The proverbial new house "carrot" dangled in front of me once again, and this time I took a big bite. I set my eyes on the prize and began the ordeal of weed whacking, grout bleaching, and hole spackling. My work has not exactly been a labor of love, but more like a labor of “I still want to be friends.”  I’ve felt somewhat guilty - like someone who has found another hair stylist but is afraid to tell her old one.

I am tired. In fact, I have been somewhat irritable. And in the back of my mind uninvited questions randomly pop up. What if it doesn’t sell? What if I lose the other house? What if I don’t get the money I need out of this house? What if it isn’t God’s will?

I have certainly prayed in the middle of my floor stripping. Who wouldn’t want God to bless such an endeavor? I have even asked several friends to pray that God would sell our house. One friend answered that she would ask God to show me His will on the matter. Of course she is right. I hesitated for a moment…then promptly went back to work.

The remote in my hand seemed frozen on the channel as morbid curiosity drew me into yet another reality show. A depiction of love gone awry invaded my space.

The story of a mother who “loved” her son to the brink of death by enabling him to eat without restraint beckoned me to keep watching. Evidently she cooked her son into a recliner and he couldn’t get up. Rescue workers needed a contraption like the Jaws of Life to get him out of his home and into the hospital. Outside the room where doctors scrambled to save her son, Billy’s tearful mother talked about her baby boy as if her were an infant. Billy was 19 years old, and weighed 800 lbs.

Billy’s mom equated food with love. I’m sure she never set out to kill her son. But her own agenda maligned his well-being. This dysfunctional relationship between a mother who incapacitated her son, and his inability to say no, drove me to ponder the true meaning of love.

When I consider the imperfections, foibles, faux pas and basic bad habits of the Patriarchs and Matriarchs of our faith, I realize God does not expect perfection. We usually read the last part of the story, where we learn of their amazing accomplishments, but fail to consider the long process these heroes of the faith endured before arriving. They had a big learning curve, sometimes wandering through decades of hit and miss before they got it. Typically, it was an act of God that enabled the necessary change, rather than joining the local fitness club.

Take Rahab for instance. She may have had dreams of becoming a wife and mother like the other little girls in her culture, but wound up a prostitute hopelessly stuck in a demoralizing lifestyle with no apparent way out.

Yet in spite of her career path, God chose Rahab to be part of His plan. The moment she decided to believe in the true God of Israel, her life became a do-over.

After risking her life to help Joshua and his men, she eventually married a Jewish man and became the mother of Boaz, who is in the lineage of Jesus Christ. God restored Rahab’s dignity, and fulfilled her destiny, and it happened without going on the grapefruit diet. She is even listed with other great heroes of the faith like Abraham and Moses in Hebrews 11.

Romans 4 says that God’s righteousness comes through faith in Jesus Christ alone, apart from self effort. God makes no distinction in regard to our status, “For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.” We can only plead Christ’s finished work on the cross as our justification.

That's better than any New Year's Resolution I can think of.