I am frustrated by my limitations. I can't make someone give me a job or stop an employer from letting me go, no matter how desperately I need the work. From now on, the decision made by any of the publishers considering my manuscript is out of my hands. I will continue to get older, meaning more wrinkles and age spots and unwanted hairs -- whether gray or in unappealing places -- as the years go by. And I cannot make someone fall in love with me.
But there are things in my control. My weight, for instance. Yet I often find myself acting like my fatness is something that happened to me, not something I do to myself. Instead of making smarter choices, I give in to the craving of the moment as if I am powerless to say no. So I eat what I don't need when I'm not hungry, then boo-hoo over pictures that "make me look fat."
Can I find the power within me to change? To undo years of bad habits and replace them with actions that will improve my life won't be easy, but that's a cop-out. We don't make wise decisions because they're easy. We make wise decisions because to do otherwise makes a waste of the years God has given me. My existence on this earth lasts only a moment, as long as it takes a leaf to fall to the ground.
"For what is your life? It is even a vapor that appears for a little time and then vanishes away." -- James 4:14b
Of course, this change must go further and deeper than eating right and exercising regularly. All the areas of my life where I make excuses for bad choices must be reconsidered. God doesn't ask me to make the best of the years He has given me. He expects it.
"For you were bought at a price; therefore glorify God in your body and in your spirit, which are God's." -- 1 Cor. 6:20
So, when I start feeling frustrated by my limitations, perhaps I would do well to remember God is in control and "with God all things are possible."
