6 lessons from 6 years in Ft. Myers (part 2)
#2 It is important to be healthy
Since I’ve been in Ft. Myers, I’ve learned that health isn’t just about your physical being, but it’s also about your spiritual and mental and emotional being. All of these have to be healthy. Here’s what I learned about each:
- Exercise is a must – I didn’t exercise before I moved to Florida, and I honestly didn’t exercise until I started working for the church. Now, I realize the huge benefits of exercise. I believe that exercise can help relieve stress, clear your mind, give you more energy, make you feel better throughout your day, and I believe that, because of the physical benefits, it allows you to pursue the greatest that God has for you with more confidence (so, it’s kind of spiritual too). If I could get everyone in the world to exercise, I would.
- Eating healthy is a must – exercise alone isn’t enough in the same way that eating healthy alone isn’t enough. Fast food and regular soda can’t be a regular part of the diet (I used to eat this a lot). There is a lot of good tasting healthy food to choose from. Also, salad, believe it or not, will fill you up.
- It’s all about your lifestyle – I’m not a big fan of diets. I think that diets can happen from anything to food or exercise or even your spiritual life and time with your family. I think, especially as it pertains to diet and exercise, it’s all about finding the healthy lifestyle that you can maintain forever and doing that.
- Take a day off a week – I didn’t do this for the first 3-4 years of the church. Matt used to get in my face about it. I just worked 7 days a week because there was always work to be done. It always led to unhealth in other areas of my life. That pace almost caused me to walk away from ministry.
- Get a hobby/diversion – I had to learn that working on church stuff isn’t a hobby. I need to get my mind off of work, so I will go to a movie. Or, I will focus on training for triathlons. There’s nothing like running during the week and then on Fridays and Saturdays, going on a 20-30 mile bike ride and a run. It just gets my mind off of the everyday-ness of life.
- Get accountable – There are thing in life that tend to hide in the dark places. Find someone that you can trust and tell them everything. Everything. Whatever darkness is lurking in your mind, bring it to the light. When there is someone of the opposite sex in your life that you think your guard has to be up against, tell them. When you feel like making, or have made immoral decisions, tell them. When your thoughts aren’t as captive as you’d like, tell them.This has been huge and has played a huge part of clearing my mind and leading me towards health.
- I need help – There was just stuff in my life that I needed to work through. So, I saw a counselor for a long time. I’m realizing that there is stuff building up again and I will probably go and see a counselor again soon.
- Keep a journal – For me, there is nothing like writing down my raw feelings and emotions. It’s like, once they’re cleared out of my mind and onto paper, I can be free to think clearly about something.
- My belief about God and my approach to God was inconsistent – I believe that God is loving. God cares for me and wants me to live an “abundant life.” But, as I was interacting with God, I interacted with Him as if He was waiting to “GET” me. I would never say the word “never” because people told me that when you did that, it was an open invitation for God to “make” you do whatever you’re not willing to do. It was very jacked up and I had to work on getting my interaction with God to line up with my belief about God.
- There are multiple (GREAT) ways to be a Christian – I came from a denomination that had a very, “our way is the best (and really only) way” about them. I had to work that out and realize that wasn’t true. There are different flavors of Christianity, and some people just don’t choose to use their tongues to taste those flavors.
- God wants a relationship, not an employee – I had always heard that it was difficult to maintain a great relationship with God when you are in ministry, but I always shrugged it off. My only way to describe it is that it’s like working at Disney World. Disney World is a “Magical Kingdom” to the people who visit, but if you worked there, it would lose it’s magic and it would be easy to get caught up in the “to do list” and miss the magic. My fight has been to not get caught up in the “to do list” of ministry in order to stay connected with the Almighty God.
