The Medicine Balls

Friday late afternoon I walked into the gym for my daily meditation session or as some call it my “workout” (but for me my greatest thinking comes in the gym). Every visit to the gym consists of a similar routine (until it needs to be varied to see progress): free weights, wall squats, lunges, abs, (all the previously stated activities are always done in repetitions of 17, not 10, not 15, but 17), followed by 30-45 minutes of cardio (depending on the day’s meeting schedule). I began my routine that afternoon as any other day, after an adequate amount of wall squats (yes, where I admire my calves in the mirrors) I started towards the corner where the medicine balls are kept and to grab my yoga mat. To my shock the medicine balls weren’t in the corner and the yoga mats were rolled up instead of laying flat. Panic rose within me for a moment as I scanned the room for the medicine balls. The balls had been moved to the other side of the room. Less than 24 hours had passed since I was in that room and it had been changed and put a slight wrench in my routine (even if it was only a moment).

Now most at this point (including my own mother) are thinking: “Jess, we don’t need to hear about your OCD tendencies”, but I tell you this to preface my thoughts over the past couple of weeks regarding the word most of us either fear, avoid, or have happen so often that we don’t know what consistency would even look like: CHANGE.

This past week I had three of my closest friends make moves that were and will be life changing. Bobby and Sara moved their growing family from The Valley to the “Magic” Valley to start a new adventure. T. Hammer started a new chapter in her life by moving from sunny SoCal to central Washington. While the two situations are different in circumstances, they are rather familiar in feelings associated with such life-altering change. I could sense the nervousness in speaking with Sara and as Tiff visited last weekend I knew there were mixed emotions in the changes occurring. I thought back to my own experiences with moving to The Bay; the hesitation, the fear, the uncertainty of the change. It seems just when we are comfortable in a place or circumstance our lives change and we are forced to step out of our comfort zone in order to progress even further along the path of life. I had no real comforting or brilliant ideas for my friends facing these changes but I do know that change will always come, whether it is a move or the medicine balls being moved in the gym change comes. It is up to us to both embrace and run with the changes or to long for our Jerusalem in the past.

I have in the days since T. Hammer left been listening to a devotional speech by Elder Jeffrey R. Holland entitled: Remember Lot’s Wife. In this Elder Holland says: “Some of you were having thoughts such as these: Is there any future for me? What does a new year or a new semester or a new major or a new romance hold for me [or in the case of my sweet friends: a new move]? Will I be safe? Will life be sound? Can I trust in the Lord and in the future? Or would it be better to look back, to go back, to go home? To all such of every generation, I call out, “Remember Lot’s wife.” Faith is for the future. Faith builds on the past but never longs to stay there. Faith trusts that God has great things in store for each of us and that Christ truly is the “high priest of good things to come.””