Let Old Habits Die Young

Bad habits are easy to pick up but hard to put down.  Picking up a bad habit is like stepping on sticky tape.  Once it’s on you, you usually aren’t even aware it’s there.  By the time you do realize you’ve picked it up -- which is often days or weeks after you first encountered it -- it's been ground so deep into your sole that it’s hard to peel off. When it does come off, it does so in pieces instead of all at once.

Bad habits can range from nail biting, to chewing while talking, to hastily “chewing out” or berating others. We are not necessarily born with bad habits-- they are things we pick up along the way on our journey through life.  Yet, we often fight with all our might to defend our right to them, sometimes even claiming that they’re all a part of just “being real.”

But, if our habits aren't “really” productive or “really” necessary, and worse yet, if they cause “real” harm to ourselves or others they aren’t “really” what we need to be fighting for.

Perhaps our energies would be better spent in fully examining our soles (souls) for extraneous things we have picked up that need to come off.  Perhaps then we would uncover the “real” us that had been buried beneath the layers of bad habits and deceptive masquerades that fooled no one but us.

The Bible tells us that “whom the Son sets free, is free indeed.”  But, bad habits do just the opposite, they keep us in bondage. It takes a lot of time and energy to peel off all of the junk that has attached itself to our soles, but once free of it, we will walk lighter, straighter and stronger in the direction of our destiny.

Sometimes, we can sense a bad habit attaching itself to us, and when we do sense it, we would do best to put it down early before it brings us down later.  Whenever we pick up a new bad habit, in essence, it’s already an old habit because there is nothing new under the sun.   When we find ourselves suddenly unable to do something without the aid of some sort of emotional crutch, it may be the new formation of an old bad habit.  If we find ourselves turning toward people or things again and again and suffering withdrawal when we can’t have them, there may be an old bad habit looking for a new home.

We must fight to let go of a bad habit while it is still young so it won’t have a chance to grow old with us and confuse us about where we end and where it begins.  Old habits die hard.  That’s why, if at all possible, we need to let old habits die young.

BNcouraged!

Rev. Karen