Wednesday, November 20, 2013

Do the hard thing

Have you ever been faced with a decision, little or large, where you know what you ought to do but you don't really want to? I'm not referring to some great moral dilemma or anything, just really a niggling sense of needing to make a wise choice?

Recently, I had to make a decision about my phone. Since I've had a smart phone, I've always plugged it in at night on my night stand, where little fingers rarely came, where I could reach it for late night/early morning texts, use it as my alarm clock and general bedside amusement (autocorrects kill me). It's been great, but I've been noticing a trend in my phone use: alarm goes off, so I turn it off. The phone is now in my hand, so I can check email from under the covers. Then, I check to see if anything interesting has been posted on Facebook (seriously?), and maybe have a look at Pinterest. Perhaps a news story will catch my attention, so I'll take a quick look at that. At this point, I've blown at least a half an hour and have little time left for reading my Bible and praying before I hit the bike and shower.

In short, my phone has become a bedside distraction.

So, I have decided to evict my phone from my room. It now gets plugged in at my desk in the schoolroom at night, and I can pick it up in the morning. It takes some getting used to, but it's a lot easier to pick up my Bible in the morning now that my cheerful, little time-thief has been relegated to another room.

Sometimes, we just need to make the difficult decision, do the hard thing. What "ought-to" are you wrestling with right now? Whatever it is, get to it, while today is still called "today". It'll be worth it.