Lent Day 6: Excuses

I work as a Fitness Tech at Curves, The Workout Place for Women. I hear all kinds of excuses women use to try to justify not taking or making time to exercise. I knew most of the excuses, because I was already pretty good at using them myself. But aren’t we all?

Paul paints a pretty clear picture of the human dilemma in Romans 7: that which I should not, that do I do. He wanted to do better, knew he needed to better, even knew what he should do, but seemed more often than not to give in to his weaker nature. He felt wretched, and we understand the feeling.

This morning when I woke up at 5:00 A.M. to go do my workout, I peeked out the window. There it was, all over the road and the sidewalks: Snow. More than any year previous, I am tired of snow. I especially don’t like driving in snow and will find any number of excuses to not do so. On Mondays my schedule is such that if I don’t workout first thing, I will find plenty of reasons in my schedule to just skip exercising.

I had a choice to make. Would I grab an excuse and crawl back into bed for an extra hour of sleep? Who would really blame me? I mean, exercising at 5:00 A.M. is crazy enough, why risk an accident in the snow to do something crazy? Or, would I pull on my sweats and head to the car? I opted for the car!

Now there is not anything necessarily noble about going to exercise at 5:00 A.M., but there is something worth rejoicing about when we don’t let excuses keep us from doing and being what we should or can be and do. We don’t use excuses just to avoid exercising and eating right. We use them to justify poor relationship decisions, cheating at work, speeding down the highway, fudging on our taxes. And we use them with God.

I had a good workout. Physically, mentally, and spiritually, I’m glad I went. As I drove to the club I thought through what the day may hold for me: things known (on the schedule) or unplanned. And I decided to try and have an excuse free day: no excuses physically, mentally, or spiritually. I don’t know how it’s going to go, but it feels freer and lighter already. How would life look for you if you decided to live excuse free?