Ups and Downs

Life recently has been filled with its ups and downs but those ups and downs have either been relatively uninteresting or deeply personal and private, leaving me feel like I've had very little left to to blog about. In truth, had my head been in the right place, there has been plenty of opportunities to record great moments. I just realized this morning that I not only missed blogging, I needed it! Here's a little recap of the latest developments: the good, the bad, and the ugly.

The Good:
a. DW and I have made several recent (good) changes with FitLab. We are in the process of moving the business into a local cycle shop so that we can expand our opportunity from primarily weight loss into having more access to athletes that want to step up their game, if you will. We are super excited about this new development...but have a lot of work ahead of us as well!

b. A few weeks back, I went on a mission trip as a chaperone for the youth from my church and kids were amazing! We worked with a local church plant in Spartenburg, South Carolina putting on a basketball camp for young kids in the community. If you'd like, you can check out those pics by clicking here. It was also a great learning experience in other ways as well: as the other leaders and I stressed the importance of reading and knowing God's word and leaning on Him to work through situations we can't handle on our own, I found myself in the midst of a time (personally) when I had to test - and approve - that theory for myself. As always, He is faithful...but I literally had to say at one point, "I can't do this without you. Please give me the strength to press on."

The Bad:
Physically this has been a tough month. First the surgery and recovery...then an extremely painful infection on the heels of the surgery...and then I managed to injure my neck. I was literally terrified I was going to be a paraplegic for a few seconds after I heard a horrendous popping sound and literally couldn't look up or down, left or right, couldn't even bend over. It's been a tough couple weeks and I suggested to Dusty, only half joking, that he take me out back and shoot me. Ha!

The Ugly:
a. well, we've all got problems, don't we? I've been really having to ask the Lord to refine me and grow me from circumstances in my life at the moment. My 6 week post-op appointment is coming up and the doctor had mentioned that he hoped to see some progress by the time we met (i.e. a cycle). To date, that hasn't happened and I'm allowing it to stress and disappointment me because I was so hoping this surgery would be a solution. Again, I find myself trusting in the timing and ability of man and not God...and He's having to work on my heart about that.

b. Although the circumstances aren't worth hashing out on here, I'm having to work really hard to let a certain situation in my life go. One of the flaws of my personality is that when I'm hurt, my tendency is to withdraw/shut down emotionally...and to do that, I cloak myself in some sort of distant anger...or maybe a better way to say it is sullenness. When I feel wronged, it's a struggle for me to allow the emotions to look like what they truly are...in this case, feeling not only misunderstood and incredibly hurt...but, honestly...burned. Don't you hate it when you can look back at a situation, certain choices, at allowances you've made despite the inner voice telling you not to go there...and know that it's your fault because you didn't listen to what you knew to be true in the first place. Maybe one day I'll know better, but for today I guess it's just another learning experience...

...just another chapter.