Don't put it on the inside Aunt Bethany

So my nephew, the cutiepie in the bottom of the previous post, has had the rhea gilberts for the last few days.
rhea gilberts=diarrhea
He's potty training but still afraid to go #2 in the toilet. So his butt is red, in and out of the crack. Last night while Christmas Tree decorating festivities were going on he started to smell a little....ripe. So we went upstairs to change his diaper. The whole way he kept saying, "Don't put it on the inside Aunt Bethany". Then my sister yelled up to put the boo boo medicine on his butt. Which means in and out of the crack.
His poor tookus was beet red and he sobbed through most of the diaper changing process.
But it got me thinking about something other then poop.....which is mainly a survival tactic when you're changing diapers : )

How often do we not want to do something because it could hurt, even though it's what's best for us. How many times do we cry and wail and thrash against what in the long run will improve us and make our life better? How often do we cry out to God to correct us, but only where it doesn't hurt?
I'm perfectly fine with God convicting me to be more generous with my time, but if he says one thing to me about changing my attitude, my language, or my behaviour in specific areas I cry, and thrash around and say "only on the outside God". I often only want to be changed on the surface, superficially where it doesn't take growth, stretching, and maybe some pain.
Real change, on the inside, never comes easy. It's a changing of life long learned behaviors and thoughts, it's about not only changing who you are but people's perception of you. Because if you change on the inside your old buddies will have to change to. Change isn't stagnant, it isn't singular. When I because believer my friends and family had to change to, they had to shift their view of me from before I had a relationship with Christ to how I was after. When I was with JCWC and then wasn't people had to change their perception of the Bethany that was in a relationship and one that wasn't good for her by their standards. When JCWC and I became tight friends again after so long people had to adjust how they saw him because of the inside change that had happened in him.
And so on and so forth.
It's difficult to deal with that for me sometimes. Sometimes I wish I could be content again just pinging around the world, wandering aimlessly and believing that there were no eternal consequences for my thoughts and actions. But over the last, gosh 5 years already?, since I became a believer that outside change is slowly but surely seeping inside. It has not been easy, and I still cry and say not on the inside, just the outside.
Looking back though, seeing the wreckage that I created in my wake and the vengance with which I spoke I know that I wouldn't trade a single second of the pain.
I'm still going to cry about it, I'll still crunch my eyes shut and say "not on the inside". I'm not sure the change has seeped that deep yet, but I'm working on it.

What is it that you cry out "not on the inside" about? Where is the change that is being effected in your life, the improvements and refining of the core of who you are and why is it so painful? I often think about those painful "inside" moments in my own life, and when I look at the reasons behind my tantrums, the need for change often becomes glaringly clear.