A few months ago on an espresso high, I was reorganizing my bookshelves in the middle of the night when I came across good old Ozzie. Chambers, that is. I read My Utmost For His Highest religiously in college (that was, um, seventeen(ish) years ago). Like most Christians in America, I set my copy next to the toilet for those brief moments of daily…solitude. Feeling a rush of nostalgia, I snuggled into the couch in the quiet of my basement, flipping through to all the underlined passages that addressed my struggles at nineteen years old.

As I read, I suddenly felt exhausted and ready to crawl into bed for the next seventeen years. How could my struggle today still feel as overwhelming as it obviously was so long ago? Had I squandered my grace all these years? Is it even possible for me to change? In that moment I felt like I was a slave to my sin – like I would never be free.

Bryan’s nickname for me is Eeyore, because woe to me for all the ways creation conspires against me! I mope, and I drag, and I mumble. But no matter how hard I try to keep it attached, my tail just keeps falling off.

I forget the grape must be crushed to make the wine. I forget the husk must be stripped for the wheat berry to be exposed. I forget the limp he walked away with after wrestling with God.

Sanctification is not a passive affair.

I just watched the rerun of Sex and the City where Miranda gets refractive surgery, and the doctor tells her to take two sleeping pills, stay in bed for twelve hours, and when she wakes up she’ll be able to see clearly.

Ha! I wish.

But contrary to the pessimistic outlook on my inner struggles, there is hope for me in the midst of my frustration. Romans 6:17 says, Thanks be to God that, though you used to be slaves to sin, you wholeheartedly obeyed the form of teaching to which you were entrusted. You have been set free from sin and have become slaves to righteousness.

By the grace of Jesus, his Word always brings Truth to crush my inner Eeyore.