Keep Your Eye on the Goal
I have an exercise DVD called Tae Bo Believers Workout. It cracks me up. I bought it in the first place because I was so tickled over the idea of yelling “Praise Jesus” for my kicks and punches. It is a good workout, though, and I do recommend it, especially for people who are motivated by praising Jesus for their elevated heart rates and sweaty T-shirts.
In this program, Billy Blanks says at one point, “Keep your eye on the goal. Like Peter in the boat, you’ve got to keep your eye on the goal.”
This is sound advice no matter what your personal faith may be, though I do have to admit I giggled when I first heard it. Me finishing a workout hardly compares to a chosen disciple walking across the stormy sea to meet the Savior of all Mankind. Or does it?
When I was in my mid-twenties and a graduate student at Oklahoma State, I was diagnosed with rheumatoid arthritis. I was devastated. I was frightened. I was on my own in the world with a big problem. My fear was increased tenfold by the fact that I knew exactly what rheumatoid arthritis could do to a person. I’d grown up in fear of what it had done to my grandfather. By the time I knew him, his hands and feet were knotted up beyond all recognition, and he needed help just to accomplish the simplest of tasks.
At first when people told me things like “Cheer up; Have faith” it didn’t mean anything to me. My grandfather was a preacher for crying out loud. If faith could heal anybody, it ought to have healed him. And if anybody had the odds stacked against her, it ought to have been me. I also had allergies and asthma and had suffered my whole life with an immune system that just didn’t quite work right. It always took me far longer to recover from sickness than “normal” people.
That diagnosis came well more than a decade ago, though, and today I am as healthy as I’ve ever been in my life. I can’t explain why. If I knew the solution to chronic illness, I’d bottle it up and give it away to the people still suffering. Call it luck. Call it the Grace of God. Call it determination or faith or whatever you like.
One doctor told me that my blood work indicated I had the most severe form of the disease. That would be consistent with my family history, but it apparently is not so. I simply don’t know why. I do know that I have kept my eye on the goal and that this has made a real difference in my life.
Once when I was first diagnosed, I remember telling a friend, “This is unbearable pain.” He said, “No it isn’t. If it were unbearable, you’d be dead or at least passed out. It can’t be as bad as that.”
Thank God for callous people. I’ve learned most of life’s lessons from them.
The truth is the body can bear most anything if the mind is somewhere else. The heart can bear most anything too if the mind is focused on meeting the goals of faith and higher purpose.
When Katrina hit, the world was a mess here in South Mississippi. I just wanted to sit down and cry. It seemed impossible that this mess would ever get cleaned up. Were it not for thousands upon thousands of people looking at the goal instead of the problem, we’d still be in just as big of a mess.
Keep your eye on the goal. As soon as you start looking at how big your storm is, you’re going to sink and drown in it. I can’t promise that every goal you set will be met, but I can guarantee that you’ll never get anywhere without first envisioning what you want to accomplish and believing in it.
In this program, Billy Blanks says at one point, “Keep your eye on the goal. Like Peter in the boat, you’ve got to keep your eye on the goal.”
This is sound advice no matter what your personal faith may be, though I do have to admit I giggled when I first heard it. Me finishing a workout hardly compares to a chosen disciple walking across the stormy sea to meet the Savior of all Mankind. Or does it?
When I was in my mid-twenties and a graduate student at Oklahoma State, I was diagnosed with rheumatoid arthritis. I was devastated. I was frightened. I was on my own in the world with a big problem. My fear was increased tenfold by the fact that I knew exactly what rheumatoid arthritis could do to a person. I’d grown up in fear of what it had done to my grandfather. By the time I knew him, his hands and feet were knotted up beyond all recognition, and he needed help just to accomplish the simplest of tasks.
At first when people told me things like “Cheer up; Have faith” it didn’t mean anything to me. My grandfather was a preacher for crying out loud. If faith could heal anybody, it ought to have healed him. And if anybody had the odds stacked against her, it ought to have been me. I also had allergies and asthma and had suffered my whole life with an immune system that just didn’t quite work right. It always took me far longer to recover from sickness than “normal” people.
That diagnosis came well more than a decade ago, though, and today I am as healthy as I’ve ever been in my life. I can’t explain why. If I knew the solution to chronic illness, I’d bottle it up and give it away to the people still suffering. Call it luck. Call it the Grace of God. Call it determination or faith or whatever you like.
One doctor told me that my blood work indicated I had the most severe form of the disease. That would be consistent with my family history, but it apparently is not so. I simply don’t know why. I do know that I have kept my eye on the goal and that this has made a real difference in my life.
Once when I was first diagnosed, I remember telling a friend, “This is unbearable pain.” He said, “No it isn’t. If it were unbearable, you’d be dead or at least passed out. It can’t be as bad as that.”
Thank God for callous people. I’ve learned most of life’s lessons from them.
The truth is the body can bear most anything if the mind is somewhere else. The heart can bear most anything too if the mind is focused on meeting the goals of faith and higher purpose.
When Katrina hit, the world was a mess here in South Mississippi. I just wanted to sit down and cry. It seemed impossible that this mess would ever get cleaned up. Were it not for thousands upon thousands of people looking at the goal instead of the problem, we’d still be in just as big of a mess.
Keep your eye on the goal. As soon as you start looking at how big your storm is, you’re going to sink and drown in it. I can’t promise that every goal you set will be met, but I can guarantee that you’ll never get anywhere without first envisioning what you want to accomplish and believing in it.
posted by Sharon Gerald | 6:24 AM
2 Comments:
Sharon, you are writing about things I need to hear and think about. I like this site and will try to add to it.
It is easy to get bogged down in what's wrong, but sometimes we also need to let ourselves experience the pain for a while. My usual response to a problem is "It could be worse." And my husband's reply is "It could be better." Somehow, I guess, we sort of balance each other.
Good point. Letting ourselves "experience the pain" is an important part of accepting and making peace with the problem. We can't really move forward until we do that. There is a time for everything, including pain.
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