For Wilshire Baptist Church
One day last week I spent some time on and off throughout the day unsubscribing from emails that I’ve never wanted and never asked for. It’s tedious work, but it needed to be done. I don’t want a business loan or a cash offer on my home. I’m fine without CBD gummies or a new miracle pillowcase. I don’t want to support a candidate in Virginia, and I don’t need to know the ancient Aztec secret to defying old age. And no, I didn’t inquire about a delivery driver job. The list is endless, and in the past I’ve just deleted the emails and moved on, but they’ve multiplied and deleting them even takes time now, so it seemed like a good time to stop the madness.
Also that day, I went for my annual physical and asked for a referral to an orthopedist to explore the source of chronic shoulder pain. I’ve put up with it and just lived with it for too long. It hasn’t stopped me from doing anything important, but it’s always there whenever I use my arms – from trying to scratch or scrub my own back to tossing a baseball in the outfield at Globe Life Field with my nephew. It started last summer with yard work and got worse this summer and it obviously isn’t going away, so I want to see what’s up. If anything, I don’t want to turn minor strains or tears into major surgical events.
So, why do we put up with stuff that we don’t need to put up with? Why do we live with things that we don’t need to live with and are relatively easy to change but we don’t change them? For me, it may be laziness or apathy or not wanting to shake things up. The emails aren’t really such a bother, after all, and the shoulder pain only hurts some of the time, but those things are symptomatic of a certain “stuckness” that we can live in perpetually.
The serenity prayer says, “God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can, and wisdom to know the difference.” If you buy into that, then apparently sometimes we lack courage to make changes, even just small ones. The interesting thing is that almost every time I make a change that I’ve put off for so long, I never have a regret. Quite often, I confess to myself at least, “I don’t know why I waited so long.”
So, what are you putting off changing? And why are you waiting?