Happy Monday!

How was everyone’s weekend?

The snow just keeps on comin’ here in the Midwest.  It’s very beautiful, and I love the snow… but I think everyone around here is so ready for some warm weather!

I still can’t find our driveway.

FITNESS
So… I may or may not have opted to sleep-in over doing a 6am workout with the husband this morning.  I’ll let you guess.

BUT I will say that a butt-kickin’ workout is on the agenda for this afternoon!  The only downside about not getting my workout in first thing in the morning is that it’s at least three times as hard to get motivated later in the day.  So!  For such an occasion, I’ll post this inspiring video to keep me motivated when I get home later today:

Believe in Yourself

I honestly teared up a little when I first saw this commercial.

Motivated yet?

FOOD
Breakfast was another quickie:  my go-to kale + banana smoothie.  I’ve had this for breakfast like 3 days in a row now!

Does the trick. :)

FAITH
Last week during our Bible study with my sister-in-law, we came across an alliteration that helped us remember how to address a struggle or conflict between the Spirit (God’s prompting to do what is right), and the flesh (our natural, sinful desire to do what can often times be wrong).  (This is an alliteration, by the way.  Don’t worry, I’m not judging; I had to look it up, too).

It looked like this:

Recognize – Identify the conflict.
Remember – Remind yourself that this is a spiritual battle between our sinful nature and God’s will for how to live our lives.
Reject – Reject our natural desire to deal with the conflict our own way!
Rely – Rely on the Holy Spirit’s power to produce good fruit in our lives.

Amidst one of these struggles, we can call on these 4 R’s to help us through them.  For example, last week as I was running around getting ready for church and trying not to make us late, Jason commented that I was a terrible manager of my time.  Immediately I felt my blood start to boil, as I was already feeling frustrated about running late and didn’t think that the comment at the moment was very productive.  At all.

I had to look to the 4 R’s:

• Recognize:  I identified the conflict to be Jason’s frustration over my making us late to church and my frustration with his offensive comment.
• Remember:  I had to remind myself that–although everything in me wanted to retaliate with some smart comment–the Spirit in me knew better than to disrespect my husband.  This was a struggle between what my sinful nature wanted to do and what God’s Spirit wanted me to do.
• Reject:  I had to reject my sinful desire to bark back at my husband!  Even if that meant biting my tongue…
• Rely:  Relying on the Spirit’s help, I was able to practice love, peace, and self-control as I sympathized with his frustrations and apologized for making us late, mentioning that we can talk more about it after church.

I’m not perfect at it, (we still fight over my time-management skills all the time), but it’s certainly a helpful way for me to work through my conflicts of how God wants me to respond to struggles in my life versus my natural tendencies to do things.

QUESTION OF THE DAY
Are there any struggles in your life that you could apply the 4 R’s to?

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