Creating Habits

I’ve mentioned that creating habits takes time, and it may not be years until you see the fruit….

Here is one example.

I spent 2 weeks correcting my son. Gently telling him not to point with his finger. It can be considered rude. “Mom, I’m not trying to”. He would get so upset and cry. His frustration broke my heart.

“I know, bud” I’d tell him. “I’m not mad”.

“But, we want to be respectful to the people here and their culture…and pointing is rude.”

We would go over how you gesture with your hand open.

For months, when we got back home, he would point. That’s fine. We are back home…no big deal.

Then, one day…I noticed him pointing to something with an open hand.

Years later..

I find my son, excitedly, open gesture pointing to something he wants to talk to us about or show us.

It warms my heart that he remembers the culture, the conversations we had, and he took that piece with him, on his own time.

Here’s another example:

In the fall of 2017, my husband and I attended discipleship school. We graduated in December, and weeks later our daughter was born.

Almost immediately, we fell out of all the intentionality we had been learning.

And I was angry about that for quite some time. “God, why would you have us go through that…just for us to go right back to our old habits”.

Breaking old habits takes time…and it takes time to see the fruit of new habits and things learned.

Now, I can see in our lives the fruit of that intense time of intentionality with God and community” It took 2 years, though.

So whatever habit you are working to create…just remember it takes time. You likely won’t see the fruit of it today…