Impressed by my wife

I'm really impressed by my wife. Yesterday we went jogging after dinner. We have been doing 4min jog, 1 min walk, 5 times. But yesterday we tried something different, we just wanted to see how long she could jog. So we did our regular 5 minute warm up walk, then got to a nice walking trail so we didn't have intersections to deal with. We went for 10.5 minutes. Mapped it this morning. 1 way is .4mi, not sure on the accuracy of that, so I changed google map settings to km, which gave me 650 feet, which is 0.40 mi, so miles is a fine measurement. Oh yea, that is one way, so we aren't that slow. We went 0.8 miles in 10.5 minutes. I think this is great.

So here is the impressive parts, besides just doing that. There were several moments where she thought she wouldn't make it.

• She didn't think she could run there and back, and was just planning to run there.
• Near the end there was an uphill portion she didn't think she could do.
• She thought she would have to sprint in the end to make it, but maintained the pace instead.

Also, for most of the run she had the dog leash, so she had that as well, and let me tell you, our dog isn't the easiest to run with.

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Priorities

So I was writing out some priorities I felt I should have in my life. I used a tree structure, and started with growth as the root. That branched out to spiritual, mental, physical. Spiritual and mental came together for memory. I can improve my memory by memorizing scripture which contributes to spiritual growth. Physical growth was boring and only went on to working out, which is something I should probably do, if you need any scriptural reasons just ask my brother, or consider you body is a temple of the Holy Spirit who is in you, whom you have from God. Mental growth had some more areas, but most overlapped with spiritual, one that didn't was learning new things, so keeping up with news, improving my vocabulary...

For some reason spiritual growth seemed to have the most, leading to fellowship, prayer, daily scripture reading, studying the scripture (which again lapsed with mental growth).

So after doing this I looked and was wondering where parenting fit in. I hadn't written it down yet. What about leadership in my family, and teaching others? Then I thought about the "With me" principle. These is basically that we are all on a road toward maturity, and we should be doing it with others. So all of these items should be done and encouraged with others. To make it all even possible I will need accountability.

This may not make much sense to people, but it was a fun little exercise. Still needs some evaluating. Like evangelism needs a place. But maybe that is simple an application that is done when studying and reading scripture.

I am to grow my relationship with God and with others.

The Basics

So what should some basics of Christian discipline be?

Scripture Memory

Reading the Word

Prayer

What else? Also, what are some reasonable goals, and then what is too much?

My guess:

Memorize a passage a week. Ps 53:10 is for this week. "Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a steadfast spirit within me." NASB

"Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me." ESV (matches the song better)

Would it be reasonable for a small group leader to expect and challenge the group to memorize a passage such as Ps 53:10 in two weeks? I think a month is too much time and doesn't offer a real challenge.

Reading the Word. Daily. Good place to start is 3 times a week I think.

Prayer, pretty much hand in hand with the Word. But probably more so than reading the Word. Pray with your kids, pray at a meal, pray before bed, pray when studying God's word, pray with a group.

Is it unreasonable to expect this from a Christian group? Why does this basic foundation seem to be such a challenge sometimes? Writing it down and looking at it, it seems so easy.

The Family

Slow Fade by Casting Crowns

I am part of a wonderful family. My dad is there for me, and he taught me to be a man. So what can I do to improve upon what he has given me, and pass it on to my children?

I'm thinking one good thing would be a clear picture. So this would be modeling. I should be the one he wants to be like, not some athlete.

I also need to point them towards Jesus, and a lot of that should be done in modeling too.

I think most important to model is having time. A model needs to be observed. If I model a busy life where I don't spend it with my kids I am just wasting my life.

What Should I Do?

In the most general since your purpose is to glorify God.

How you go about this is the harder part. I would say one way is to invest your life in others. This is where stay at home moms really stand out. They realize the importance of children, and desire to spend time with them. Unfortunately so much time with kids can be really exhausting, so it is nice that others can spend time too.

I think one thing our culture lacks is the real feeling of community. The church has moms n' tots once every other week, which seems way too infrequent to me. But when our small groups meet, it is only twice a month, which in my opinion is pretty bad as well. fortunately it seems most small groups meet more often, but I'm always discouraged by the turnout.

Maybe my perspective will change when the kids are actually in school and have friends in the neighborhood. Though that seems far away fortunately. Sometimes I wonder how my kids will do in their purpose to glorify God. Right now they need so much more training it seems, but I don't know if that will ever change. I think I always feel like I need to learn more, so I look at others the same.

Variables in Life

Establishing good habits is great and all, but there are some variables that make it difficult. The variable that I find the hardest is children. There naps aren't really consistent, but more of a general time. You put them to bed, and hope they go to sleep. Then you hope they don't wake you up in the morning. These things aren't that common, and maybe if they were common it would be easier to work around.

The weather is also an interesting variable. This morning it is raining, but I was pretty sure it would be, so I was pretty much planning on driving instead of riding to work today. Though with the rain came a drop in temperature, so it is a little sad I'm not riding in the cooler weather.

Well, speaking of kids, I hear by baby girl, so I should probably go get her.

What are some variables that make good habits difficult for you? Or what excuses do you use to get out of your workout?

Update for mid June already

If you aren't reading http://blog.jasonkearney.net/ you really should. Right now free wheel Oklahoma is going on and I like reading about it. I'm thinking of going next year, but that also requires training. Also need to rope as many others as I can into doing it.

Lately things have been really busy. I've been spending my time with my wife and kids, and other family, but I have also spent it playing video games. Had my quiet time this morning which has been lacking. Just this month I have missed so many, I had a QT on the 1st, 3rd, 5th, and now today. That is pretty bad, but at least I had it today. And now I'm actually posting on this blog which has been even longer. If I was riding my bike to work I wouldn't be posting, but I used the last of the dog food this morning for her breakfast, so I need to grab a bag on my way home. Then I need to mow, so I didn't want to wear out my legs.

Over all things have been going really well. Work is a lot of fun, we have our new boards in that I've been testing and writing down needed changes. We have some good goals for the end of the summer, so I'm excited about accomplishing them. We have three old products that we are redoing and it is exciting, we are making some great improvements. The hardest thing is trying to keep the size and cost down while expanding the features.

Now that somewhat bad news. Katie's birthday is in September, and kids need to be at least one year old with good neck/head control before riding on the bike, so she won't be able to ride this summer. That is really sad. We need to get riding to train for freewheel next year. I also need to make sure I can take a child carrier trailer. That may be a deal stopper, but I think it is permitted.

I need to post some pictures of the kids, we have been having so much fun interacting. I'm really enjoying them growing up and developing more.

Back to the original purpose

So I started this blog with thoughts of life and now it turns out to simply be my random thoughts. Usually dealing with my own life, and not so much digging into God's Word.

So what do you the readers think? Should I change to a more focused blog or is everyone happy with whatever I happen to be thinking at the time? Not like anyone really posts comments, so maybe what I'm doing is fine. Maybe the question is whether or not I'm happy with it. I'm the one who posts. I recently looked back over some of my original posts and thought they were pretty nice. Not too sure what I should do. I have a journal, that I can use. Should I journal here, or there?

New Week, New Month; Now What?

As I was lying in bed last night I was thinking how I'm not doing very well on some of the goals I had for this year. I'm not reading the books I was wanting to get read. I wasn't exercising as planned. Things just got busy when DFL started.

I'm thinking I need to readdress my goals and get motivated again. I haven't talked to my wife about it yet, but I think just briefly going over them at the beginning of the week and at the beginning of the month may really help us get done what we want. Unfortunately this sounds more like a business meeting. You meet ever so often to address what you have gotten done, what you are doing, and what needs to be done. So I hate to say it, but it sounds like meetings are a good thing. We all know they are when they provide lunch, but maybe they have a benefit besides the free food.

So I should talk with my wife so we can go over our objectives and decide how to achieve our goals for this year. Maybe we can make shorter goals and even create a reward system based on achieveing those goals.

Some goals I would like to do:
QT everyday but Monday - started meeting with a guy early Monday morning
Workout twice per week
Read 5 minute theologian 5 times/week.
Finish "Basics of Bible Interpretation" this month

Not too sure how to handle rewards. It would be funny to reward junk food for working out though. So I could use some help here. How do you guys motivate yourself? How would you reward yourself for some of this stuff?

My thinking is a structure like this:
If I meet GoalA for the entire Month then I get to enjoy RewardA at the beginning of the next month.
Is there a better structure? I though about doing based on a week, but that seemed way too short sited. But my thinking was also good rewards, if I dumbed down the reward then I could do that on a weekly basis.

Please leave some ideas in the comments.

Short term goals

Well, Julie has a short term goal to lose 5 lbs before Christmas. This is great, I'm so glad she is actually making goals for herself. I'm going to join her in her fitness, not the losing of 5 lbs. I would rather gain weight, but I could use the training and exercise.

Unfortunately this reminds me of my goal of memorizing scripture which I have already got messed up with. I think that is my biggest problem with the holidays. It messes up any routines I have.

Last time I was working on:
Judgement, Romans 14:12
"So then, each of us is to give an account of himself to God." Rom 14:12

Yeah yeah, I know it is easy, but it is on the list. It just gets balanced out by the new one.

Matthew 28: 18-20
"Then Jesus came to them and said, 'All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Therefore, go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the father and of the son and of the holy spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. Surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.'" Matt 28:18-20

Now that is going to be much harder. So now I have some more motivation to spiritually exercise since Julie is wanting to physically. I just don't want to fail at my job as being priest to my family. I think this is one area where most men fall short. But reading Romans 14:12 you really don't want to have to stand before God and give an account of how you were too busy with hobbies/entertainment to train your family.