The Unnatural Becomes Natural With Practice

Struggling yesterday with demon attack.  Just two weeks after discovering a way to treat my family nicer and truly love them, I’m falling back into my old habits of treating them poorly – thinking only of getting my needs met first.  It seems like I can only remain constant in a new thought for about a week before I lose it and it becomes confusing and lost to my ability to see how it works out in my life and in the real world.  The new thought that was so clear a day or week ago, now is lost in a fog of contradictory and condescending thoughts and I don’t know which one is the right one to think anymore.  Also, I was super frustrated with my middle son and the fact that his structured training program makes him so frustrated to the point of tears that I literally get hopping mad at the training center for making him feel so bad.

 

Finished a must-read book entitled, “The Servant, True Leadership” by Hunter.  It said that loving someone (regarded in the Bible as Charity – a verb, not a feeling –) can be taught, practiced, and will eventually become a habit.  That is a very hopeful thought.  My wife said yesterday that maybe I should think of my days with the boys as me going to work.  That has stuck with me.  From the time I get up to the time they go to bed (some 14 to 16 hours a day, seven days a week) I am going to try to train myself by practice how to meet my family’s needs and give them every kind of charity.  (Not too many days off in that schedule, and at night I’m so tired I can hardly have but a few minutes to myself.)  However, the payoff for being diligent and having love become a habit is that I’m supposed to experience a great measure of Joy.  And I’m sure there is something in the Bible about Joy bringing health and wellness to your body.  We’ll see.  I can’t imagine what that would look like.  I’m not a joyous person by nature, but “Nature is what we are put in this world to rise above.” ~Rose Sayer (Katherine Hepburn) “The African Queen” 1951.  And that is exactly what this book admonishes.  You can teach yourself anything unnatural and eventually it will feel natural to you.  Ever let your mind wander while driving somewhere, and, after you’ve arrived, not remember driving there?  You have become unconscious and skilled at driving – the final skill of the four levels of creating a habit.  What would loving a person without thinking about it look like?  Would it look like Jesus?