Parenthood, along with all the joys, also comes with the unique burden of living with an adorable little viral sponge. This lovable sponge picked up a cold and passed it to me right as I was getting over another one so I spent a few weeks passed out on my couch while my wife made fun of me for having a "man cold" (in my defence, it really was awful). In the depths of said man cold, I had a startling realization: the sick, miserable, uncomfortable version of me can be selfish, despairing, and rude.

For the last few years, as I've worked on my spiritual formation, I would say (in all humility) that God really has worked powerfully in my life. By His grace, I can actually see how I've grown in holiness, virtue, and love. Contemplative prayer, deep relationships, and suffering have all come together to grow and deepen my soul. I've built a Rule of Life that's worked to open me up to grace. I'm not perfect but looking back over the journey of the last few years, I can honestly say that I have become a little bit more like Christ.

My downfall, however, is what happens when I slip from the routine or experience some kind of inconvenience. When that happens, it can feel like a whole different version of me emerges: one who is much less like Christ and much more like what St Paul calls "the flesh."

The philosopher Dallas Willard in this fantastic article outlines three types of will:

A quick look at each one:

The impulsive will is the part of us that acts on whatever we find attractive. We see the impulsive will in babies who, when they see something they want, immediately go and grab it. This is not a character flaw; it's just the way we come into the world. The problem emerges if we're unable to mature beyond this compulsion. It's true that many of the good things we want can become sources of suffering: money, food, sex, alcohol, power etc. While there's nothing inherently wrong with these things, we get ourselves into trouble if we are powerless to resist them.

The second type of will is "the reflective will," and this is our ability to choose between what we want in the moment and what will be good for us in the long term. This is what's at work when we choose to go to the gym, eat vegetables, stay in a healthy marriage, and pray in the morning. These things might not feel attractive to us when we're doing them but if we stick with them over the long term, we see their fruit in our character.

The final type of will is the embodied will. Over time, we submit more frequently to either the impulsive will or the reflective will. A life of submitting to the impulsive will creates an impulsive person, a slave to their own desires. A life of submitting to the reflective will, of choosing the good over the immediately desirable, creates a kind of person for whom it is easier to do the life giving than the destructive. This is our embodied will: what embeds itself into our very body over a life of decisions.

A Rule of Life has a lot to do with our reflective will. We choose to do things like practice the Sabbath, fast, give generously to the poor and to our Church community, and pray not because they look exciting on the surface but because we know that if we do them over and over again for a long time they have a cumulative effect on our souls.

What I noticed about myself when I was sick was that while I might have experienced some transformation of my reflective will, it's going to take a long time for that to sink down into my embodied will. That's okay; the good news is not that the transformation of the embodied will is easy but that it's possible!

When we look at our brokenness, there can be a temptation to despair. We might feel trapped in patterns of destructive behaviour and no matter how hard we try, we can't seem to overcome them. The good news of the Gospel is that we can break these patterns. Not overnight, not by trying really hard, but by allowing God's grace to seep deep into our bodies and transform us over time.

The little decisions we make towards the good do something to us - even if we don't immediately notice. It's our submission to the ordinary grace of God over a lifetime that, eventually, will make us more like Christ.