Do you ever feel as if you’ve morphed into a person you never intended to be?

Sometimes I feel as if life, without my permission, has shaped me into a rock-hard object that I find ugly. Though I try to chip away in order to make positive changes, the chipping is such hard work that I am tempted to give up and live with what I’ve got.

I don’t eat healthful food. I don’t drink water. I don’t exercise. I don’t follow through with good intentions. I don’t keep up with my housework. I don’t spend enough time reading the Word and praying. I don’t practice the Christian graces of kindness, forgiveness, and serving.

And I don’t love anyone as I should. I either don’t love them at all or I love them with a flawed kind of love that spoils them (grandkids), or enables them, or demands that I sacrifice my own needs in order to give them things they ought to earn for themselves.

Will life ever get easier? Will I finally one day overcome, conquer, and soar instead of flapping my wings wildly and barely lifting myself off the ground? I doubt it.

This working at and striving for are the very essence of life on this earth.

Why am I always striving to make life good for myself and the people I love? Don’t I understand that I will never make life good?

Life here is already ruined, sick with an incurable disease called sin, and wasted to the point of being irredeemable. I run wildly against a fierce wind, push hard against immovable obstacles, and wish, hope, work, and pray that people and situations will align themselves with what is right and stop making life so difficult to live.

But none of these things will be accomplished. I will experience small successes and enjoy periods of relative calm, but I won’t find peace through my own efforts. Like in the Whack-a-Mole game, when one enemy is eliminated, two more emerge from the periphery to keep me ever swinging but never eliminating the foe.

But, I must not give up. I must keep trying to make positive differences in myself and my situations and in other people and their situations, remembering always that I am never in control in this business of life. I can’t cover all the bases, keep all the corks submerged, spin all the plates in the air, and hit the bull’s-eye every time.

I will never at the same time be eating and drinking right, exercising faithfully, keeping up with my housework, feasting regularly on spiritual food, loving as I should, and performing perfectly. I will never score 100% across the board. I must not make that my goal, because it is unachievable.

My goal is to strive at all times to move forward, overcoming and rectifying when I can, and with God’s help, living peacefully when I can’t.