the Morning Jog: Get Up

Spending some time with my children each month on the day they were born is always my highlight. For nearly two weeks now my little girl has been asking me the same thing over and over again. “Is it my day yet, daddy? I want today to be my day so I can go have fun with you.” Her day finally came yesterday, and now she has already begun asking when the next one will be.

It makes me laugh but I must admit that sometimes I get a little agitated hearing the same thing over and over again…but I am just like her. Lately I have found myself asking God, “Is it my day yet?”

Life can become such a grind and we start to wonder if our ‘day’ is ever going to come. It’s so easy to slip into the mindset of surviving our days instead of making something of them. All sorts of negativity can fill our lives until the positive is ‘burned out’. One moment we are riding the wave of passion, and the next we are feeling the pinch of reality.

(Storm rolling in)
(Forest Hill, MD)

I recently received encouragement from an unlikely source. My family and friends have always been there to lift me up when I needed an arm around me or even a swift kick in the ‘hiney’ J. But there are times when even their encouragement isn’t enough to lift me up. It’s those times that require me to reach deep within my being and inspire my own self.

David had a moment such as this in I Samuel 30. He was in a storm and was even fearful for his own life. But David ‘encouraged himself in the Lord his God.’

So many of our days slip by us wasted because we are just in survival mode. We forget the fact that ‘this is the day the Lord has made.’ Storms and distress can rage all around us and cause us to forget that God made this day for us to thrive in…not just survive in. What we continue to tell ourselves is what we eventually believe. If all we let in is the ‘bad stuff’, then we will never see the ‘good’.

(Silo Entrance)
(Forest Hill, MD)

CBS News anchor Dan Rather admits he was always fascinated by the sport of boxing, even though he was never good at it.

"In boxing you're on your own; there's no place to hide," he says.

"At the end of the match only one boxer has his hand up. That's it. He has no one to credit or to blame except himself." Dan, who boxed in high school, says his coach's greatest goal was to teach his boxers that they absolutely, positively, without question, had to be "get-up" fighters. "If you're in a ring just once in your life--completely on your own--and you get knocked down but you get back up again, it's an never-to-be-forgotten experience.” (Reader’s Digest)