Starting isn’t the journey. It’s only the first step. You have to keep taking steps, even if they’re baby ones, to be on the Way.

This is what I heard God say to me yesterday morning as Rick spoke. And it struck a bit of a nerve.

I’m really good at starting things. Finishing, not so much. But starting… well, my home is filled with great and wonderful projects I’ve started over the last few years, all in different stages of, um, progress. But none are finished.

Saturday I started again on an endeavor I’ve tried and failed at so often in my life: regular exercise. I’ll get started, all gung ho and ready to go, only to get "sidetracked" by tiredness, busyness or just life. Before I realize it weeks have gone by without any exercise in my life, aside from walking to my car or walking through the grocery store.

But by last night I was already hearing the buzz of defeat in my ears, as I had napped through the time I’d set for exercise. Oh, I know I needed the sleep. I’d only slept about two hours when I awoke around 1:30am. And I could not for the life of me get back to sleep. So I passed the hours of 3am to 6am watching the latest news and the end of a movie I’d never seen until, finally, it was time to get ready for church. Yes, I needed the sleep. But, dang, did it have to come at the expense of my newly restarted effort?

Life isn’t a project that you start and finish and put on a shelf for all to see. It really is a journey that doesn’t end, just changes stages, from a temporal physical one to an eternal spiritual one. So staying put in one place really isn’t an option — even if you decide to do so. Life’s river keeps dragging us downstream, whether we want to go or not. And trying to stay in one place only leaves us with lots of mud and riverbank muck under our fingernails (wow– can I put more metaphors in one paragraph??).

Starting something, but never taking more steps upwards leaves me standing on a plateau — albeit, one that keeps moving me on towards eternity, but a plateau nonetheless.

The only way to move forward, or upward, is to take another step, and then another, even if they’re separated by many days, or months. Or years.

So today I determined to take another step. And tomorrow I plan to do the same. But if I fail I’m not going to give up. I’ll just determine again to take another step. And plan to do the same the following day.

My mom often told me, "practice makes perfect". I doubt I’ll ever be "Perfect" at life, but I’m determined to keep practicing. Even if it means I have to "start" again and again, and again.