But anyway…
Yes, it’s been a long several months since I last published anything; no, I’m not going to go into a lengthy explanation of the whys and wherefores of where I’ve been. I will say this, though: Several months back, I read a blog post that a friend of mine shared about being careful not to spend so much time blogging about our lives that we forget to live them, and it really hit home for me. So, I’ve been taking some time off from blogging and just kind of focusing on simply living life each day with my family and friends. And life has been exceptionally busy this year, so… Yep. That’s where I’ve been :-)
So, tonight, I was sitting here on the couch in our new apartment (we moved over the summer… yeah, that was actually one of the more fun parts of the busyness :-D ), listening to iTunes and working on my mental list of people I now owe apologies to for running my mouth (What? Don’t tell me I’m the ONLY person out there who does that every once in a while… ^_^ ), and this song came on:
I’m like a promise, I’m like a promise
I’m like a promise broken every time I open my mouth
Open my mouth, I open my mouth
OK, yeah… That’s me, right there, encapsulated in a single sentence. It’s like I know I’ve got so much potential in me to do good, to do the right things, to love people and treat them like I want to be treated….
And then I open my mouth and all that promise just gets hurled to the ground and shattered into shards of glass that fly everywhere and cut the people who most need me to be gentle with them. The Bible says in James 3 that the tongue steers our life like the rudder of a ship, that unlike any other wild animal, we cannot seem to tame it, no matter how hard we try. The human tongue is like a flame that sets the forest ablaze; in my case, it seems more like a scalpel that strips the skin away and leaves the nerves frayed and loose and open to all the grit of daily life…
Under the surface, under the surface
Under the surface sometimes I wanna slip right out of my skin
Out of my, slip right out of my skin
Sometimes, when I hear the words that come out of my mouth, all I want to do is find a way to pretend that I’m really someone else, a good twin who can deny all knowledge of anything “that other person” has said. I wish there was someone else that I could shrug my shoulders for and say, “No, that wasn’t me… Must have been that other chick who just happens to look like me and live around here. I think I saw her go off in that direction…” Maybe, just maybe, 38 years ago, my mom actually gave birth to identical twins in secret, and then the government wiped her memory and took one of the twins away to train her as a black-leather-and-spandex-clad secret assassin, and now there’s some kind of super-secret spy agent out there who looks exactly like me (only in leather and spandex... which I, for the record, would never wear together...) and is now running around all over the Chehalem Valley doing whatever she can with her words to mess up my life and my relationships and my reputation so she can murder me and bury me under the new patio in the backyard and then seamlessly take over my life…
No, wait… that’s a show on Netflix. Never mind.
Well, until my clones start showing up on my doorstep, I guess I’m stuck with the knowledge that, nope, it’s just me using my own tongue as a weapon of mass destruction to take out half the population of Newberg. Sigh…
And tell all my secrets
And open my scars
Break into pieces
Cause at the end of me, at the end of me
That’s where You start
Now there’s the hope in the situation… God doesn’t expect me to be perfect all the time. God doesn’t expect me to be perfect any of the time. Which is really good, because I’ve always sucked at perfection (just ask my sister… the real one, not the long-hoped for evil twin one ^_^ ) But when I get to the point where I’ve completely FUBARed things, that’s where God can come in and make the biggest difference. Not that I should go around trying to screw everything up… but since I seem to be so darned good at it sometimes, it helps to know that God can salvage anything and turn it into something beautiful in His way and time :-)
Do you remember, do you remember?
Do you remember when I was young and I knew everything?
I knew everything about everything
(Yes, before she even comments, my sister will definitely confirm that this was totally me when we were growing up... and that at least 2 of my 3 kids take after their mother in that regard... and that she was NEVER like that at ANY point in HER youth... ;-D )
Such a long time, such a long time
Such an uphill climb just to finally get over myself
Over my, I’m so over myself
So tell all my secrets
And open my scars
Break me to pieces
Cause at the end of me, at the end of me
That’s where You start
I don’t know where, I don’t know how
Maybe a prayer, maybe a cloud
I don’t know where, I don’t know how
So tell all my secrets
And open my scars
Gather the pieces
Cause at the end of me, at the end of me
That’s where You start
--Bebo Norman, "At the End of Me"
You see, that’s what I absolutely LOVE about God: He takes us right where we are, and then moves us forward from there. His grace isn’t about making me feel really crappy about the stupid thing I’ve just said— I already feel crappy enough about that already, thank you very much :-P God’s grace says to me, “OK, yes, you messed up here, I concur. Now here’s what we’re going to do about it… You go and do what you can to apologize and make things right, and meanwhile, I’ll go and take care of the rest of it. Then we can leave this in the past and move on to our next crazy adventure… Hurry up, gotta dash. Things happening. Well, four things. Well, four things and a lizard...”
(OK, so I'm still waiting for one of God's plans for me to include a lizard... Darn you, Netflix...)
I find that, when I’m stressed, I tend to lose what little control I have over my mouth, and then out come all sorts of sharply sarcastic, mean-spirited, “I was just joking…” sort of comments, armed and loaded and just ready to take flight and stab people straight in the heart. And yes, I’ve been stressed recently… There’s a lot of stuff going on and way more running around and trying to fit everything everyone wants to do into the schedule somehow than I ever expected going into this school year.
But…
If I know that being stressed makes me more of a sharp-tongued shrew, then I have an obligation to try harder to keep it under control when I am stressed. Because honestly? None of the seemed-like-a-good-idea-at-the-time comments that come flying out of my mouth ever seem to make life easier or less stressful for anybody, myself included.
So this is why I’m writing this now…
First off, if you’re at all like me and you find yourself at times mistaking your tongue for a Ginsu...
... Don’t beat yourself up. God loves you, He’ll forgive you if you ask Him to, and then He can help you get up and move on. Apologize to the person you’ve hurt and ask for their forgiveness; they might forgive you, they might not, either way, you’ve done what you can to make peace (Romans 12:18, one of my favorite verses :-D ) and now all you can do is move forward anyway. Maybe if I’m honest about the fact that I screw up waaaaaaaaay more often in this area than I’m proud of, it can help someone else too.
Second off (Second on? Secondly? Maybe it’s just Second…), I’m writing this to ask for people to help hold me accountable. Sometimes (as God has been pointing out to me recently), I say things in the moment and then just kind of walk away thinking everyone’s laughing and every thing’s fine and everyone understands what I really meant… and I have absolutely no clue until days later that someone’s been lying on the ground behind me bleeding out from their soul because of something stupid that I said. And let me tell you, that is one sickening realization to come to, especially when the person bleeding to death is someone I love almost more than life itself.
So, the next time I say something (or write something, or you’ve heard that I’ve said something) and it hurts, tell me. I can’t do anything to make things right and try to bandage up the wounds I’ve caused unless I know about it. And as a Christian, I want to make things right, I want to heal wounds and make things better… Just as I’m supposed to be an ambassador for Christ (2 Corinthians 5:20) and help to bring peace and healing between God and people, I need to do everything I can to bring peace and healing between myself and those that I have hurt. Even if it’s embarrassing, even if it’s awkward, even if people never forgive me and I end up alone in some cave somewhere waiting for my evil clone twin to show up and finish the job I’ve started…
No, wait… Too much Netflix is apparently bad for my blogging life :-P
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