Can a tiger change it's stripes?

How much of who we are is habit? nature? learned? innate? choice? genetics? I am the kind of person who makes the same resolutions every New Year's eve, always full of hope and determination, and never succeeds. I am one of those who jumps into Lenten sacrifices full throttle but two weeks into it I'm struggling or I've failed all together. I am one of those who go into the confessional to confess the same sins, over and over. Oh, with the grace of God I've beaten some major ones, but those little ones? Yeah, those trip me up every day. My remorse is real though, so why can't I change?

Here it is February and I am still not able to wake up at 6:00 a.m. like I resolved. I know this seems like no big deal to hear it, but it really is a big deal to me. It's at the heart of my whole problem. I am lazy. I go to bed around 9:00 every night and left to my own devices will sleep until 9:00 a.m., get up, have coffee, throw in one load of laundry and then take a nap. Of course, God knows me all too well and has therefore blessed me with many children, who force me to wake up in time to get them to school, who force me to do more than one load of laundry a week, who force me to go beyond myself. Still, I do everything half-assed.

For years now I have told myself that if I can just wake up earlier (6:00 a.m. as opposed to 7:00 a.m.) my life will be totally different. I will have time to start my day peacefully,quietly, prayerfully before the mad rush. I've tried offering it up for Lent, I've tried making it a resolution, I've set my alarm for 6:00 a.m. every morning for years. Still, I persist in waking at 7:00, or worse yet, 7:15 (from hitting "snooze", you know, 6 times as opposed to 5). And then it's a mad rush.

There is much more to my laziness than just oversleeping. I procrastinate, I take on only little tasks letting the big projects build up, worse yet I slough stuff off onto my husband that I could just as easily do myself. I order take out for dinner. I pull dirty uniforms out of the kids' hamper because I didn't get around to getting laundry done. I blog, I play on Facebook, I talk on the phone. And I've noticed, the lazier I am the more selfish I am. If my kids interrupt my e-mailing asking for a drink of something, I get all bent out of shape. What is wrong with me?

It is true that when you have small children at home it is very difficult to get large projects done. There is so much interruption and so much multi-tasking and so much of having to leave a project unfinished that I know a lot of moms like me who just don't even bother to start them. Some of that is an excuse, some of that is honestly a learned defense mechanism. So I often wonder, how much of my laziness is learned? I've always been lazy it's true, always an underachiever. In high school I once skipped doing a research paper completely because I figured out that with my average currently being an "A", an "F" on the paper would just bring me down to a "C", and that was good enough for me. But in my 20's I managed to keep a tidy apartment, cook healthy meals for myself, hold down a job, and achieve the National Honors Society in college, graduating summa cum laude. So, it's not that I can't do it, I just don't. I think. I mean, taking care of only one person is a lot easier and there was definitely a lot of down time.

Maybe I am making too much of my laziness. I mean, in the end, things do manage to get done. My house is mostly clean, the laundry is mostly done, dinner is mostly home made. I am raising good kids who eat healthy, get good grades and say their prayers every night. Of course I could do better. My kids tend to walk all over me and I have to tell them to do everything 20 times because I'm not a very good disciplinarian - I'm too lazy to follow through. Maybe I am making too much of it, but sloth is a sin, and certainly when it leads to selfishness and impatience it's a sin.

Can a tiger change it's stripes? How much of this is just the way I am and how much of it is habit? There is a song by Switchfoot called "This is Your Life". The words say, "This is your life, are you who you wanna be?" and every time I hear it I think, "not really." I want to be a person who rises early, starts the day with a coffee and the Bible, then patiently helps her kids get out the door to school. I want to come home and mop floors, clean out cabinets and closets, plan dinners, and spends the afternoon in prayer and study, not napping. Can I change? At what point do I decide to stop trying and just love myself? And why can't I just get up at 6 o'clock in the morning?