Cycles of Disappointment

I have started to notice a pattern in my life.  It is a circular pattern.  First, I get a spout of inspiration.  I want to be excellent, I want to make goals, I want to smack those goals out of the park.  But then, a couple of weeks go by, and the spark of inspiration that I felt would turn into a wildfire has already died out.  I slip back into old habits.  I fall behind on my goals, and I start to give up on myself.  I get bored on the long, hard road to excellence, and I get lazy.  Sooner or later, I again tire of the consequences of bad habits and inspiration strikes again.  All these messes I have created- I will take them by storm!  I will clean all the things!  I will be at the gym for all of my free time!  I will never eat unhealthy food, much less spend too much money on it!  I have spent so much time being not excellent!  What was I doing?!

And the cycle, as cycles do, begins again.  Sigh.

I left one part out: I usually hit an emotional slump right before the inspiration returns.  I have failed, I tell myself.  Again.  The lies trickle in, I feel overwhelmed, I feel like I should not even set goals if I find myself here time and time again in this place of disappointment and failure.  Will I ever get to where I want to be?  Will excellent ever be an adjective I can claim?  A cloud of fear casts a shadow that simply answers, No.

Tonight, the inspiration came and I saw so clearly the cycle that has been spinning in my life for the past year.  I was reminded of the frustration my best friend has been having recently while reading stories of the Israelites' own cycle of disappointment.  They find themselves back in the same spot, time and time again.  Turning from their goals, their identity, and their God, over and over again they fail.  And I saw my cycle through a filter, not anymore of disappointment, but of grace.

I can't meet my goals all the time, every time.  I know who I want to be, but the reality is that I will not always act like that person.  This is the beauty of grace, however.  God knows all this.  He knows who I am and who I want to be and even who I think I am sometimes but really am not.  And what's even better is that he meets me in the middle of all that mess.  He affirms who I am, and he gives me grace for the times I don't act according to my identity in Him.

And if God can extend that much grace and be lovingly honest with me, then so can I.  At least for tonight.  I will set goals that will be forgotten or ignored.  I will skip the gym some days.  I will make and break promises to myself.  But after all the single steps forward, even when they are followed by two back, I find myself in a better place right now than I was last year, not to mention all the lessons I have learned from the backwards steps.  I am walking toward health, and most importantly I am walking toward God.  (It's nice that they are in the same direction.)  I stumble.  I get off track.  But I am getting there, and like I have said here before, this life is more about the "getting" and less about the "there".