The Meantime Matters

A Story About NOT Reaching Your Goals.

My dad is seeking ordination in the Episcopal Church. For him, it is a dream deferred—something he has wanted for a very long time. Talking to him, I hear the conviction that comes from having figured out exactly what you want, and going to get it. It is turning out to be a very complicated and confusing process.

With frustrating doubts and disappointment, he continues toward this long-held goal . I’m lucky enough that he confides in me, and that I get to think about the challenges that have arisen lately. He acts as if my advice is sound and valuable, even when all I can say is “I love you and know that the right thing will happen for you”.

Look Great in Eight! Talking to him on my way to work one morning, I remembered a

time when I was set on reaching a goal (important to me, but not as important as becoming an ordained minister). It was a workout program that I had clipped from Muscle and Fitness For Her. The special pull-out section was emblazoned with the title: LOOK GREAT IN EIGHT!

It was eight weeks of very structured daily exercise with the promise of miraculous weight loss and toning. Just what I needed! I was determined to do it. Religiously. Faithfully. Strictly. No-matter-whatly.

I can tell you exactly what Week One consisted of (because I still have the pull-out section of the magazine).

• Sunday: 60 minutes recreational cardio

• Monday: 60 minutes circuit training

• Tuesday: Flexibility training• Wednesday: 60 minutes

circuit/25 1:1 cardio intervals• Thursday: 45 minutes cardio

@65-70% max heartrate• Friday: 60 minutes circuit• Saturday: 40 minutes cardio

@ 65-70% max heartrate.

If this would not make me a new person, nothing would. I resolved to do it.

I figured out, to the day, the end date. “If I started RIGHT NOW, I would be transformed on, let’s see, June 7th. Perfect. Just in time for summer clothes”.

This is what I want.

This is what I want.

It was a goal. And nothing short of completing that eight weeks with perfect attendance would have been enough for me.

I spent a year trying to reach that eight week mark. I would start. I would get through the entire first week. Something would come up. I would miss a few days. I would write in my workout journal, “LOSER”. And then start all over again. New calculations about when the new me would emerge. “If I started again RIGHT NOW…” June 7th turned into August 12th. I would get through the first week. Again. Then I would have to work late one night, and the next thing I knew, it had been three or four days since I worked out. I would write “PATHETIC” in my journal, and then start back on Day 1. August 12th turned into November 15th.

A year of stop and start. A year of being frustrated. A year of not reaching my goal. A year of wondering why it even mattered. Twelve months of doing all sorts of great things (being loved by my family, celebrating Buddy’s birthday, hiking, liking my job, watching good films, reading good books). But all of that was shadowed by my not being able to stick to my eight-week plan!

What I failed to notice is that at the end of that year, as disappointed and sad as I was that I could not achieve the ONE goal that I had set for myself, I was fitter than I have ever been. After all, I had been repeating weeks of:

• Sunday: 60 minutes recreational cardio• Monday: 60 minutes circuit training• Tuesday: Flexibility training• Wednesday: 60 minutes circuit/25 minute 1:1 cardio intervals• Thursday: 45 minutes cardio @ 65-70% max heartrate• Friday: 60 minutes circuit• Saturday: 40 minutes cardio @ 65-70% max heartrate/flexibility

training

Only in my mind did it not add up and have value. My glutes, pecs, quads, heart, had NO idea that I was not reaching my goal. All they knew was that I was working them very, very hard and they were responding to the challenge.

My point is that sometimes,

maybe, our goals might need to be looked over again. I want my dad to ask himself, what is the real objective? What do I want for myself? What do I hope to achieve by being able to complete the process of ordination? How will I be different from who I am right now? How will my service to the Lord and others be different? What will reaching the goal enable me to do that I am NOT able to do right now?

I wanted to have an active and fit body. To appreciate movement. To be proud of taking care of myself. I was achieving those things all along, but I continued to be unsatisfied because I was not reaching my goal of getting to the end of the magic eight weeks! I was blind to how I was fulfilling my own needs—already—without ever reaching my goal.

I was focused on the end of the program and was ignoring what I was doing in the meantime. I was writing “LOSER” in my journal, but in the meantime I was repeating a week of really great

workouts.

What does my dad want for himself after attaining ordination? He has expressed to me that he wants to serve the Lord through service to others. To shine a light for those in need. To use the hard-won wisdom of his own spiritual journey to guide others. To let his faith guide him—and others—to a sense of peace and wellbeing. To be a proud representative of faith and to offer comfort and compassion to believers and non-believers.

GUESS WHAT

While not ordained, in the meantime, he does all that. He does that every day. He has done that along the way. He did that when his task was to raise six children largely alone. He did that as an executive manager to hundreds of employees. He did that when he let me come live with him when I was scared and unsure of how things would work out for me. He does that whenever he says something really goofy and makes a bank teller laugh. He does that when he can forgive a perceived slight and move on. He does that when he can accept that he is loved and appreciated. He does that when he can accept another person’s position—even if he doesn’t agree with how they got there. He does that when he can use his own self-doubts and constant searching to make others feel okay about their insecurities.

He may not be moving in the direction of being ordained. It might be that his character is too big for what seems to me a very small and unbending set of criteria used to deem someone worthy of ordination.

I don’t know.

But I do know this. Our days make up our lives. What we do, or don’t do, in the meantime, while keeping our eye on a future day, or goal, matters. How we act while striving to be the person we want to become matters. I was doing exactly what I needed to be doing as I started Day 1 over and over again, but I simply didn’t see it, and wasted so much time worrying about not reaching my goal. I hope my dad knows that he, too, is doing exactly what he needs to be doing right now.

Our Meantime Matters