Excuses, Excuses

A few weeks ago my church held a special challenge (I promise this won't be a religious post - so keep going!) that everyone in the congregation read scriptures daily with their families.  To demonstrate the challenge half-a-dozen families were picked to report on their progress during Sunday School.

Each family had different circumstances - military family, newlyweds, empty-nesters, a family with young children, and a family with older children.  Along with their different circumstances - they all had their different excuses about how they could not possibly take 10-15 minutes a day to read scriptures.  My jaw dropped all the way to the ground by the end of the lesson as each couple stood in front of the crowd reporting their half-hearted attempt to read scripture. (Don't get me wrong, I'm no angel - but I also wasn't asked to talk about it in front of my entire congregation!  If that's not motivation, I don't know what is!)

The military wife stood up first - she said something along the lines of "We were doing okay, but then my husband was deployed."  Okay, that's understandable - a good excuse in my book.

Then the couple with young children stood up to report their results.  They began explaining how it's hard to wrangle three young children when their father gets home from work - and how making sure dinner was on the table and the kids had baths was more important.  Again, understandable.

Next, was the couple with teenagers.  Their excuse - work and teen extracurricular activities got in the way.  Been there, done that (as a teen) so I can understand.

Finally, the empty-nesters.  Surely having no children at home would make it possible to read scriptures each day.  I probably shouldn't have been shocked to hear yet another excuse - as I had already heard several others - but again an excuse.  The husband started with, "I work 12 hours a day."  Yadda, yadda, yadda - we don't have time to read scriptures.

Okay - now to my point.  Thanks for bearing with me.

I've been thinking about all those excuses a lot today because I just started a new schedule and am gladly latching on to my newest excuse to skip exercise!  My new schedule is Monday - Friday overnights.  Working from 10 p.m. to 8 the next morning and then sleeping from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. makes everything else impossible!

I didn't exercise today.  My excuse - my too-crazy-to-do-anything schedule.  Okay, so it is a good excuse for the time being.  So say I just decided to skip exercise all together while I'm on this schedule.  Then when I have my first baby what will I do?  Will life be getting any easier?  What about when my kids are teens - will it be easier to squeeze in a measly 30 minutes of physical activity?  Finally, when my kids are out of the house - will I still not have time to exercise?  Anything can be an excuse, but not everything can be a priority.

If I want exercise to be part of my life - it's up to me to make it part of my life.  I can't just hope my boss will come to me and say, "Oh so you haven't been able to exercise with this schedule - now let me change it for you."  (who's to say I wouldn't come up with a whole new excuse with a new schedule!)  Life will never get less-stressful or easier - it's now or never.  I have to make exercising a priority or it won't happen.  Now on to the gym - oh wait, I have to make dinner.

Living Life Moment

 As promised, I'm writing about the moment I really took life in today.  Well, it didn't happen.  But I have an example of a moment I should have sat back and enjoyed life.  My husband picked me up from work (we're having car troubles).  We had about 15 minutes to talk and have fun with each other - and we did, but I wasn't really taking it all in or enjoying it.  Instead I was thinking about what was coming next, how I would format my day, and of course complaining about my work day.  My living life moments don't have to be something extravagant, but can be something as simple as taking the time to enjoy my husband.  Well, I'll give it a better try tomorrow!