Ingrown Toenail and Going to Church

This entry on my blog is dedicated to another blogger and friend, Jessica.

Jessica has written on her blog a while back about her struggles in finding a new church home. Believe me I understand. Every since I moved to this rinky-dink little town it has been very difficult for me not only to find a church home but to attend worship service regularly. As many of my online friends know I work swing shifts. It makes it very difficult to attend church services regularly. In fact, 4 days this week I am working 10 pm to 8am in which midnight to 8am I am working at the office alone. My duties on this shift are to man the phones and watch our computer networks. If our networks have any problems I am to report it immediately an engineer, even if I have to wake them up! So, even if I ever get a Sunday off it is still very difficult to get up to attend worship services because I am often so exhausted on Sunday mornings.

Not attending church regularly makes it also very difficult to be motivated to attend. It is like my ingrown toenail (and I will be glad to explain this illustration). Often I would go walking in a local park either before or after work. The exercise is fun, it gives me a chance to get some exercise, and it helps me to control my blood sugar. When I first started walking it was really difficult to get motivated because diabetes makes me sooooo tired all the time.

Slowly I began to motivate myself to start walking. At first I started to walk to one end of the park and back. In a few days I began to walk the entire one and half mile of the course. Before long I am walking the entire course twice (three miles). Now I am on a roll and I am feeling so much better until I started to develop an ingrown toenail. UGH!

The ingrown toenail killed my enthusiasm for walking. Last year I had the same problem. When I was really getting into the walking the ingrown toenail interrupted the momentum of my enthusiasm and when this happened it took months before I was able to build the enthusiasm back to the same level.

It is the same way with church attendants. When I don’t go to church for several weeks it is hard to motivate myself to go to church when I am able. The last three weeks has been good to me because I was able to attend church services three Sundays in a row. I have been attending a good Reformed Presbyterian Church that is about 15 min away from where I live. At first, it was hard to motivate myself to get up, dressed, and to drive myself to the church. After attending three weeks in row I am getting enthusiastic about attending. However, the next work schedule will be posted soon and undoubtedly it will kill the enthusiasm because I will be working some Sundays again. Just like what the ingrown toenail did to my walking.

So Jessica once you find a good Reformed church that you will decide to call your home it will get easier to get into the habit of attending especially when you get to know the people of the new church. I know that attending a new church is hard, and even harder if you are a single Christian attending a new church alone. Let us know how it is going with church search.

Your Brother

Timothy
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PS – After work today I will be going to the doctor to have the ingrown toenail cut out!