Dear Friend, I'm in if you are

Dear friend,

I received your letter a few weeks ago, and it's taken me forever to write back. I'm sorry about that. Life's busyness has been brutal, and I can't seem to get a handle on it.  

It's funny that you should write about bad habits, because I'm in the same place. Even in a season where discipline is crucial, my bad habits keep knocking me down and luring me to a place of complacency. 

How is it that forming good habits is mentally exhausting, while bad habits form while we're not even trying? 

I hate to admit it, but I've become a pathetic creature of degenerate habits lately. 

This past week, even, I got into a routine of hitting the snooze for AN HOUR before getting out of bed. An hour! It started with a few mornings of harmless laziness, and now my body literally straps itself to the sheets and won't move.

It doesn't seem fair, does it? To fall into a trap when you're not looking. It actually seems like a dirty, miserable game of "capture the weaklings," to me. 

Perhaps therein lies the problem--not trying. It pains me to admit it, but my poor habits often settle in after I become smugly satisfied with myself and my "reputable" self. I think, "Wow, I've arrived," and as I sit back to enjoy the fruit of my labor, I start backsliding into complacency. 

Thankfully I'm rehabilitating myself. (Hi, I'm Elizabeth, and I only hit the snooze for 30 minutes). I definitely have to give myself a mental pep-talk everyday; asserting authority over your mind and body is no easy task.

Our brains are just so malleable. They easily create well-worn pathways of belief. Every time our brain acknowledges something as true, the pathway erodes a little more. 

Unfortunately, hitting the snooze is not the only bad habit my brain has worn a path for. My brain has been traveling down the same path of "You're not beautiful" and "God is angry with you" and "You're not safe" for as long as I can remember. Somewhere in the past, it became easier to believe those lies than to fight them.

After believing these lies for so long, the pathways turned to trenches--deep trenches--that felt nearly impossible to climb out of. How do we get out of the trenches of bad habit? Of addiction and lies? When does escape from these depths become futile? 

Friend, I'm learning that even the depth of my trenches do not defeat the power of Jesus. His redemption is for the darkest, and his work does not depend on me. He holds power to transform my heart and mind, but I have to let Him.  I have to choose to shift my thinking. I have to reject going back into the trench of lies and begin digging another trench--a trench of truth. 

A few friends and I have been sending each other a Truth to believe each day. It isn't long, just something to help us remember the Truth when we're tempted to jump back into our trench of lies.

Each day I cling, the Truth becomes easier to believe, and the path becomes a bit more familiar. 

Sometimes choosing the Truth feels like I'm dying. Why? Because I am. I've learned that I have to disobey myself in order to obey the Truth. It feels like a death, but I'm giving the Truth more power in the process.

So don't get me wrong, forming new habits and abandoning old ones is an agonizing choice, but it can be done. It means picking a Truth everyday and choosing to believe it. It means choosing to believe that I am of infinite and undefiled value. It means fighting so hard for Truth when everything inside of me is fighting for sin. 

So, yeah, I've been diving into some trenches these days, because digging trenches of truth means going to war with myself. It means telling my flesh to go die because it doesn't hold my life anymore. It means my life is sinking in the Truth.

Well I hope that encourages you. Here's to more days of diving into the Truth and dying to our flesh. I'm in if you are. 

Sincerely, Elizabeth