Seriously now. I Messed Up.

Sure enough, it happened. I should know that when I open my big, fat mouth declaring some truth of the ages, that I will be tested on it. This time it was instant. I hit “publish” on the post about Selfishness, and prepared to shut down my laptop and head home, when my phone rang.

A volley of false accusations and tangled anger came out of my phone. I scowled at it and held it out in front of me while it got louder and louder. I scrapped wisdom and coolly interjected, “What? I don’t get what you’re saying. Don’t you think it is rude to talk to me like this, when I can’t read your mind to know exactly which false assumptions about me you are talking about this time?” and set the phone on the counter to make more noise on its own. After a while, I simply touched the red button icon and it got quiet.  I know. I am mortified to confess I did that. That was all extremely unhelpful of me…and selfish.

Being misunderstood and lied about pig-headedly can be two of the worst things to experience. Both of them faced me in a moment and I chose selfishness as my response. Sure enough, it felt to the speaker like I was hurling them against the wall with my cold response, only because the response chose my feelings, over hearing the heart’s need hiding behind the raging nastiness.

So I went to the home of said nasty person, as a halfway-towards-kind gesture. And I must confess that suddenly, I was further selfish. Oh, but they were so wrong! They desperately needed me to talk them into a corner in a torrent of carefully crafted words for three minutes without breathing and see just how stupid they were being. But wait, that was definitely a shape-shift symptom, bulging with potential to wipe out proof of God’s testimony in my life to this individual, (as well as my heretofore sweet repute) in a matter of seconds. So, I bit myself mentally, instead.

I leaned against the door jam and listened. This someone had actually been hurt by someone else, and I happened to have done something that remotely reminded them of it. In an instant I was remembering that in every relationship, one of the individuals is more mature than the other one. One of the individuals chooses the hard path towards healing; one of them sacrifices their pride. Hence, I had to let it go. Right there I finally actually killed that glossy black predator in a battle. A smile came in and my Selfishness slunk miserably from the room.

Thanks for keeping me accountable just by reading this. Please know that what I exhort others towards, I’m definitely just learning myself.