Begin Again, and Again

Everything, atrophies and dies if you don’t attend to it. Love, addiction, prayer hostility, strength, discipline and desire. In any number of ways I can become a stranger to myself. This can tend towards virtue, as much as it can tend towards sloth. A simple, humble ambition can wither and die, weathering the storms of daily life.

A recurring theme can become what now, or what next, as you prepare to stare down the latest, random embodiment of chaos in your life. You know that so many have it far, far worse than you do, so ever and always you count your blessings. You thank God for the abundance of His graces, and you know that perhaps in the final estimation, some of your disciplines inevitably become luxuries.

Over time they gather dust... the clink and thunk and clank of the weight plates a distant memory. The padding around your waistline grows. Your sleep is bent and broken, tortured by late nights and sluggish starts. You must, of course; you must, kick and fight and rail. I You must, of course, spit and curse the slow death that chases you down. You must, of course, return to the balm of scripture and prayer, return to the rule of life that made you the man that you are, that sustained you in darkness and woe.

You must load the bar and start over. You must humbly face the loss and the limitation of 100 nights wasted in order to build back up again without breaking yourself in the process. You must allow thought to take line shape and form on the page before you and send that word out into the ether that someone or anyone may be touched by it.

Bury your finger into that wrist. Find the pulse. You are a child of God, and you are not dead, yet.