my week felt like a long month.

I have been holding hands with my enemies.
Hosting extravagant feasts with those I had no welcome rug for, and spent the heart of my week exchanging conversations with my thoughts. And of course, I was always in harmony with myself. And only me.

Its been a while since I was in the same room with Rage, Malice, Gossip, Pharisee-of-a-heart judging, and Slandering..but this week, we reunited and once again became the best of friends. It brings me such sadness & burden to be this way. Not only does it alienate me from everyone in church, it intiates my running from the Lord. So I attempted to recall & even read prime examples of the way God treated those who were judged.. Mary, the Samaritan woman.. the lepers.. the adulterers.. the "Judas's..".. we were all in the same boat. And I knew full well that I was just like them. They were all terminally ill. Yet God treated them all with the same medication: LOVE.

Still, my heart was cold-cut steel. The pointing fingers, building walls, and finding every single fault known to man in every person that made me angry kept me occupied long enough.

but oh, how much work was not done this week! how many souls could have been encouraged, prayed over, and reminded of God's love..but wasn't-- I was too busy tarrying away at how much HATE I thought needed to be proclaimed to the world. "This & that person's sins need to be exposed! .. Everyone must know who they really are!" haha. I only laugh to recall how ridiculous i was. Even horrible-heart-me is bestowed a universe of grace. (My gosh, if everyone found out the things that i have done! the skeletons in my closet! wow, I would be banished to the ends of the earth! haha.. )  Ironic, but before, I would grow embittered with people like this, and used to think that I could "never be like them". But I am. It took a while for these things to surface, but they were there all along. Now God can strain me out and take all those rotten things away. (God is so patient, loving, kind & sweet to keep working on us day by day!)

I hated..because I had no LOVE. You spit out what you ingest. And to be honest, sadly, transparently.. embarassingly honest, I did not spend any genuine time with the Lord this week. His love was not evident in my life, and nowhere to be found..because I absolutely REFUSED to receive it. I see the importance of earnestly praying for God to inscribe, chisel, engrave, ..burn into our lives His powerful & changing truth! We can read for hours & still not receive any word of the Lord if we refuse to accept what He whispers to us.

I was reminded that judging your brother or sister who might be doing something wrong will never work. We should all overwhelm with praying & love, and gentle admonishment. In the end, God changes them anyway, diba! All the strife & angst we expressed in.. "dude, don't they know any better?" "omg! can you believe so-and-so did this?" is unnecessary, foolish, and plain outright a waste of time.

Yes.. we are all sinners being held at the mercy of an Eternal Hand.

**Gratefulness seeps out from every crack of me for you, the only one who heard any of the ugly things I said, and still remained quiet..gently admonishing & encouraging me after I had expelled every breath of angry air. I thank God for you. I thank God for you.

"Once we get a glimpse of who we really are, believe me, we will be awakened to our need. God will also show us who he really is, and what we see can't help but draw us in."-Contentment (Lydia Brownback)