Monday, March 9, 2015

Building "Soul Muscles"

It's very good that I can't "fail" Lent. I heard someone say about Lent recently, "It's better to make a small promise you can keep then to struggle throughout and never succeed." I disagree entirely.

Consciousness is raised through struggle. "Do hard things," right? Our will, our stamina, our conscientiousness, our faith: these are the muscles of our soul. They are built through exercise and specifically through stress.

We know how muscles grow, right? When a muscle is required to produce force, it causes tension. The tension creates tiny tears in the tight bundle of fibers that makes up the muscle. When your muscles know they have been under tension, the send in the troops to rebuild those tears. As the tears heal, the muscle then grows in those spots. Over time, and with consistent commands to produce greater amounts of force, the muscle grows in measurable fashion.

Yet if you never require anything extra of your muscles, they won't grow. In fact, if you keep on slacking and not requiring more of them over time as you age, they will naturally atrophy! Yes, in choosing to do nothing of note, in not requiring of our bodies the extraordinary, we actually become weaker.

Which brings us back to Lent and how I am struggling. I am having my everyday problem: there aren't enough hours in the day to do everything I want to do along with everything I should do. I keep breaking my promises! Argggh. Then I recommit and put in renewed effort and then, magically, my "soul muscles" grow a bit.  

It's day by day around here. No, hour by hour. The key, I think, is to never give up. The key is to do the hard thing. Lift the weight, push the sled, sit up, "git" up, do anything rather than nothing. Keep the faith, literally. 

At every turn, we must choose again the best course. At the end of our Lenten journey, we will have built those big soul muscle and we will have the strength to face whatever is next.