Chart the Course: end up where you want to be

Growing up I was fortunate to spend a lot of time deep see fishing. Truly some of my favorite memories. One thing I remember is that every time before we left the dock the captain would punch in the coordinates he wanted to fish first, then we would untie and push off.

He didn’t just leave the dock and aimlessly drive anywhere out in the open ocean, nor did we untie and just drift with the expectation that we would get where we wanted to go. Quite the opposite. The night before, he looked through his logs to see where we had fished successfully, and then he charted a course for us to hit one of those spots again. In other words, he prepared the journey, before we ever embarked on it.

I believe life requires much of that same kind of forethought. Andy Stanley says that “Everybody ends up somewhere in life, a few people end up there on purpose.” What a powerful thought. You could stay in the dock, you could drift, you could aimlessly cruise, or you could chart a course then go for it.

For many of us we want live healthy, whole, generous and full lives. Admirable goals. It’s what I want. But any of the times that I’ve tried to drift to any of those markers, I end up in quite a different spot. If I want a deeper faith, a more disciplined diet, healthy relationships, I need to mark those spots on the map and then chart the course.

I have found that once the course is charted, it’s imperative you have daily checkpoints in the form of practices. The practice of healthy whole Foods and less sugar, on the way to healthy body; the practice of daily scripture reading and prayer on the way to a deeper relationship with God; and the practice of limited social media consumption and an up’d intake of reality to live a whole life.

Without picking out where we want to go, and initiating the practices that will ultimately get us there, we will either feel stuck, or end far down a course we didn’t want to travel.

In one month where would you like a portion of your life to be healthier? Mark it out, chart the course, then untie and push off.