As The Mr. Says, "Lace It Up & Get In The Game"

The first weeks of school are so hard on everyone. We all chafe at being pushed back into "real" schedules and routines. We all sigh at the long assignment lists. We all put on brave faces and fake our good attitudes about getting the work done. We all say all the right lines about making good efforts and working hard now will pay off later. We're just down right tired.

But secretly, or maybe not so secretly, we all really miss those easy days of summer. We long for sleeping in, lazy meals and days just hanging around. We miss our fun reading and junk TV shows. We long to stay up late doing all the fun summer stuff.

In our hearts, though, we know that this is best.

Just last night, I longingly said to The Mr. "There is truly nothing on the calendar for tomorrow. I don't have to shower before bed. I don't have to be up serving hot breakfasts at 5:30. I could sleep in."

But before I was finished with my day dream, we both knew that wouldn't be the right thing to do.

It was really important to get up this morning and make it be the same as all the other school mornings. It was key to the kids progress--not just in academics, but in life too--that we just did what we needed to do, the way it needed to be done.

Our faith walk is sort of like that too sometimes. We know what we should do. We know how unpleasant it will become if we let it all slide. We know that God will step in and be the parent or teacher or your choice of authority figure here that we need to have sitting by our side, saying "no, honey, I know you want to play, but we have math lessons to learn. You can choose, learn them now the easy way, or later the hard way."

We all know what a relief it is to go into the weekend with no homework from school, no work from the office, no chores left to be done and no tasks untended.

We who believe know what relief it is to be right in our standing with the Lord and to walk into each moment of life with confidence that whatever comes next, it will be His perfect plan.

So discipline is the way, for today and everyday.