Steady Progress

It seems as if I haven’t blogged in a while.  I suppose that’s due to the unrest that’s been occuring in my own backyard of Minneapolis and in the nation following the brutal death of George Floyd.  My heart has been very heavy as I’m sure yours have been too.  First with his death, then watching community establishments burn down, and then most recently watching the protests that have spread throughout the nation.  I said to myself, “Can this be the time for true change to systematic racism in America?” 

Why the topic of George Floyd is of high importance to me, I want to shift just for a little bit.  As I’ve shared on my previous blog, God has really been working on me in the area of being disciplined in various areas of my life, one of those being exercise.  For the past 2-3 weeks, I’ve been on my elliptical machine daily or taking brisk walks around the lake.  However, after doing this for a while, I found I wasn’t getting as good of a workout as I did the first week, so I challenged myself to do something different.

Yesterday, I went to the lake and decided to jog around the lake.  A tall task, but I really wanted to do it.  When I started out, it felt great!  I was enjoying the breeze and atmosphere.  By the time I made it ¼ around the lake, I began thinking differently.  I was tired and thought “there is no way I can do this.  Maybe I’ll just go halfway.”  I quickly changed the goal because it was hard to see the light at that point.  That’s when a revelation came to me to just set small milestone goals for myself.  I would set goals for the landmarks I could see in plain sight – a tree, a stop sign, a person, etc.  When I reached that goal, I set my sight on the next landmark in the near distance I felt I could achieve.  I had to talk to myself and tell myself I could do it and I would do this opposed to my normal language of “I can’t do this.  I can’t do this.”  It was never easy, but once I got closer to the goal, my spirits began to rise.  “I can’t stop now.  I’m getting closer”.  Before you know it I rounded the corner to the finish line.  I’d like to tell you I sped up like they do in the movies for a dramatic finish, but I honestly kept the same steady pace as the journey to that point had been challenging.

I’m proud to tell you I finished!  I achieved my goal of jogging around the lake!  More than finishing I learned some important lessons.  The first being changing my self talk from I can’t to I can.  We’ve all heard the saying, “ The man that says he can’t and the man who says he can are both right”.  So much of our failures or achievements are based on the conversations we have with ourselves.  Secondly, I remembered Rome wasn’t built in a day.  Setting the long term goal was important, but all of the short term goals I set allowed me to accomplish the long term goal.  Many times I find, we don’t celebrate our accomplishments unless Rome is completely finished!  This is not how we should be measuring progress, it’s just as important to celebrate each short term achievement, celebrating that task completion alone.  It all comes down to us being a little kinder to ourselves and taking one step, one day at a time.  

Now I go back to the initial question I posed, “Can we use this moment in time to help change systematic racism?”  I believe we can.  However, we have to remember we cannot do it all in one day, month, summer or a year.  These systems were built over a long period of time and therefore it will take a time to change them.  It may take even more time for us to see true change in the hearts of people who learned these implicit biases at a young age.  The important thing is that we persevere.  We do what we can, we celebrate the small milestone accomplishments along the way and never give up because it’s too hard, too frustrating or taking too long.  I can remember this week, strongly disagreeing with someone’s opinion and desiring to cut them off completely, but what good does that do?  It’s time to have difficult, uncomfortable conversations – listen, talk and listen some more.  This will take time, but it is very important we all stick in this race and cross the finish line.

~Felicia

Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles. And let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us, fixing our eyes on Jesus, the pioneer and perfecter of faith. For the joy set before him he endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God. Consider him who endured such opposition from sinners, so that you will not grow weary and lose heart.

~ Hebrews 12:1-3