One must not let the Identity he is trying to preserve become the sickness he wants to change.
I suppose the inverse may also be true, but that is not my meditation at present.
I pray to God for certain changes, virtues lacking, vices embarrassing. “Make me what you want me to be,” I’ll often conclude.
There are external changes I pray for and work toward as well, and a change I don’t really know how to work toward at all.
To put it bluntly, I have no romance in my life. This external change ties into an internal one I want to make. I am not chaste; I let my external eye wander from pretty stranger to pretty strange, and in my mind’s eye I have conjured up such frightful images that I cannot, once passion flies, even comprehend their allure.
Saint Paul’s words are true: What I do not want to do, I do.
This I do want to change. I long for a sort of inner chastity, but when I pray, I always seem to add, whether I mean to or not, the plea for a partner, that the chastity God give me not be celibacy. At this addendum, I fear all my prayer undone. Again and again, the flush of passion returns.
I cannot quite, even though it is a hope and not a reality, give up the possible identity of husband and father that I long to play even as I pray for God’s grace to become chaste, a necessary part of that identity. I try to say, “Not my will but Yours,” but add, as long as it’s my will also. This nonsense annoys me, but I do not change. I do not change, and subsequently, I remain as I am, stuck in a rut.
That which I wish to change, that which I am and that which I long to be, is one thing. I cannot change the one and hold onto the other.
I must give it all to God. No addendums.
Tale Told 