in our busyness.  I encourage you to stop long enough to take a very hard look at it.  Do you have any “think time” lined up in your life to focus on that elusive yet significant something God has placed within us?

I am going to spend some “think time” today pondering what this world might look like if more of us chose to let that something significant stir, stew, and spew out of us…

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January 4, 2010 by Teri Frana.

Anyone who knows me would describe me as a “go-getter” – someone who is constantly working on a goal of some sort.  In fact, I’ve pretty much always trained others on how to set goals and achieve them.  In the past few years, God has been very hard at work, changing my perceptions of goals and how God views my performance. 

It’s been in the last five years especially God has opened my eyes to see just how precious rest is.  In order for Him to get my attention, He basically had to take away all that I was striving for, but on the other side of that, I must say that the lesson of rest is one of the best gifts He’s ever given me.

First I had to learn what rest meant.  I don’t know as I ever did it, at least without feeling guilty.  It’s not exactly just sitting around twiddling your thumbs. It’s a purposeful pause in your day or week to simply be still in your heart, mind, soul, and strength and hang out with God. 

I also didn’t realize how much work went in to resting.  I have to think ahead, persevere, guard my time, say no to things I don’t want to say no to, and do nothing even when I’d really rather be doing something.  I had to learn to be happy in silence.  

I’ve come to realize that describing an American as “busy” is redundant.   Somehow in our quest for more quality of life, we’ve lost something very valuable.  We lost depth.  We lost insight.  We’ve lost meaningful connection.  We lost the power of musing, thinking, pondering, and posing questions.  We’ve cut them out of our schedule and deemed them “unproductive.”

We are constantly trying to invent time-effective ways to connect; like Facebook, Twitter, and texting.  We’re learning to make our musing and connections fit within a five second window.  Not that I’m against any of these - in fact, I use all of them.  But, my truest connections do not happen there.  They happen in the space and time that I purposely carve out of my schedule to allow my mind, heart, soul, and strength to rest and just be.

It is in that time I connect the deepest with my friends and family and with God.  Don’t know if you noticed, but the Bible isn’t written like a text or a Twitter post.  If we aren’t careful, we will lose the ability to embrace something richer and more profound that a five word sentence as a complete thought.   Do not replace the gourmet of your Sabbath rest with fast-food style relationships.  Each has their time and space in your life.  

Make rest a New Year’s resolution this year.  You might have to say no to Facebook for a whole day.  You might need to open your Bible and pray and pray for God to reveal something to you there.  You might struggle a bit with your mind wandering to a zillion other things.  You might need to not take that trip to the store for things you probably don’t need.  Or you may need to redefine what you think you need.  You might need to say “no” to the kids or the family or to friends or to church.  In essence, you could be saying “yes” to you and God.

Saying “yes” to rest, as hard as that is, may be the best thing you will ever do.  As painful as silence can be to our American, 21st Century ears, it can grow to be the best sound you’ve ever hear.  There is something beyond anything you’ve experienced waiting for you in the silence, rest, and quiet contemplation of God.  I pray that you find it in 2010 - but, it will take some work and a lot of resolve.  

“The LORD said, ‘Go out and stand on the mountain in the presence of the LORD, for the LORD is about to pass by.’Then a great and powerful wind tore the mountains apart and shattered the rocks before the LORD, but the LORD was not in the wind. After the wind there was an earthquake, but the LORD was not in the earthquake. After the earthquake came a fire, but the LORD was not in the fire. And after the fire came a gentle whisper.” 1 Kings 19:11-12

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