a year of habits//week 2 confession

I'm going to be super honest- confession was a discipline I thought about skipping. The word itself brings to mind a wooden box where you are made to confess your sins to another person in order to gain God's forgiveness. Take into consideration I am not Catholic, so my idea might not exactly be what a Catholic would appreciate (sorry about that), but nevertheless, it is how I view it. 

BUT I decided to take my own approach with this discipline. I wanted to mainly journal my confessions so that it was something only between God and myself, but it would also be something I could look back on and see how my relationship with God had grown.  A few of the days this past week though, I didn't want to journal- either my thoughts seemed to sensitive or I was too tired. So instead, I just went to God in prayer. And I counted that still. 

It's funny how most days I didn't feel like I had messed up or had been in offense to God, but after this past week and really looking into my actions and thoughts, I realized how even the little things started to stick out. Journaling and confessing even those tiny instances made me feel closer to God because it made me realize how much I don't consider Him in every single thing I do. And I really want to change that.

Update on my Habit 1: 

I also am still working on my first habit- prayer before each meal, which turned into prayer each time I put anything in my mouth-even a mint. It's still a hard habit to get into and most days I still fail- but at least I still am trying. 

This week: Habit 3: meditation.

This one I am a little overwhelmed with. It's not like in yoga or the other types of modern-day meditation where you just clear your mind. That's just the first step. But the second step is to fill yourself with the person and Word of God. The book I'm reading, Enjoying Jesus, gives the example of meditating well as "pick[ing] a quality or promise of God and turn[ing] over and over in our minds, seeing the different facets of truth as we consider it first from one angle and then from another." Finding time to do this is harder than I thought. Although the book does suggest doing this on your commute, somehow I feel like I need even less distraction for the first few times I do it- and then of course when I get home I haven't made the time. 

So if you have any suggestions for how you've done this, please, please share!!!