Good, good, good.
Ray and I are blessed with two Christian physicians, both of whom are our friends. One was the dad of homeschooled children back before our children graduated from our homeschool. The other one is a homeschool dad today. One of these friends has a gym in his physician office and a fulltime trainer who is also a trained physical therapist assistant. The trainer’s name is Boyd. Upon our physician’s recommendation, Ray and I completed an eight-week group fitness course with Boyd during the late summer and early fall.
The course was so fun and beneficial that Ray and I asked Boyd to offer a continuing program that we could participate in after the fitness course was over. We weren’t the only ones asking. To our great joy, Boyd was able to convince the doctor to give that a try. We are so grateful.
Ray and I took a break during the Christmas holidays. We got delayed by our trip to Oxford, Mississippi, and then delayed again when Ray had pneumonia. Boyd suggested that we wait until the beginning of February to give Ray some time to recover.
Here we are on our first day back on February 2.
Boyd keeps us moving and stretching and lifting during our 40-minute sessions which we try to fit in three times a week. That means that three times a week, we not only get a great workout, we get to spend 40 minutes with our young friend Boyd. He is openly Christian, a devoted family man with two young children he is very proud of, a very fit former football player, and a super encourager. As he operates his stopwatch and we move, he is speaking words of praise. Again and again, we hear “good, good, good.”
Not one “good,” or two “goods,” but three. While I was hearing “good, good, good” on Tuesday, I thought about you and about the lesson in that for you mamas. You have the opportunity to cheer your children on all through the day. Boyd could tell us that he’s glad to see us when we arrive and that we did a good job when we leave, but that’s not his style. He is a constant, consistent motivator. He is also a wonderful explainer. He doesn’t simply tell us that what he has planned for us is good for us. He tells us why it’s good for us and what it will do for our health to do it.
Everyone needs a cheerleader. We are grateful to have Boyd as one of ours. In 1 Thessalonians 5, Paul encouraged the Thessalonians to encourage one another and build up one another, and he immediately did the same for them by acknowledging that they were already doing that.
Therefore encourage one another
and build up one another,
just as you also are doing.
1 Thessalonians 5:11