There’s no doubt about it: temptation is easier to fight when you are healthy. Proper nutrition, exercise, sleep and just generally not sick help me when I battle.
So it’s no surprise that 3 hours of sleep last night has put me on the down side of temptation. I gave into something I thought I licked.
I cannot feel self-hatred, only bitterly disappointed because this is my Achilles Heel, and it means that God is far from me now.
What is the length of time, I always wonder, before I can ask for forgiveness and beg mercy? I had opportunities during the temptation period to resist, to pull, to not go as far as I did. My prayers for help did not go unanswered, only my response to rise above and STOP lacked. I feel remorse and disgust at my actions, but I don’t feel worthy as yet of even asking forgiveness when it was so deliberate.
It’s like addiction, only if the alcoholic were learned cured. What I really need is a spiritual partner. My own partner shot down the idea that I could conceivably lick this sin this weekend and that little devil has been sitting on my shoulder ever since.
Given that sleep is not an option right now (my little one is having to hard a time sleeping), then that must mean that I am strong enough to defeat temptation even at its most difficult point: when my body is suffering fatigue.
We fall, we get up, we try again, but sometimes we can’t – or shouldn’t – get up to fast. To wallow in our fallenness is to feel the sting of our incorrect actions. Suffering, not for the sake of suffering, but to learn our lesson better and better this time.
This road is difficult but someday, somehow I shall overcome, with God’s grace.