Do you ever feel like your life is rolling on oval wheels? Fight as you may, normalcy, stability and balance elude you. Life is uncertain. Sometimes normal things go unpredictably sideways. It seems, too, that the phenomenon is cyclical.

During my teen years, I spent oodles and oodles of hours in the gym. There I learned and perfected skill after skill. The sport of gymnastics taught me many things about life. I learned lots of cool skills. Most of those would render me positively broken if I tried them now. Other things I learned in the gym will stay with me for life. Of the important life lessons I learned, the uncertainty of things is one I return to often.

I enjoy standards and consistency. Schedules and systems make me happy. If I do a thing once, I should always be able to do a thing. Is anyone with me on this?  Unfortunately, we don’t live life unopposed. All kinds of things serve to distract us, derail us, and make life more complicated than it should be. Much of that actually makes us more successful people.

Most people who take up gymnastics or cheerleading learn a back handspring relatively early on in the process. I learned one when I was around 11 years old. In my lifetime I’ve done thousands upon thousands of them. I can still do one on a trampoline at nearly 50 years of age.

During my gymnastics career, I learned to do a back handspring on the beam. I spent hours on the beam doing them again and again. One day, an odd thing happened. Every time I went for it, one hand refused to find the beam. I started doing them one-handed. That would have been super cool, except it scared me bad! I backed off to the low beam to correct the problem. Sadly, I was never able to do a two-handed back handspring on the beam again. A reason never existed for why that happened. Something changed that refused to be corrected.

I spent the summer after I graduated from college working at a children’s sports camp called Crosspoint. I coached gymnastics, of course. The camp offered 7 or 8 different sports. As a staff, we liked to work out together and be exposed to each other’s sports. One of my friends coached track. One day, she offered for some of us to get together during a break for a track conditioning session. I took her up on her offer.

Later that afternoon, I had a group of campers in the gym. Back handsprings were the focus of the session. After I did my intro teaching, I proceeded to demonstrate the skill. I underestimated the effects of track conditioning. Ultimately, I demonstrated what my coach always called a “back nasal skid”. My quadricep muscles failed me when I tried to jump. The trajectory landed me on my face. I embarrassed myself doing a skill I could practically do in my sleep and with one hand on beam. It turns out I needed a bit more time between Becca’s lunges across the football field and doing a back handspring for my campers. My knowledge and proficiency with the skill were no match for the timing of the moment.

We got back from vacation three weeks ago. I definitely do not have my groove back. Writing feels hard, relationships feel wonky, and my energy level is off. I expected to come home and hit the ground running with both feet. Instead, my days feel full of back nasal skids and oval wheels. All the things I can generally do without trouble suddenly feel incredibly difficult. What gives?

As I drove across town last week, I remembered something important. Some things take time. And, sometimes I need to take some time. In my fight for normalcy, I am prone to calibrate what “should be” based on the wrong metrics. I tend to favor “what has always been” over “what could be” or even “what is best”.

There is an occasion for everything,
and a time for every activity under heaven:

Ecclesiastes 3:1 (CSB)

Presently, my life has cycled into a time to tear down (Ecclesiastes 3:3). I am trying to embrace the sideways feeling of it all. Did I say I really, really love consistency?  Walking in faith requires a bit of rewiring every now and again. Old thoughts and old ways become obsolete. As uncomfortable as that can feel, it is all a part of being transformed from glory to glory. (II Corinthians 3:18) We get to lay down what was good in order to pick up something even better.

What about you? Is there an old thought pattern keeping you from progressing? Do you need to spend some time recalibrating to prepare for the best God has for you?

We get to be movers and shakers in God’s kingdom. That requires a willingness to get uncomfortable on occasion, to recalibrate, and climb out of old structures that no longer support where we are headed in life. What can you work on laying down?