Keep Coming Back

Change isn’t instant.

Photo by Razvan Cristea on Unsplash

Change is at a snail’s pace.

I wish it was at least steady, but it isn’t that either. It involves mistakes and then mistakes in correcting the mistakes. It involves discovering that the initial problem was just a symptom and that the problem is deeper.

When I decide to do something good in my life, like lose weight or gain muscle or learn a language, whatever it might be, I begin by believing it won’t be that hard. Then I invariably discover that it is harder than I originally thought.

It isn’t until I decide that I am willing to practice every day that slowly I begin to see change at all.

This evening I was with a friend who had been an alcoholic for many years. The destruction it caused in his life resulted in him attending an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting. At first he said his struggle was believing he had a problem. For this reason he continued drinking. Eventually he hit a lower bottom and decided that if he continued on the path he was on he would die a young man.

So he returned to an AA meeting where he happened to sit by an older former alcoholic who told him that if he was serious he would go to ninety AA meetings in the next ninety days. So he did — which turned out to be just the beginning of his recovery journey.

True change requires a commitment to feed the good and starve the bad.

Recovery for every addict, it turns out, is not getting sober because sobriety, like weight loss, is not a moment in time, but a new way of living.

Conversion to the new Christian is never the end, always just the beginning.

And what is available to all of us committed to a daily walk away from our former destructive behaviors, whatever they might be, is an abundant life not possible to imagine at first. In fact, it is best appreciated years later when we pause a moment and look back.