Today’s inventory lesson started off with:
“If we don’t take our inventory, sooner or later someone will take it for us.”
For me, that’s not just a premise, that’s a fact. For many years I moved through life thinking and doing as I saw fit. Every so often, I’d get blindsided by trouble. Trouble that pointed out flaws in my character. Places where I ran over people and made them feel bad with my behavior. “I never meant to” was always my answer. And I really didn’t. I never set out to hurt anyone or gain anything at another’s expense, but that didn’t mean it didn’t happen.
I learned that when someone “slaps me upside the head” saying, “Hey, look what you’re doing!”, not meaning to do it isn’t an excuse. It doesn’t absolve me. I need to stop and pay attention. It’s a wake up call. Changes in myself and/or my life need to be made. Of course, I apologize, but apologies without going off and doing some real work on myself to correct the behavior, would be insincere.
Sometimes the changes I have to make are painful and embarrassing to admit. I am tempted to make more excuses to hide behind, so I don’t have to face what’s ugly in me and cut it out of there. Admitting and cutting out ugliness that I never knew I possessed, is one of the hardest things life asks of me.
God is always behind these situations. He sometimes uses people to smack me upside the head and make me realize I am not acting in ways consistent with what He would have me act like. I have one dear, dear, friend that I can always count on to be honest with me, grab me by the shirt collar and say, “Hey! That’s not nice!” It usually blindsides me, but there’s always something that really does need my attention. Everyone should have a friend like her, not only honest, but caring, too. I appreciate the people in my life, such as my husband and my friend, who do not let me go on unknowingly behaving in a manner that is just not right.
It’s like them not letting you leave the house with one earring or a curler in the back of your hair. Strangers, and some friends, won’t tell you. They just whisper about you. I value the people in my life who will not let me display my emotional curlers in public. This is called trusting another with your raw innards. They see all the good in you on your good days, but they call you out on the things you do that are just not right, and you can love them for doing that. Why? Because you really know, I mean really know, deep down, they mean you no harm. You are safe with them.
To take inventory of all my “bad stuff” and find the people who love me and appreciate me in spite of it, for all the good I do possess, is the real treasure of inventory.
And so, as another day goes by, to be able to bring your flaws to the table and be given the chance to learn and grow from them, is, perhaps, the best part of any true, real, relationship, and ….I have written.
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