Life isn’t a straight line goal. No matter how committed we are, no matter how much we strive, the nature of life is more Fibonacci than number line, more Hokey Pokey than line dancing. 🙂 Which means that no matter how well you’re doing or how far you’ve gotten, periodically you’ve got to pause, take stock, and readjust things. This was brought home to me the other day as I was sealing the deck in prep for the fall rains (which started the next day.) Oil based stain means I was decked out in rubber gloves and really old, don’t mind if they get stained by stain clothes and the crappy, this is all they are good for now tennis shoes. As I was going along – things went fine, thanks for asking – I noticed that I put my keys in my pocket and that with all the movement and the weight of the keys, the elastic in the shorts just wasn’t doing the trick. So every so often, even though things were going well, progress was being made, and at rather a quicker pace than I remember from 2 years ago when I did this last, I had to take a pause, remove a glove, and adjust my shorts to prevent a neighborhood incident.
This is true of our spirituality as well. What worked 2 years ago might not work now because we have changed and grown. How we pray and what we pray for might need to change to incorporate new learning and new facets of our being. Altars need cleaning and refurbishing from time to time. Our goals might shift and that’s a great indicator of growth, not a lack of commitment. Better to check in with these things consciously rather than wait for some uncomfortable incident or some external influence to point out the need for change. You’re on your path, completely capable of self-evaluation and course correction. All growth and change and progress leads us to need to adjust things. Or, if you want a visual, don’t let your spiritual life develop spiritual plumber’s crack. Pull yourself back together and then keep going. 😉