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    Dig 

    Uncovering the Idols that Control Our Choices 

    Chapter 9. The Dirty, Unrelenting Doing of the Thing

    RIGHT NOW

    “What we call the process, God calls the end.  What is my dream of God’s purpose?  His purpose is that I depend on Him and on His power now.  If I can stay in the middle of the turmoil calm and unperplexed, that is the end of the purpose of God.  God is not working towards a particular finish; His end is the process – that I see Him walking on the waves, no shore in sight, no success, no goal, just the absolute certainty that it’s all right because I see Him walking on the sea.  It is the process, not the end, which is glorifying to God.  God’s training is for now, not presently.  His purpose is for this minute, not something in the future.  We have nothing to do with afterwards of obedience; we get wrong when we think of the afterwards.  What men call training and preparation; God calls the end.  God’s end is to enable me to see that He can walk on the chaos of my life just now.  If we have a further end in view, we do not pay sufficient attention to the immediate present; but if we realize that obedience is the end, then each moment as it comes is precious.”  Oswald Chambers

    I share this rather long quote with you because it says what I want to say better than I could ever say it. 

    In my fifteen-plus years in the health and wellness industry I have watched so many people give up on their goals because they haven’t seen the results they wanted as quickly as they wanted to see them.  They get into these great exercise patterns, they learn to eat well, they’re getting sleep, they’re making healthful choices on the regular, they’re starting to thrive! 

    But the scale doesn’t move fast enough, or they don’t shrink out their clothes as quickly as they desire to, and so they quit.  They slide right back into the old habits of gnarly food choices and egregious amounts of time in isolation and in front of the screen. 

    I think that what happens with any behavior change – not just healthy living changes – is we perhaps never really understand that the objective is the journey, not the destination. 

    A while back I published a full-length blog post on this subject called “Destination Now”.  It’s available under the Blog Koinonia tab if you’re interested in diving into this idea in depth, but here’s the main takeaway: our training is for now.  

    Our destination is our every choice, in every moment, as it comes in real time, right now. 

    The results are important, of course.  If we work to make changes and never see any kind of results, it’s incredibly discouraging.  But in my life, and I’m guessing in yours as well, it seems that my end and God’s ends are often very different.  What I think I need or want or am seeking to change is often derailed by what God knows I need, or what God knows I should want, or what God knows I need to change. 

    I wonder, if we could release our own ideas of our ‘ends’, and simply seek to work on our behaviors from day to day, how that may change the behavior change process for us.  I wonder if our ends of ‘fitting into the dress’ or ‘looking good for the cruise’ were raised to ends like ‘steward the gift’ or ‘give thanks’ or ‘live in the abundance He desires’, how that may change our journeys.  And those journeys are made up of our collective moments of choice…

    MOMENTS OF CHOICE

    “No one can succeed in mastering feelings in his or her life who tries to simply take them head-on and resist or redirect them by ‘willpower’ in the moment of choice.  To adopt that strategy is to radically misunderstand how life and the human will work, or – more likely – it is to have actually decided, deep down, to lose the battle and give in.”  Dallas Willard

    Moments of choice are the pinnacles of our daily outcomes.  Our daily outcomes are what make up our journeys.  Our journeys make up our lives.  Thus, our collective moments of choice – they are what will define the results of our lives.  (Read Donald Miller’s Hero on a Mission for a fantastic practical guide on how to plan for and achieve the kind of life you really want to live.) 

    We can have all the best intentions in the world but when emotions and feelings and desires enter into our moments of choice, intentions go flying out the window. 

    Planning helps.  We talked about it in the Idol of Food chapter.  Having a plan in place to nip the behavior we’re trying to avoid, or to support whatever behavior we’re trying to achieve can really help in moments of choice.  Here are a few practical ways we can plan for healthful food and movement choices. 

    If you are working on a behavior that’s not related to food or movement (e.g. having more patience, living on a budget, refining the way you parent, etc.) consider adjusting and applying some of the tips below to help you plan for what you want to achieve. 

    Food-related planning

    • Have a meal plan for the week.
    • Create a meal plan and grocery shop when you’re not hungry.
    • Have healthful snacks prepared and easily accessible.
    • Don’t keep the food that tempts you in the house. This way you will have to get in your car to go get it if you want it that badly.  The inconvenience of it all may stop you from indulging. 
    • Decide ahead of time what you will eat for each meal of the day. Looking at the whole day picture and deciding before the day begins will help you stay on track.  This way you’re not relying on your ‘moment of choice’ feeling to guide your choice. 
    • If there’s a tempting drive-thru on your route (e.g. Dunkin Doughnuts on your way to work), consider making a turn earlier to avoid the trigger of seeing or smelling the temptation.
    • Identify a way to reward yourself for healthful choices that is not related to food.

    Movement-related planning

    • Have a movement plan for the week. Look at your schedule ahead of time and identify ways in which you can incorporate movement into your days. Remember, this does not have to mean time at the gym. It could mean planning a coffee date in which you walk to the coffee shop, or taking time to call a loved one while you walk, or hiking while you take a business call (my personal favorite). 
    • Place your movement clothes in your favorite spot on the couch. This way, in your moment of choice, if you’re headed to the couch to worship the screen you will be required to move your workout clothes in order to lounge.  This may help you make a different decision in that all-important moment of choice. 
    • Identify people to move with and plan to move together. Studies are consistent in demonstrating that those who are on a health journey together are exponentially more successful in achieving their goals.  Find people who will share your movement goals so you can hold each other up in the moments of choice.  The accountability of having someone waiting for me at the park or the gym has made me get up and go when I wanted to sleep more times than I can count. 
    • Have Plan B’s and Plan C’s in place. If you typically move outside, have a backup plan in case of inclement weather.  If you typically move in the morning, find a window in the afternoon in case the morning workout doesn’t happen.  If you typically bike or rollerblade, have a walking, running, or dancing plan in case your equipment needs repair.  Movement is natural and because it’s natural, we can achieve it almost always if we choose it.    

    Planning for the behavior change you want is paramount to making the decision you want to make in your moments of choice.  When we don’t plan, we rely on our temperamental and fickle feelings to lead the way in those critical moments. 

    Take a look back at the Idol of Feelings for a more in-depth look at the way feelings impact our choices. 

    FEELINGS

    “Self-control is the steady capacity to direct yourself to accomplish what you have chosen or decided to do and be, even though you ‘don’t feel like it’.  Self-control means that you, with steady hand, do what you don’t want to do (or what you want not to) when that is needed and do not do what you want to do (what you feel like doing) when that is needed.  In people without rock-solid character, feeling is a deadly enemy of self-control and will always subvert it.”  Dallas Willard

    I don’t know about you, but every time I read that line from Willard, I nearly laugh to consider myself a person with ‘rock-solid character’ whose mere willpower could influence my behaviors the way I desire them to.  Fam, that’s just not me. 

    I am insanely jealous of the ‘cold turkey’ people who can simply decide to never eat sugar again, or never smoke again, or never whatever again and they’re successful.  My sister is one of them and she has some kind of magic that I will just never have.  I simply cannot rely on willpower to make decisions, and I think that’s true of a lot of people. 

    As Willard says, ‘feeling’ is a deadly enemy of self-control, and this travels far beyond food and movement choices.  Marriages are won or lost on feelings.  Affairs are started because of feelings.  Gambling choices, parenting choices, screen-time choices, recreational choices, alcohol choices, and on and on – so many, if not all, of our choices in a day have the potential to be led by our feelings if we let them be, and our feelings cannot be trusted with such an essential task. 

    Oswald Chambers approaches feelings and decisions from a slightly different angle:    

    “We must do the thing and not lie like a log.  If we will arise and shine, drudgery becomes divinely transfigured.  Drudgery is one of the finest touchstones of character there is.  Drudgery is work that is very far removed from anything to do with the ideal – the utterly mean, grubby things; and when we come in contact with them, we know instantly whether or not we are spiritually real.”

    This quote always makes me think of the stay-at-home moms (or dads) I know.  Those people work y’all.  24/7/365 they are never not ‘on’ and I know there are days when the doing the dishes and providing meals and changing diapers and doing the laundry and going to the store feels like drudgery. 

    But they do it anyway.  Every day. 

    I wonder what would happen to our behaviors if we applied this kind of SAHM(D) grit to our food and movement choices.  Is it sexy?  No.  Do we get an audience?  No.  Is there a round of applause every time we step off the treadmill?  Absolutely not.  But being willing to go about the drudgery of making the non-sexy choice every day is what creates thriving.  When considered from the stay-at-home mom/dad perspective, those routines, that clean laundry, that safe, foundational, consistent space that children come home to every day – that’s what makes them thrive.  They know they’re loved.  They know they’re safe.  They know they have a place of belonging.  They thrive because their parents are committed to the drudgery of the thing because that’s what’s best for the children. 

    Well, it’s what’s best for us as well. 

    If we can endure the drudgery.  If we can commit ourselves to the un-applauded, unseen, non-sexy choices every day we will create thriving.  And I have truly come to believe that this is where we begin to tap into the abundant life God desires for us.  In the simple.  In the plain.  In meekness.  In meekness there is no striving.  There’s simply being – resting in His goodness, His achievement, His righteousness.  Our fight ends because we are complete right there in His hands. 

    This is where drudgery becomes abundance… in the release of our efforts to perform… in the embrace of our living to simply worship with what we’ve already been given.  There is great freedom there, if only we will choose it. 

    Nic Ford