What do they say? It takes 21 consecutive days to solidify a new habit? Does it matter if the old habit you're trying to replace has spent 30 years taking hold?
I feel lately that I've had this whole Christianity thing all wrong for a long time. I'm not sure where it started really, and this isn't a blog to cast any blame. It's an attempt at dissecting my spiritual anatomy so I can see why I can't seem to stay "healthy". Although I know it takes ACTION to make a true change, not REASON. Case in point, my favorite doctor who moved away several years ago, hit me up every year at my physical with her speech about getting exercise. I already knew about the physical and mental benefits she listed; I knew the effects of not getting this much needed exercise could be detrimental long-term to my health. I would always nod and promise that the next time she saw me I would be in peak physical condition, having found that one perfect method of physicality that I could consider not quite torture. Every year I showed up and had to honestly list my level of fitness as "nil". Even now, as a new life grows inside me, I tell myself everyday that I need to give this child every health benefit possible, and that includes taking care of myself physically. And everyday I spend far more time reading my books, sitting down to IM and check my email, and watching tv than I do in anything resembling exercise (with the exception of running after a 2-year-old of course). Equally disturbing is my relationship with food. While other pregnant friends of mine are gorging themselves on fruits, veggies, and their requisite number of protein grams, I find myself still irresistably drawn to ice cream, macaroni and cheese (there is protein in there, people!), and all manner of sinful salty snacks. It comes down to decades of eating habits that I've never bothered to address mostly because I haven't HAD to due to a thus-far high metabolism (thanks, Dad!). What is my point in these ramblings? Although I see the problem and know the solution I haven't taken ACTION to change.
Is it the same with my spiritual life? For years I have berated myself when I've "fallen off the wagon" of daily devotions or skipped church on a Sunday or if I feel my prayers haven't included all the "necessaries" (remember learning ACTS anyone?). I think I've mentally been keeping a tally sheet of what is expected of me as Christian and when I haven't measured up I've failed miserably and demoted myself to rung one of the corporate Christian ladder. Dotting all the Biblical i's and crossing all the t's has been my focus.
With the big 30 birthday looming only weeks away I have recently felt surges of panic that I am no further along, really, in my spiritual journey than I was at the beginning, oh, 30 years ago?
Or am I still judging according to old law? Daily devotions: check, hour-long prayer time: check, gazillion church committees/activities/noble efforts: check, right things said and done each minute of the day: check. Is this really what God is looking for? In my head I know the answer to that.
I think I started out being raised in a church society that valued these things above all else. Walking the talk but robotically, without any true internal understanding, change, or value. And sometimes that's how I feel about my relationship with God: robotic. It kills me to admit that and kills me further to put it in print. And now I think I have fallen right back into a church society that, to some extent, reinforces that. It certainly reinforces the idea that we should not at all unmask our true selves, ugliness and all. Who could handle it?
I think what I struggle with most is, first of all, humility. Allowing God to truly break me and to re-mold me once again. There should be such a thing as spiritual boot camp. But I suppose that's really what our everyday life is. I also struggle with honesty: with God but moreso with myself and especially with others. As evangelist and writer, Roy Hession, wrote: "The only basis for real fellowship with God and man is to live out in the open with both". And without the humility I need I cannot also be honest about my failures and need for spiritual accountability.
I feel that I need a drastic heart transplant sometimes; a clean slate to break myself off of the understandings and beliefs I have been operating under for so many years; a fresh start - a revival. Finally leaving myself behind, turning fully toward the cross, and along with Christian in the tale Pilgrim's Progress, feel the burdens of my legality and earthly dependence loosed and fallen off once and for all.
