Total Alignment

Why do I have to do this again? Is this really important? Why is this happening to me?

These may be questions you’ve asked yourself before. Maybe about something small, like the never-ending laundry and dishes pile that comes with a house full of a busy family. Or maybe you asked yourself these questions about a big thing, like mending relationships strained by your own sinful heart.

If you are at all like me, you’ve asked yourself those questions about the small stuff, and the big stuff.

Today I was at an orthodontist for a consultation for my 7-year-old daughter, and for myself. I actually had braces when I was 11 years old. My braces chapter was done; my teeth were perfect. Life was good.

Until roughly two decades later, and now I’m about to get braces. Again. The why in my case has a lot to do with a genetic condition and lots of elastin flooding my body with 4 pregnancies in 5 years. But no matter the why, the fact remains, it is so frustrating feeling like I’m back at square one to solve my new problem with a solution I thought I was done with.

I have so many frustrations. All the money I’d rather spend on my family. The nearly two years of extra attention on what I can or can’t eat, and how I care for my teeth. All the time spent in appointments. I already did this once; I never wanted to do it again. Unfortunately, the fact is, my jaw and teeth are so far out of alignment I can barely eat. I have to do this, or the misalignment will only get worse.

As I was mulling this over throughout the afternoon, it occurred to me that all too often the frustration and resistance I feel towards this minor problem is the same way I feel about serious problems. Can you relate? How often do I find myself frustrated that the way to fix a problem in a relationship is to admit my fault in poor communication, or unfair expectations? I could list examples for days. So often I find myself repeating the same solutions for slight variations of the same problems. You’d think by now I would have learned from all the mistakes I’ve made, messes I’ve created and cleaned up, that I would be free from making those same mistakes. How I wish that were true. My guess is you have some mistakes you wish you could stop making too.

As much as we might wish to be mistake-free, we can’t ever be perfect. In Romans 3:23 we read that we have all sinned. We all still sin. We fail—daily. No matter how hard we try to be free of mistakes, free of sin, we can’t.

So what’s the point of trying to get better? Well, if you’re trying to get better on your own, honestly; there’s not much point. But if you are trying to get better with the help of the Holy Spirit, stepping up and fixing the problems again and again leads to improvement.

Jesus tells us in John 15:5 that He is the vine, and we have to stay connected to Him to bear fruit. Bearing fruit like, having patience when we usually lose our cool, staying away from gossip when we usually want all the juicy details, telling the truth when we usually choose to lie, choosing humility when we usually stand on pride.

The only chance we have to improve our lives is to be in alignment with God. Much like my teeth need braces to get in proper alignment, we need support to get in proper alignment too.

We need support from the Holy Spirit. Support from God’s Word. Support from our church community. We need to remain firmly connected to God, and faithful believers, to keep from being pushed out of our proper rooted place.

And in the same way I can’t avoid getting braces without letting the misalignment do continued and worsening damage to my body, we cannot go through life without staying in alignment with God without damaging our souls.

I encourage you, even when you feel weary from the process, when you wish you could just “move on” and be done with your struggle, to hold on tighter to God. He is the creator of the universe, lover of your soul, and the author and perfecter of your faith.