Last night we were having our monthly women’s ministry meeting.   One of the team members hosts the meetings in her home, and she had recently moved.  I knew that she was still in the same neighborhood, just a different house.  I opened the reminder email, to grab her new address and headed out.  I have to admit, I thought it was odd that the street name was the same.  But, having driven to that house so many times, I had long forgotten the exact house number.  Perhaps, she had just moved down the actual street.  It happens.

As I turned down the street, and started driving… the thought occurred to me:  “I am going to her old address”.  But I kept driving.  It wasn’t until I was parked, right in front of the old house, that I finally grabbed my phone & called another team member.  Sure enough, the wrong address had been sent in the email.  I hadn’t noticed the email correcting the address.

I knew, as I drove down that road that I was going to the wrong address.  It was a street and house I knew well, and it wasn’t until I was there in the driveway that I fully acknowledged that I was in wrong place.

Isn’t that exactly what old habits are like?  Even if it has been months or years since our last drink, temper tantrum…. or since we allowed ourselves to slack in our studies or prayer time.  It is so easy to just travel down that road, knowing we are going the wrong way, ending up in that same driveway, and only then questioning ourselves.

Why didn’t I stop?

Why didn’t I turn around?

Why didn’t I call for help?

Even with all the resources we have available to us, to make our lives easier…  all of the people we can call on for help… all the access we have to information…  We still go down that road well traveled.   It is familiar and comfortable.

It is sometimes easier to go down the wrong road because we recognize it, and we know it.  We know the bends and turns, the speed bumps and the stop signs.  We hope that we will end up at a different place, as if we can continue taking the same path and find a new destination.

But, we can’t.  It will never be right.

We have to be willing to go down those new roads, even with all of the unexpected and unknown.

Old habits are way too easy.

New ones are unfamiliar and at times scary.

The only way to a new destination, is to start taking new paths.