Engrained in my nature...

How is it that I can try so hard at something and fail so badly? I try every day to help out around the house and do my part. I try to be a good father to my children. I try to be a good son, brother, coach, etc. But it’s just a like a car with a flat tire pulling really hard to the left, I sometimes pull the wrong way. Why do we tend toward the easy way? Why is sin so engrained with us that if we drop our guard, it takes over?

My whole life has been a pattern of me fighting off the urge to sin until I think I have beat it and then BANG! Right in my face I realize that I dropped my guard and its over. Just like trying to roll the rock up the hill and just before you get there, you loose your footing and it rolls back down. It’s a constant battle that you must continually fight. For example, one that is very difficult is the urge to sit around. There is always something to do around the house, especially with little ones. There is always something to pick up or clean up, laundry to do, meals to make, dishes to do, etc. Yet, here I sit writing a Blog entry when I could be doing any of the above. Don’t get me wrong – my wife is amazing and would take care of all of these things while I’m at work, but I feel like I need to carry my weight around the house (after all I am the biggest). I find myself struggling to deal with the urge to sit around, to play on the computer, to do things for fun, etc. all the while shirking my responsibilities and leaving more work for my partner. The laws of physics state that an object in motion will stay in motion and an object that is inert will remain inert. However, maybe it is the forces of gravity, inertia, or some other physics term, but my personal thought is that it is the force of original sin – a tendency to sin that is so engrained within us all that sometimes we end up not realizing that it is even influencing our decisions until it is too late.
Sorry for the rant, but its something that always bothers me about myself... But as C. S. Lewis once said, "No man knows how bad he is till he has tried very hard to be good." If only it wasn't so hard to be good... But now, back to my mission...