Your log; doesn't mean pick on someone elses speck

"Don't pick on people, jump on their failures, criticize their faults— unless, of course, you want the same treatment. That critical spirit has a way of boomeranging. It's easy to see a smudge on your neighbor's face and be oblivious to the ugly sneer on your own. Do you have the nerve to say, 'Let me wash your face for you,' when your own face is distorted by contempt? It's this whole traveling road-show mentality all over again, playing a holier-than-thou part instead of just living your part. Wipe that ugly sneer off your own face, and you might be fit to offer a washcloth to your neighbor.” Matthew 7:1-5 (The Message)


I love this, and I love this version, though I wish lately that I had been taking it a lot more seriously, and actually taking action.

I have this friend in my life, someone who is so much more than a friend. They are my other half as some people say, and I agree completely. We laugh together, cry, when they hurts, I hurt. But I hadn’t realized how much I had been hurting them lately.

Something has been going on with me lately, something that I refused even to acknowledge. I had been convinced that all the “problems” we were having was because the other person changed, changed too much for the “bad”. Yes, they had changed, but this person could never change for the “bad”, they have Him, therefore, it’s not even possible. But while I was all along “criticizing” them, telling them they needed to go back to the way they were, I didn’t even notice, I refused to watch myself change the exact way that I was accusing them of changing, if that makes sense.

I was the one that was changing, and needed to watch myself more, and question what was going on with me, and my attitude, because my attitude has grown, in a five year old temper tantrum way. This is what I have understood what I had been doing. I had been blowing up everything this person said into something way bigger and unneeded. I was doing this because then if everything was their fault, then we wouldn’t have to look at my “problems”, the REAL reason that all of this useless fighting was happening. I was letting my guard down too much, letting myself get hurt by stupid things that I would never in my right mind let hurt me before. But I certainly wouldn’t be such a jerk about it.

This person finally brought this to my attention this morning, Valentine’s Day, and I believe this to be the best Valentine’s Day present that I could have ever received. What more could I want then honesty? Because honesty, in the deepest way is LOVE. And isn’t that what this whole day is about? Love in the deepest level? Not culturally it isn’t, but it SHOULD BE! This morning we had the stupidest fight ever. It was about why Valentine’s Day is stupid, and now I am realizing that I was so wrong. My whole argument was stupid, and they were completely and entirely right. Everyday should be Valentine’s Day.

You shouldn’t love someone more just because Hallmark designates a day for it, you should love someone as much as you can. every. single. day. I am a Christian, and I’m not afraid to say it, not at all, and I should be loving as possible, to everyone. every. single. day. But I haven’t been. I’ve been hurtful. Nobody has been hurting me, only myself. I have been getting hurt because of myself. All this person has been giving me since we met is love. UnCONDITIONAL love! I have messed up a lot since we met, but no matter what, they are always still there, loving me more than they did five minutes before I messed up. And what this verse is saying is this; you should treat this person the way you want to be treated, and that’s what I’ve been getting. I’ve been treating them like crap, though I’ve only been getting a taste of it back. I can only imagine what it is like to be this person, and hurt like they have been hurting because of me. Because I refused to look at the log in my own eye, they have been hurting, and I will never be able to fix that.

I don’t want to make this a “public apology” because I have done that, and I don’t want to use this place for those kinds of things. Everything that we do should be for Him, and that is what I try to use this blog for, for the glory of Him, through me. Writing stuff down and letting all my thoughts out, has always helped me see how I need to changed to glorify the Lord more. This has been a really hard blog for me to write, I think mostly because I have had to admit that I am wrong, but this is something I need to get better at, this is one of the things I used to be better at, and am now refusing to do. So this will be my starting point to change, today, February 14th 2010, I am going to work harder to see the things that I need to work on, and not tell others to look at themselves before I examine myself.

This was really long, and I can now see, it was another blog mostly for me, but I haven’t written one in a long time, and so maybe I need to look into myself, and what I need to change more, and dissect it like this. We’ll see where it goes.