My grandfather was always up to something.\u00a0 He always had a plan, a hobby, a project to work on.\u00a0 Even when he got old, he didn\u2019t sit still for too long.\u00a0 When health finally forced him to stop, that\u2019s when he went on to be with the Lord.\u00a0 I remember my grandfather as a guy who never stopped moving forward, looking for the next thing to build, the next place to go, the next person to help . . .\u00a0 He didn\u2019t just talk, he did.\u00a0 With this as his attitude in life, the advice he gave me one day appeared to be a little out of character.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Emotionally, I was going through a rough patch in life. From the outside perspective, it looked like\nthings were going well for me. Life was\nworking out just fine. I had a house, a\nfamily, a job . . . but I was not content. \nI couldn\u2019t figure out what I should be doing next. Should I be working harder? Should I be doing more? Or should I just be happy with things the way\nthey were? That\u2019s when my grandfather\ntold me \u201cSometimes, you just coast.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cSometimes, you just coast.\u201d \nIt sounded like good advice at the time and I\u2019ve never forgotten it, but\nrecently, I have wondered if it is really true. \nAfter all, the Bible says we should run life as a race. Run to win. \nThat doesn\u2019t sound like coasting to me. \nOn the other hand, there are also stories in the Bible where God told his\npeople to relax. To stop striving. He would fight the battle for them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I think my issue was that I was confusing coasting with\ndrifting. Now, maybe my grandfather wasn\u2019t\npurposefully so choosy with his word, but even so, I\u2019m glad he said \u201c\u2026\nsometimes you just coast \u2026\u201d and not \u201c\u2026 sometimes you just drift \u2026\u201d Drifting\nis aimless. You just go wherever the\ncurrents of life take you. Coasting is\nstill purposeful. When you coast, you\nstill aim toward the goal. You still move in the right direction, but you stop\nstriving so hard to get there. You stop\npumping the peddles of the bicycle like crazy, relax a bit, lift up your head,\nand enjoy the breeze as you coast toward your goal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In life, there are always hills to climb, times when you\nhave to peddle hard just to make progress. \nTimes when you feel like giving up, like you will never make it to the\nfinish line. That\u2019s when you build\nstrength and character by keeping your head down and pushing the peddle with perseverance. But if that were all there was to the journey\nof life, most of us would give up before reaching the destination. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
I\u2019m glad there are times when we can coast. Times of resting and refreshing and being\ncontent. The important thing is to know\nwhen to coast, to recognize and enjoy it when you can, and to always keep\nsteering in the right direction. I guess\nthat\u2019s what my grandfather was trying to tell me years ago. Sometimes in life, \u201cyou just coast.\u201d <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
My grandfather was always up to something.\u00a0 He always had a plan, a hobby, a project to work on.\u00a0 Even when he got old, he didn\u2019t sit still for too long.\u00a0 When health finally forced him to stop, that\u2019s when he went on to be with the Lord.\u00a0 I remember my grandfather as a guy […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"","ast-site-content-layout":"default","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"default","ast-page-background-enabled":"default","ast-page-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"ast-content-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2769","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-misc"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/markspruill.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2769","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/markspruill.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/markspruill.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/markspruill.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/markspruill.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2769"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/markspruill.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2769\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2770,"href":"https:\/\/markspruill.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2769\/revisions\/2770"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/markspruill.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2769"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/markspruill.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2769"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/markspruill.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2769"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}