You're right, I know you're right...

Sometimes I hit these introspective moments that slap me in the face. Its like I've been lazily sleeping on the job just doing the routine; or I realize I didn't put on shoes for the day or brush my teeth. I just wake up for a minute, get out of my sleepy body, look at it and say 'what are you doing!?' Then I get back into my body and crank it into gear. I don't know how it happens. How I make it from one of those moments back into slumber mode but it does and I feel sick when it does.

I've been told that the devil likes to work in babysteps. He sees a slippery slope and slowly moves us down, and down, and down until we don't know how we got there. He's a sly dog. He's a jerk. He knows exactly what he's doing and deliberately works to get us down. Its tough work, manipulation, it has to be deliberate or we wouldn't actually make it to the bottom. We'd wake up before getting there and just jump back.

Life is never just going to happen. You don't just wake up and you're the ideal self one morning. The same tough work of manipulation can be countered with deliberate pursuit of the ideal self. The self God created you to be. This self takes deliberate action to crack into and be whittled out; it takes watering and pruning; it takes dusting and buffing; it takes caring and keeping; it takes sweat and tears. But luckily, we don't have to do it alone ("My yoke is easy and my burden is light"). We don't have to take deliberate steps on our own. The battle is won. We simply have to make the choice to take up the yoke and walk in victory each day.

Sometimes we get stuck in our chains. Sometimes we chose our chains because they feel comfortable. Sometimes its scary to be free. People don't know what to do with themselves. I don't like the idea of being in a cage that I hold the key to, that just sounds mental.