Celebration of Discipline

When my alarm went off this morning, I sat up in bed and said, "You have no discipline, and you need some."

Apparently my subconscious had been lecturing me in my sleep.

The other day, I got this fortune in my Chinese fortune cookie:

At first I thought, "This is awesome."

But the thought that followed directly afterward was, "No, I won't." 

I would love to be an accomplished writer, but, even if I am a talented writer, I will never become an accomplished writer, because I don't write. Because I have no discipline. I only write when I'm inspired, when I feel like it, when I want to.

Just because my room is clean doesn't mean I'm disciplined. I just like to clean. If I hated to clean and my room was clean, then I'd be a disciplined person. As it is, I'm very, very poor at doing things I do not want to do.

I've quit a lot of things in my life. Ballet, gymnastics, playing the piano, playing the flute, public school, choir, Business Management, boring novels. I'm pretty undisciplined. Especially...when it comes to eating.

A couple weeks ago I told my boss I'd save him some Cheez-Its and he said, "Can you? I know you. If there's food in front of you, you'll eat it."

I can't even take offense at that, because there's nothing false about that statement.

(But I DID save him some Cheez-Its. So...step one on the road to discipline.)

Discipline's biggest enemy is self-justification. If I can justify something in my mind, I have overruled discipline. I want to eat 7 cookies. They have oatmeal in them, and raisins. Hello, healthy. I went running this morning, it's fine. I haven't eaten this many truffles in, like, three days. So it's like a treat, really. If you think about it. Really.

God has been telling me a lot recently about discipline. Discipline is what it takes to grow. Discipline is what God uses on us to help us grow, and discipline is what we institute in ourselves to help us grow.

In what areas do you want to grow? Reading more? Praying more? Thinking of others more? Eating less? Buying less? Being more generous? Being less selfish? Being a better cook?

In case you simply need some encouragement: Take some steps to discipline yourself. (Tell me this, too.)

Write out the names of those you want to pray for and tape it to your shower to pray through every morning.

Fill out one of these calendars for 100 days, each day checking off the same three habits (or disciplines) you really want to be a part of your life.

Stop eating 7 cookies.

I'm not willing to sacrifice growth and character for comfort and temporary satisfaction.

He will die for lack of discipline, led astray by his own great folly. - Proverbs 5:23