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Vol. 2004 Issue 07 ~ July

The other day, while at church of all places, I snapped a bit at four people (in four different encounters) within about 30 minutes. Not a banner day, that's for sure. I had some mending to do --- which I did. Thankfully, I was shown a lot of grace, which I desperately need a good deal of the time from the people in my life. The littlest, dumbest things got under my skin and I didn't bother trying to mask my annoyance. But I was so struck by how short my fuse was that morning...shorter than the usual pretty darn short.

It got me thinking that I have really been living out of my humanness a majority of the time lately. I stumbled upon a great quote by Jim Cymbala: "God will manifest himself in direct proportion to our passion for him." Why didn't I have the strength of character to simply be kind, let alone even tolerate, those petty irritations? Why do I seem to be enduring my kids lately as opposed to enjoying them like crazy? Sure, I'm tired. And I'm busier than I probably should be. But it's more than that. It's that my passion has been low and I have been doing next to nothing of late to fan the flames of my relationship with God --- so I should actually expect little to no supernatural power to overcome my human tendencies and flawed knee-jerk reactions to life.

Typically when this happens --- when I blow it --- I beat myself up a bit and move on. This time however, I took a moment to jot it down in my journal --- and I'm giving myself some time to really think about those incidents. To think about the why behind it and to think about what I can do to combat that from happening again. And I know what I need to do…it's quite simple really…I need to practice what I preach…I need to get back on track. I need to spend time with Jesus every day. I need to spend time in His word and to spend time talking with Him. But it's not going to happen just because I say I need to do it. So, I'm going to stop writing right now and go do that. This way, if I run into you at the grocery store this afternoon, and you get in front of me in the express line with 16 items when you should only have 15, I just might refrain from snapping at you. Just maybe…

© Elisabeth K. Corcoran, 2004

Submitted on : 1-Jul-2004