Weight Lifting Wonderings

i'm taking weight lifting for my PE credit. yes, i get credit to go and lift iron three days a week and am going to become one buff, toned chica who will be able to beat boys off with her big guns instead of the stick that most people use.... but right now i'm mighty sore.... my pecs are aching and my abs are defintely not feeling like steel right now. like i do so many times with athletics, i related this phenomeon of soreness to life.

when you lift weights, you are actually tearing the muscle apart and then building it back up. and it hurts. you are sore and achy and it's kind of painful. but in the end you are so much stronger and better for it. so many times i feel that way spiritually, especially after this past week of Summit (iwu's spititual emphasis week). God told me a lot of things that i need to work on and started to tear down my walls, pride and strongholds. and to tell you the truth, it's hard. but in order for God to use me, he first has to tear me down and take out all of the things in my life that are hindering me. but the great part is that he doesn't leave me there. after he gets rid of the "bad" stuff, he starts building me up again. and when he does i'll be even bigger and better than before, and best of all i will be able to be FULLY used by Him. the hard part is getting there. so much of the stuff i hold on to i have tried to give up before and it just doesn't seem to last....

and then there are the times that i mess up. it was tuesday night and we had just gotten out of night chapel. it had been a great time of worship and being challenged. we sang some great songs about praising God in all things and not letting circumstances dictate our behaivor. our speaker talked to us about how to react when bad things happen or we have bad days (etc) and how we needed to perservere. i went to the student center and during that time had an encounter with someone. it didn't go as well as i thought it would and i was pretty angry, hurt and upset. and instead of remembering what the speaker had said and how i was going to have a good, praising attitude, as soon as i was out of ear shot of this person, i went off. looking back it was pretty immature. i didn't put things in perspective. i didn't stop and pray for that person. i didn't calmly relay what had occured. i lost it! everything i had just learned, out the window! so maybe this person had hurt me, but i had no right to say some of things i said or act in the way that i did. when i later looked back and realized how i had acted i was appalled. talk about tearing down! God had given me a test, to see if i had really absorbed what had been taught, and i failed miserably. and that was not fun to realize. but i repented and God is now building me up again in his likeness. Thanks goodness that we serve a God of second, third, fourth....chances!

i don't know if any of this rambling makes sense, but i just needed a place to get my thoughts out. so as i lift weights this week, i want to try to remember that in order to grow in my relationship with Christ and become a Christian giant, i need to be in the Word and be willinging to be toren down so that my Maker can build me back up again.