Three Things About Working On Our Issues

We’ve got issues. Good news though: help is available.

Prayer. Community. Sanctification.

Therapy, medicine, coaching, self-help: the resources we have for working on issues is unbounded. It’s hard, even heroic, work, but it can be done. It can be done.

Three things about working on issues.

Let’s keep our judgy paws off the work people are doing to deal. If a married couple has rules to protect the chastity of their union, that’s their business. Let’s not snipe and snarl about it because we can’t relate.

Also, though, we needn’t make our work public in this regard. It will be good for trusted people to know the work we’re doing–leaving the office early every Wednesday for therapy–but that’s a small circle operating on a need-to-know basis. Public declaration is not the work. The accountability it seems to provide is a momentary illusion; the public won’t be there when the real work needs doing.

Finally, working on our issues is not the end goal, growth and transformation are. Our issue work will change over time as we mature. The rules I had for myself at 23 I don’t need at 40. Piety equals improvement more than static habits.

Oh, we’ve got issues. Working on them is some of the hardest work we do. But help is available and it can be done. It can be done.