This weekend, I got:

A new laptop
A new blender cup for my Blendtec
A new top to my coffee carafe

I used both the coffeemaker and the blender earlier today. It’s amazing how much easier it is to use both appliances now!

For months, my coffee carafe has been inconsistently working. It has a special top, so that when you pull the coffee carafe out from the coffee maker, the coffee stops pouring. This is a great feature – except when the coffee stops actually flowing into the coffee carafe. I never could figure out exactly what was wrong with the coffee carafe that stopped the coffee from properly flowing into the carafe. I finally realized I could get a new top for the carafe, and now the pot works fine.

I’ve been using a blender cup for my Blendtec that I got years ago at a Border’s closeout sale. That tells you how long ago it was. I got it for $5. It’s a commercial blender cup, so it’s not exactly built for my blender. But it worked pretty well. The only drawback is it is so loud. When the bottom started cracking, I moved to using my Nutribullet instead. Well, that thing is so old it stopped blending my green smoothies smoothly, so they are more like “green chunkies” due to lack of thorough blending. I made a green smoothie with my new blender cup today. It was so smooth!

And now I’m posting this blog post from my new laptop. My old laptop is nine years old and so, so slow. Like, SO SLOW. I would sit down to open a spreadsheet, and 10 minutes later, I would still be waiting. I had to download some PDFs on Friday to send via email. 3 PDFs and 20 minutes later, I got them sent.

Painful.

All of this left me wondering: what have I done in my own life to accommodate my own deficiencies? My weaknesses and inadequacies?

I love my coffee pot. I got it for $10 at a thrift store several years back. It’d be well over $100 to replace it. Because of this, I’m willing to stand at my coffee pot every morning, let a little coffee drip through the machine, pull the carafe out and stare at the top, willing that coffee to please drip into the carafe!

My husband thought of the word kludge, which means a haphazard or makeshift solution to a problem. My kludge was to stand there, shake the carafe, poking and prodding the top until somehow, the coffee dripped down inside!

What have I done in my spiritual life to accommodate areas I could improve on or grow in, but have chosen not to or perhaps didn’t even know that I could?

Now, why would I choose not to grow? Perhaps my inadequacies have become comfortable. I’ve become accustomed to their familiarity. As I wrote in my book, I’ve worked around my limp. Maybe I’ve assumed my limp would always be there. But have I really taken this to God? Have I asked if this is something He wants me to work around, or if I could access His help? Have I asked for His insight and His input?

One of my favorite verses is Romans 12:2b (NLT): “Let God transform you into a new person by changing the way you think.”

Here’s the thing: while I needed a new laptop, I didn’t need a whole new coffee maker. I didn’t need an entirely new blender. I needed to make some tweaks in order to get these things working as they were intended to work in the 1st place.

It’s God’s job to transform us, not our own. He does this when we partner with Him in making small changes in a positive direction.

Ask yourself: are there modifications you are currently making in your life to accommodate your own areas of shortcoming, modifications God never asked you to make? Are there ways you could change your thinking or your perspective in order to allow God to change those areas of your life?