I’m so glad to be back at it. The holidays and New Year were great, and I’m thankful for both the time with friends and family and a much-needed break.

As much as I love blogging, I need my break each year. It allows me to regroup and come back refreshed with all kinds of great plans. One of my plans for this year was to finally move HISsparrowBlog over to a self-hosting service.

No more renting my space. I wanted to own it.

But any homeowner knows quite well that although ownership has all kinds of perks like customization, it also has a lot of … non-perks too. The owner has to fix any leaks.

And that’s exactly what happened when I got my new, shiny keys to HISsparrowBlog—a big leak to fix with no plumbing know-how.

You may be wondering why I’m telling you all this, but there is a point. I promise.

I’d already planned to do a twist on New Year’s resolutions with a post on habits I wanted to break, but my week-long ‘plumbing’ issue soaked me through.

Nothing like a few problems to show you just where all the holes are in your spiritual life, eh?

Bad Habits I Want to Break

#1: Delicate Happiness

Oh, it’s great to be joyful when things are going smoothly, but then something happens or even several somethings and I reach the point where I’m asking myself if anything can possibly go right.

Just one.

It’s quite obvious I haven’t reached that place. The place that allowed Paul to say he’d learned to be content in all kinds of situations. Whether his life was in danger or he was in pain.

Me? My life wasn’t in danger. I wasn’t in pain—the physical kind anyway, yet I was so frustrated I could just…just…I don’t know what. But you know that heart place I’m talking about.

#2: Critical Spirit

This one definitely came into play this week—in a couple of ways.

The first one, negative self-talk or self-esteem, isn’t really a surprise to me. It was already included on this list since I’ve always struggled with it.

I was reminded that I am way too critical of myself. Now I don’t mean this in an always-believe-in-yourself-because-you’re-awesome kind of way. That’s no more healthy than what I do to myself.

There was no reason for me to question my own skills and intellect over the last week just because I had a bit of a drip (back to the house analogy).

Although I’m a low-down dirty sinner, God doesn’t keep bringing up my every wrong. He offers me the blood of His Son to cover my discretions, and then instructs me to be a witness of that love with my actions.

I’m not a great witness when I’m putting myself down all the time.

The other side is being critical of others. I promise I tried to be very nice to every single person I talked to while trying to get HISsparrowBlog fixed, but I was not so nice in my head. Which counts as much as the action.

#3: Guilt

I had felt like I’d gained some ground on this one lately, but apparently I’ve still got work to do.

It’s amazing how much guilt you can have over the simplest things. Should I have started this process? How could I risk breaking what God’s given me to steward? Am I only interested in personal gain?

Just thinking about it now is exhausting. How much more productive would I be if I put that energy into trusting God?

#4: Fear

I think fear may be one of the biggest things that holds us back from doing what we’re called to do. It is for me anyway.

This week I was almost ready to hang it up. Well, not blogging per se, but definitely my goals for where to take the blog next. And that scares me. 😉

Joking aside though, how many people can be impacted in the future when I step through that fear?

#5: Need to be ‘Right’

I always thought I was pretty humble. After all, I’ve always defaulted to thinking I’m in the wrong when anything happens.

My husband likes to say that we’re all walking contradictions, which definitely applies here. Even though my self-esteem hasn’t always been the best and I question my abilities, intellect, and … just about everything about myself, I still think I’m supposed to be right in every situation and everyone else is supposed to think I’m right in every situation.

What kind of sense does that make?

Til Next Time

It’s amazing how one ‘leak’ can show you the leaks in your own life. And really that’s a good thing. You gotta identify the problem—and the extent of it—before you can fix it.

Usually, I like to add some action steps, but I decided each one of these issues is plenty big enough to look at individually. I’ll write something on each of these in more detail with action steps in the months to come.

How about you? What bad habits have you decided to work on this year? Let me know in the comments section below.

All Posts in the Bad Habits Series

Be sure to check out these posts if you want to read more on improvement over the new year.

• Resolutions: Starting the New Year with a Bang from HISsparrowBlog
• My Faith Bucket List from HISsparrowBlog
• 10 Bad Habits That Christians Should Kick from Crosswalk
• 10 Bad Habits Christian Women Need to Break from Crosswalk