Habits

I've never been one to stick with things, to follow a set anything, schedule, routine, habits,...
So when lent rolled around again this year, it took me by surprise, again!  Early this year too, it started the day before Valentine's day, which I found delightfully odd. Probably because I usually think of giving up chocolate.
Anyway, Lent, the practice of fasting, giving something up for ever, I mean, for 40 days.  Every year I consider doing it, sometimes I do give something up, most of the time I fail miserably at giving up whatever it is I decided myself to give up. Why?  I never understood this phenomenon   I myself am choosing something that I think I can manage giving up for 40 days, and yet, I fail all the time.  There's a lot of I's in that sentence and I think that is precisely the problem.
I read a blog about Lent, and about how failing at the "challenge" of giving something up is actually the point of giving something up for Lent.  What?!?
The more I think about it the more it makes sense.  I can chose something easy to give up and succeed or something hard and rely on God for strength and ultimately, His grace when I fail.
Didn't He who created everything out of nothing give it all up to come to earth as a human, and suffer to give us something we couldn't do ourselves?
Didn't He, Jesus spend forty days and forty nights with no food, in the desert, being tempted by the devil?
And I can't skip a meal, avoid sweets, not do ... whatever, for a brief period of time?  What a wimp am I?!
But isn't that the point. I can't, only He can.