The Dread/Satifaction Cycle

Are there things that are good for you that you just dread doing?  When I was a kid, I used to dread taking a bath.  I'm not sure why it seemed so awful.  Perhaps it was that I had to stop playing long enough to draw the bath and actually get in.  I only remember there were many battles between me and my mother over getting into the tub [as an aside, my son appears to have inherited the bath aversion gene].

But for all the opposition I put up to getting in the tub, something intriguing happened once I got in.  I didn't want to get out.  The very think I so dreaded ahead of time became the thing I enjoyed once I actually did it.  I'm finding this is true of quite a few things in my life.  Tonight I particularly noticed this about working out.  I did NOT want to do my workout tonight.  I came up with all sorts of excuses, procrastinated, whined -- I covered the whole gamut.  But I finally did end up doing it when Ann removed my last excuse.  Predicably, once I was done and showered, I felt awesome.  Why is it that I so consistently resist something that makes me feel so good afterwards?

And then I thought of prayer.  Perhaps there is no greater example.  There is something in me (sin?) that resists prayer and solitude with God.  I fight it, make up excuses why I can't take the time, and procrastinate when it comes to prayer.  But inevitably any time I take the time to focus and pray, I find that it is incredibly rewarding.  I feel peace and joy, and a great sense of rightness about life.

You would think seeing this pattern repeated over and over in life would make it so that the right choice would become easier and easier to make.  Perhaps it is, but the difference is incremental, not dramatic.  May God give us the grace to respond to His initiative so we can experience the intimacy He desires in our relationship with Him.