I have a friend who makes New Year Resolutions, gives up bad habits for Lent and makes free will bad habit corrections to her life on a routine basis. I admire Ingrid's iron will. Melody, on the other hand must become frightened before she learns anything. After you see your loved ones battle cancer, contract diabetes, you start to wonder if you will be next. In my case, it means I better straighten up my act so at least I won't have to blame myself if it happens to me. Maybe I consider it a personal failing to watch myself make myself sick.
What are these habits after all? Why do we do things to harm ourselves in the first place? Are we lured to it by TV? Is the devil always on the look out to make us self-destructive? I mean, I don't jump off cliffs, do drugs, take poison, or spit into the wind. But I do get addicted to sugar, coffee, chocolate, cream and cheese. Correction--I do not GET addicted to these things, I AM addicted to these things. So now, I'm spending a lifetime learning to live with as little of them as possible. Which is really cruel to me.
I feel like my dog, who wants my food, whatever it is, so she looks at me with her eyes rolled up pleadingly. I feel like my babies used to -- they wanted everything I put into my mouth. It wasn't good for them, so I had to be tough. Was it good for me? No. But that's while I was still bulletproof (translation: stupid) and wanted it anyway. In the eyes of God, then, I suppose I'm really just a puppy, a baby, who wants what I want.
Talk about a double standard. I know what's good for others but not what's good for me.
Now, I do like broccoli, for some reason. I used to drown it in cheese sauce. Then I drowned it in butter. Somewhere along the line I learned it tastes pretty good without all that stuff. Now I crave it. And it really ticks off the devil, who gets tight jawed about it. And that absolutely delights me.
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