Surfing through life

I often enjoy time alone to think and one of my favourite places to spend alone-time is the beach.
The North East has some beautiful beaches and I like the opportunity of just gazing out to sea.
It reminds me of childhood summers - going to Germany on the ferry, holidays with my family and many freezing cold days eating chips & ice cream with the wind blowing my hair & sand into my food.

I recently had an afternoon to myself so I went to Tynemouth and sat at the top of the cliff looking at the beach below.  It was a windy day but sunny & around 2ºc.  Needless to say people were wrapped up against the cold!
As I looked below I saw a surfer paddling out to sea with his surfboard.  I immediately wondered how ridiculous he must be to be in such freezing water and then I just waited and watched.
He seemed to be enjoying himself with the waves in the shallow water.  Every now & then he caught a small wave & spent a couple of seconds riding it.
He spent quite a while splashing about and then as I looked beyond him I saw huge waves just out a bit further from where he was. 
I noticed that he was so busy with the small waves and yet the fun, big waves were just a little ahead.  If he had pushed through the small ones he would have had the fun big ones to play with!

How often do we busy ourselves with the small things of life that we neglect the bigger things ahead of us.  We can get distracted by the not-so-important things of life that we neglect the important things!
Don't get me wrong, we do need to go through the small waves to get to the big ones, but we cant ignore the big waves in life & think the little waves are all there is!

For me, this often looks like me pottering around the house all day thinking I'm busy but then realising how little I have really accomplished because my pottering was fussing over insignificant things!

I also had realised that from the top of the cliff by the beach I had a different perspective than the surfer & maybe he genuinely didnt see thie big waves just ahead of him.
From my perspective there was lots to be gained from pushing through the small into the deep.
We need to realise that God has a different perspective from us and sometimes the things that attract a lot of our time & attention are actually disctractions from the real stuff of life, yet we dont know it!
I challenged myself by thinking that the prime minister of England has the same 24 hours in a day as me, he just uses it differently!

How many things have we put off because it seems just a bit too risky or it makes us feel uncomfortable because it's just too big or too much?

How many times do we wish we had just pushed through a pain barrier to the bigger more rewarding things?

In the great words of a popular sports brand, "Just do it!"

One of life's little sacrifices

I'm a process kind of person.
I often love the process of planning projects more than the actual project. Take for example Christmas, I love the preparation, planning & cooking so so much!
I also enjoy painting and usually enjoy the process of painting more than looking at the finished masterpiece.
As a teacher I remember observing a small child painstakingly paint a lovely picture of her house & family only to then paint all over the top of it with black paint. She loved the act of painting and was learning so much from the process of it. The only issue for me was then explaining this black splodgy soggy paper to her parents when she gleefully said "I did a painting of my house!" At home-time.
One process I could really do without however is cleaning my bathroom.
I enjoy having a clean sparkly bathroom but not the process of getting it that way. As I write this my nostrils are filled with the smell of bleach which usually takes half a day to fade away.
After a twitter conversation with a friend this morning I got thinking about this in a new way.

It's a sacrifice for me to clean my bathroom...
...I don't like the process but I learn from the process.

I've blogged before about the importance of being diligent with the little things in life, but there's another lesson to be learned here.

In life we must sacrifice things in order to have something we want.
In order to afford a nice holiday we need to sacrifice the odd Starbucks here & there... (and usually other luxuries too)
In order to enjoy a morning walk with my dog I need to get up that bit earlier...

Sacrifices big & small are annoying, but we're willing to go through with them if we can see the prize waiting on the other side.

Proverbs 29v11 says that without a vision/revelation, people cast off restraint / or people perish (depending on the translation)
Yes, we have to sacrifice from time to time but keeping our eye on the prize keeps our focus where it should be... ahead.

When we have dreams & desires for our lives they're usually in seed form within us.  The sacrifices we make along the way to realising them are like the fertilizer that ensures their growth.
Fertilizer smells and its a nasty job using it (thinking of my toilet here) but the results are amazing!

 SO, the next time you clean your bathroom think about what lesson you can learn in the process.
 :-)