Choices

Let me preface this post by saying that I am not peddling religion. I believe that religion is a personal choice and should be kept that way. I'm just giving a little back story to go with my thought of the day. And I am feeling chatty.

My husband and I have been looking for a new church to attend. We are Catholics of the non-practicing kind.  We Baptized both boys in the Catholic Church with the assumption that we'd be finding a new church to practice our faith in. We've been putting it off for  years.  But the time has come when we have to put-up or shut-up, as they say.  Our eldest has started the first grade and really needs to be in some sort of religious education or none at all.  

Over the summer, we sent our son to a Vacation Bible School at a Methodist Church.  He had a blast! Then started asking why we don't attend church. That's a tough question to answer and one best left alone. Anyway, we thought it would be nice to check out the service to see if it might be a Church that we'd like to call "Home". We did enjoy the service. It's not as formal as what we're used to with following Catholicism for all our lives. However, the Church was very welcoming.  They told us what to do, when.  The Pastor gave us a lot of information but didn't "shove it down our throats". Simply put, we felt welcome.  It's a feeling we're going to have to get used to as we decided to join the Methodist Church.  Hope we don't burn in Hell for all eternity for turning our backs on the Catholics - the only true Christian religion. (Yes, that's sarcasm)

Now, to the point. During today's sermon, Pastor and the Religious Educator (RE) spoke about choices.  The RE spoke to the kid's about the kinds of choices they have to make during the day...most of the answers were about what kind of ice cream they should have and weather or not to have a piece of cake to go with said ice cream.  You know, really difficult life choices. The RE held up a piece of broccoli and a bag of M&M's and asked which one is they healthier choice. Of course the kids all said the M's - (I was thinking the same thing - my body would probably explode if I put broccoli in -haha). Anyway, both the Pastor and the RE's point ultimately came down to sometimes it's easy to follow Jesus and sometimes it isn't.

All this led me to some thinking while I was out on my walk. I typically do 1.5 miles. There is a point in my walk when I have a choice to make the left hand turn to walk back down my street towards home, or I can make it up the hill in front of me and on to the next left to go another block.  The next left leads me to an even bigger hill that I need to trek up.  Usually by this point in my walk, I am ready to head on home. However, I stop myself and say "aren't you going to feel better about yourself if you keep going?" or "you'd have to continue on if you were on The Biggest Loser like you so badly want to be!" Most of the time I keep going and make it up both hills. I always feel great about the choice that I made! 

Today though, I not only decided to make it up that second hill, I kept going!  I went another block. Thus up two more hills. One is much smaller than the other, but an incline nonetheless. It felt GREAT! When I reached the top of the hill today, I thought about all the things Pastor had to say about how sometimes it's really hard to make the right choice, but in the end it'll make you feel better. And it certainly did! 

When I got home, I continued my workout with one of Bob Harper's challenges.  I did the single arm raises - found on the challenges link.  Now, I took this challenge plus one other arm one a few days ago. My arms were feeling the burn that day, but I made it through OK. Today? Not so much. I was screaming that scream you hear while watching Loser. I gotta tell you- as much as it hurt - it felt even better to make it through the whole set!!!!  Nothing is stopping me now!  Can't wait to do another one of Bob's challenges tomorrow!  

What will you challenge yourself with today?