But I Like My Rut

Resisting healthy change is like resisting a healthy diet, I know it will give me everything I want but I don't want to do the work to get it. I want to have more energy, but I don't want to get off my butt. I want to feel healthy, but I don't want to give up all my bad habits.

In real life, there is no sitting on the fence. Refusing to make a choice is making a choice. It's choosing to do the same thing as I've always done. Albert Einstein once said, "If you always do what you have always done, you will always get what you have always got." Making the same choices, living the same lifestyle, while expecting things to get better makes as much sense as hitting my head against a brick wall while expecting it to stop hurting 'this time'. And why do we do this to ourselves? Because we have fear. If living like this hurts this much, how much more would it hurt to do something different? But it is exactly that fear that keeps us from experiencing peace. The peace of resolving conflict. The peace of having an unending hope. The peace of finding new joys in the relationships we have with others.

The Bible has many examples of people who dared to ask God to show them their flaws. My own experience with this was quite painful when the list was first shone to me. But, as I have worked at that list, I have received what I think is the most sought-after peace of all: Being able to fall asleep at night without the tape recorder of 'remember this? remember that?' playing over and over again in my head.

"Search me, O God, and know my heart; test me and know my anxious thoughts. See if there is any offensive way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting." Psalm 139:23-24