Breaking Habits

I have been thinking about habits all week. Good habits, bad habits. Physical. Spiritual. Everything.  When most people think of breaking habits they immediately go straight to smoking, over indulgence, gossiping, even biting one’s nails. But to be honest with you, these things are not the things that plague me. These are not really the things I have overcome or are truly proud to say that I have broken. If I were to say I was a master of breaking habits though, I would so far from the truth. As it is, there are several things I am trying to “break” that have for one reason or another become habitual in my daily life. Worry, fear of the unknown, lacing confidence in myself. So many struggles I could name that I am actively focusing on. And the biggest vice of all may very well be smacking my gum! However, as my thoughts have strayed from the “typical” habits, I have come to see the reality of perhaps the habit I am most proud of riding from my life.

Until quite recently, I have dealt with the pesky little habit of negativity in the rather annoying form of over analyzing; everything.  It had crept into almost every area of my life it seems now looking back. It started with work, then slowly seeped into other areas as well. Now technically I should rather say that I have yet to fully conquer this nasty little habit, but that I have now a firm grip on it. And this is solely due to my wonderfully sweet husband. As so many of the best things I can claim (expect for my sunflower eyes of course) they come from the persistent nurturing of that incredible man.

For the longest time, my first thoughts have always been “the worst” for every situation. I have an incredibly wild imagination, which rarely never works out in the real world when it is laced with negativity. Rather, it causes turmoil. I always assume the most outlandish outcomes that oftentimes have never even crossed the mind of anyone else around. Let me just give you some examples into the craziness that can come from this way of thinking. When the cat makes a noise in the middle of night – obviously there is a intruder in the house who has not only come to steal our stuff, but murder us in the most horrific manner. When a female acquaintance compliments the husband – obviously she is way more attractive than me, funnier, smarter, and I can never match up to how much better she would have been for him than I am. When my jeans don’t fit as well as they did a few days ago after two weddings and a birthday party – obviously I am incredibly overweight and am a fat ugly cow. Obviously. My goodness it had overtaken my mind and made me such a pain to be around. It was literally sucking the joy from my life. And yet, my husband’s response was to pull the joy out from within. To guide me
to take captive such thoughts, and dismiss them before they even have the time to take hold. To hand them over to the Lord, and stop letting my imagination get the best of me. To stop letting my overanalyzing the situation prevent me from enjoying it. To not only break the bad habit, but change way I think to be more positive and make a better habit.

Since the moment I met the man who I have the wonderful pleasure of spending the rest of my life with, I admired the most his ability to be carefree and live in the moment. To be able to take things as they are, not reading into them unnecessarily, but to see the time for acceptance and the time for questions. To discern reality as it is, and not create some incredulous world that binds his emotions to some false view of what is happening. And more than anything, his ability to pull that out of me. I am still a work in progress. Still an imperfect, unfinished mess, that is striving to capture His grace daily and tightly grasp onto that truth. But because of my husband, I can proudly say that I am in the process of overcoming the all too real habit that desperately needs to be rid from my life. And for that I am so very thankful, and beyond blessed.