Changing Things Up

 

 

“How are things going?”  I asked the older gentleman sitting across from me.

“Terrible,” he replied.  “I just don’t feel good most days.  I’m tired and out of sorts and none of my doctors can figure out what is going on with me.”

I looked up. I was one of his doctors and I could tell he was feeling frustrated.

It had been three months since Al had been in last and these were the same sorts of things he had been talking about the previous time he was in.  “Have you started using your CPAP machine yet?”  I asked him.

“No,” he said.  “I can’t use that thing.  It gives me claustrophobia.  I tried it once a year ago and I could tell right away it was a no go for me.”

“I think it would help,” I said.  “You definitely have sleep apnea.  How about smoking.  Have you cut back or quit that?”

“No,” Al said slowly.  “I haven’t really made much headway there either.”

We went over a couple of other things that I had suggested the last time he was in the office, and it turned out that he had implemented zero of them.  “I guess I’m not a very good patient, am I?”  He asked, ruefully.

“You’re a normal patient,” I said.  “Most of us struggle to do things we know we should, but I’ll keep bringing them up and hopefully as time goes by you will begin to feel better.  I know you won’t feel 17 again, but I think you could feel quite a bit better than you do right now.”

There is a famous quote (misattributed to Albert Einstein) that says, “Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.”

Even as we come to the beginning of 2024, it bears asking the question, “How was 2023 for you?” 

This is not a question about financial valuation or wonderful trips.  The question is how is your relationship with God and your family today, January of 2024, compared to those same relationships a year ago?

Hopefully, you can say that they have improved over the last year, but most of us will admit that they could be better.  The question then is very simple: “What are you going to do differently next year to make sure that these things improve?”

The point is that if you do the same things in 2024 that you did in 2023, you should expect the same results.  If you spend limited time in prayer, limited time with your wife (or husband), and continue to be highly critical of your family members, there is no reason to believe that your relationships with the most important people in your world will do anything other than stagnate.

In Ephesians 4:22-24 Paul said, “That ye put off concerning the former conversation the old man, which is corrupt according to the deceitful lusts; and be renewed in the spirit of your mind; and that ye put on the new man, which after God is created in righteousness and true holiness.”

I pray that as we head into the new year, we would make wise decisions about the most important things in our lives – our relationships with God and the people around us.  If we reach January 1^st of 2025 and our bank accounts are full and overflowing and our relationships are bankrupt, that will be a disaster.  Far better to make different (better) decisions than in the past, for that is the only way that we will see the results we really want.