There Is No Coast

There is no coast.

It's my new motto for life. (I have several...I just keep adding them to the list, but that's another day, another blog.) 

I'm not referring to the East or West Coast. I'd be a fool to contend that they don't exist. A car or a boat can coast. Even on a bike when you're riding it and you pedal really hard and really fast so that you can sit back while all the scenery whizzes by you, legs throbbing. That's coasting. Coasting exists, for sure. But what about coasting in life? Like day in, day out coasting. I don't think it's good for us. When we coast we take our eyes off the prize. We allow ourselves to be too easily distracted by things that don't matter, things that actually take us further from our destination. 

When I think of coasting, I think of being passive. You can't be active and coasting. I get more careless when I'm coasting. Particularly on a bike. I can think of more than a few occasions where I pushed myself hard, gained some really great speed, then sat back to rest and soak it all in...only to be jolted back to the task at hand by a rock, twig, or curve in the road that tried to throw me from the two-wheeled fast-moving metal contraption. I quickly began pedaling again (or braking, depending on the situation) and chose to focus, lest I end up in a twisted mess of metal. 

So what about coasting in life then? Do we do the same things? We work super hard at something, make some progress, get some good speed going, then sit back and ride on that for awhile. And what happens? A crash? A setback? A curve that causes us to wonder how the heck we got to where we did?

Just a couple weeks ago, I was feeling really good about some progress on internal things. I'd been working hard, trying to utilize the time I have now to take in what I can until my time soon becomes taken up by a job. Then I went out of town for the weekend, started to coast, and (even worse) started to enjoy the coasting. I didn't want to start pedaling again. It was easier to sit and just let things go by. Easier to not engage. Until something went wrong. Until thoughts started going down an alley that was darker than expected. I recognized this particular alley and concluded, after a bit of wallowing in self-pity and frustration, I'd better turn myself around and pedal quickly out of it. Which meant I could no longer coast. I had to actively pedal. Diligently begin working on the things I left behind. Was it fun? Initially no. But then I got out of the tunnel. I began to see some new scenery. I began to feel the accomplishment of working for where I was going, and not just pedaling harder and harder barreling through it just so I could rest again. I can't just sit back and expect to go great places (and I'm not just referring to literal places, sometimes it's often thoughts, emotions, spiritual places I need to press into). Slow and steady wins the race. Sometimes it's flat ground. Sometimes God takes us up hills. Sometimes He goes down them with us. But I am challenging myself to keep from coasting. To keep from losing sight of the goal, the promises. Each day I must take what He is offering, because what He offers on a daily basis is better than what I can store up and coast on.