Back Down, Again

The very moment I start to think, "Oh, I'm definitely on the pathway to righteousness" God shows me exactly where I really am: the bottom of the totem pole; the dirt beneath the cow pie; the sand in someone's eye.

Pride. It is a favorite rant of mine--a rant I usually go off on in my own head--to complain about people's insanely big egos and prideful nature.

It's also a favorite game of God's to take something I dislike and open my eyes to see that that very thing is thriving inside my being.

I am prideful.

The other night, Hannah talked to me and mentioned something about someone saying that I was prideful in my own way. Of course, as you can imagine, I was stung by such a comment. Strangely enough, (not very surprising, though) I couldn't get the thought of me being prideful out of my mind. Today, I opened the bible study I'm doing and flipped through the pages. One prayer I wrote out a while ago confirmed exactly what I didn't want to know, much less acknowledge; I had written, "I think I'm prideful." No details, no adjectives, no run-on sentence (for the first time in my life). Nothing. I had stated it clearly, not thinking at the time that it would become the one thing I absolutely could not stop thinking about.

This morning, searching, grappling for an excuse, any way I could prove myself wrong--that I was not prideful--I read these verses:

"Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother's eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye? How can you say to your brother, 'Let me take the speck out of your eye,' when all the time there is a plank in your own eye? You hypocrite, first take the plank out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother's eye." --Matthew 7: 3-5

Then, when the feeling of hopeless and utter shame dawned, it's weight complete in fullness, and I was on my knees, I was reminded of this:

"This is the confidence we have in approaching God: that if we ask anything according to his will, he hears us. And if we know that he hears us—whatever we ask—we know that we have what we asked of him." --1 John 5: 13-14

The pride I have harbored inside of me for so long, must go. All of it. And I must give it all to God; trusting that He will take all the judgment from my heart. But not only that; with this realization, comes the acknowledgment that there are a lot of people out there who have been hurt by my pride and insensitivity; and so I owe to all those I have ever judged, or called prideful, this:

I am so sorry. My words, I know, were insensitive and hypocritical and they shouldn't have even been thought, much less said. Please forgive me...

If you can find it in your heart to pray for me I cannot tell you how grateful I would be.

Thank you all, for being there, and for being so kind--when I deserved no less than a slap on the face.

Most humbly, I remain,
Ellie

Oh the Cleverness of God

A little Bing Crosby jazz, a clean room, a shower, wonderful smelling candles, a pretty dress and a journal full of blank pages... I'm ready to wait out this glorious snow storm.

Shawty's like a melody in MY HEAD!

I'm so tired of modern music. It's loud, repetitive and has awful lyrics. Anymore I've realized it doesn't just fill my ears with... well, crap, it fills my head with it's horrific values--or lack there of--and I can't it out of my head!!

So I'm going on strike. No more bad music. I won't listen to it. Won't buy it. Won't support the artists that produce it.

There.

A Plea

Jesus,
Take my heart.

It is yours.

Do with it as you will.
For I am no judge of what is good, or what is bad.

Amen.

...

When times are hard,
and my voice is gone,
and I weep into the night:

He is Glory
He is Holy
He hears my sigh tonight...

There's the Day

There's the day where your head feels like a fully soaked sponge. If anyone were to come squeeze you, even touch you the slightest bit, you'd start unloading all your "water worries/thoughts/ideas/etc" on them and be fully drained of all things thought provoking and complicated.

There's the day when your mind is a big blank page. Flat, white, 2D and completely empty of all thoughts.

Boy Am I A Grump Today

This morning I woke up. Besides a jarring headache, a raw sore throat and an earache, hey! I was bloody wonderful!

I went down stairs, grabbed my Bible and my bible study book and went up stairs for some God time. (That sounds slightly weird, doesn't it? God time. Moving on.) For thirty minutes I was doing good. (Probably because I wasn't focused on myself.)

Then all hell broke loose. Something similar to that of a tightly stretched rubber band broke in my head. Every time someone said something my responses were tinged with a scowl and sounded something like, "Yeah. Fine. What?" And if you've ever seen Ellie mad, you'll know there was very little, if any, good-natured expression in those words. I lumbered around the house like a grouchy bear, wrapped in a blanket.

The end of this story? Well, quite frankly, there isn't one. I'm still a grump.

The moral to this story? I haven't found one yet. I'm not about to look positively on a morning such as this.

Jesus please forgive me, because I know not what I do. Heh (I got a snort out of myself on that one.)

Knock it off, Ellie. Don't joke around with Jesus' personal quotes.

Sheesh.