“But also for this very reason, giving all diligence, add to your faith virtue, to virtue knowledge, to knowledge self-control, to self-control perseverance, to perseverance godliness, to godliness brotherly kindness, and to brotherly kindness love. For if these things are yours and abound, you will be neither barren nor unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. For he who lacks these things is shortsighted, even to blindness, and has forgotten that he was cleansed from his old sins.”
II Peter 1:5-9 NKJV
“Come to Me, all you who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take My yoke upon you and learn from Me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For My yoke is easy and My burden is light.”
Matthew 11:28-30 NKJV
“The heart is deceitful above all things, And desperately wicked; Who can know it?”
Jeremiah 17:9 NKJV
You know those moments where you see yourself accurately and you’re shocked and dismayed at what you see?
I don’t like to offer up this fact: sometimes I am a jerk. It’s hard and awkward to say. Because it means admitting that I hurt someone due to my own selfishness and short-sightedness.
I have one person who I would really like to reconnect with, but I’ve realized that I’ve been a jerk to this person in the last multitude of interactions – they’ve all been in writing so there’s no avoiding what was exchanged – and I can’t believe how horrible I was to this person. Someone who I considered to be one of my best friends. And me: being a jerk to them.
I know that I can overanalyze and control my words when I write something. Here, I’m trying to overcome perfectionism and strive for living more intentionally. But each post has such a long process of editing by myself to come off as the person I want to be but it isn’t always an accurate picture of who I am. Yet there, after all the editing to come off how I wanted, I came across as scathing, nasty, and spiteful. I must have wanted it that way?
How could I do that to a friend? I feel so horrible about how I’ve treated this person, now that I see it. No wonder I’m not part of their life!
So what’s to be done?
Swallow this hard pill and change.
Pray that I can reconcile humbly and ask forgiveness unselfishly.
The hardest one: know that the chance to change in regard to this person may have passed its time limit. That there is no reconciliation that gets my relationship back to a good place and life has to move on.
I know there have been some people who have run out of chances with me and I feel justified in myself for those.
The flip side of me having run out of chances with someone else? … That is a harder thing to stare down.
Why do I have a double standard of how I accept being treated vs how I expect people to allow me to treat them?
I also have this terrible disorderly fire in my personality where if it ignites on you, I am completely out of character with how nasty I can get. I’m ashamed to admit that it has burned a few people. Including this friend.
And the truly sad gut-wrenching part is that when it happens, I’m proud of hurting the other person with clever words, a biting tongue, and being wittier than they are and “winning” the conversation by shutting them down.
Crap.
That’s hard to see on paper.
These things exist at war inside of me. And as much as I give my days to God, my human heart wants to take over and spill out wickedness and every hurtful thing.
The verse at the beginning has my being the latter part: I’m shortsighted to blindness because I missed the first step of adding virtue to faith.
Having faith in myself and believe “I am right because I am me” is not the kind of faith I want to have at all, much less grow.
I want to grow my faith in God: someone greater, wiser, perfectly loving, ever-gracious, and the creator of all things good.
And, boy, do I know I’m not talking about me there!
When I switch who my faith is in, I stumble.
I need Jesus.
I need to walk beside Him. To follow Him. To learn from Him. To exchange my yoke for His.
He is gentle and lowly in spirit.
I’ve been scathing and haughty and spitting fire.
There’s a big gap there that needs to close. And by that, I mean my side needs to die.
Maybe if I’m committed to yoking together, I’ll actually be steered the direction I want to follow and not lope off on my own? I can certainly pray for that!
I don’t have a finishing point to this. And the conversation may not be over with this friend: I’m naturally a very impatient person who acts quickly and impulsively – yet wants to be intentional and thoughtful with her life, so I have to push against my nature – and I may get a response in the future.
But also, this is a reminder to be kind no matter what. To remember that the path goes faith, virtue, knowledge, self-control, perseverance, godliness, brotherly-kindness, and finally love. That I can’t act in a loving way without all the steps before it. That if I miss the step from faith to virtue, I miss it all; whether it was yesterday or 14 years ago.
So I’ll keep choosing Jesus and asking for forgiveness as my selfishness comes to the light; keep praying to make better choices in how I treat God’s favorite person (which is each one of us!); and humbly ask for forgiveness when I’ve left off God’s yoke for my own.
I’m a fallible sinner who needs Jesus every single moment, like we all do, so I’ll keep clinging to Him and asking Him to change me.