Thank you all for reading and commenting. So until that next post I wish you all the best.

- dh

By way of disclosure, I do get a free year prescription for anyone who uses this link to start using Penzu (there is a free version) but that’s really not why I’m posting this.

I just think it’s a good product. If you try it, let me know what you think.

And yet… And yet…

There are times when even a creature wired for self-preservation can contemplate suicide.

I want to die.

I wish I were dead.

I’d be better off dead.

Then what?

I should tell you that if you are currently feeling like dying, you are not likely to lose that feeling while reading the rest of this post. But, I do think you may be able to look at your suffering (and yourself) a little differently by the end. First some straight-to-the point answers for those who are at risk of actually acting on the feeling:

• Follow the plan that you have worked out with your mental health professional or doctor, if you are in treatment.
• If you are alone, don’t be. Get people around you. If the feeling is still strong, tell someone.
• Go to an emergence room.
• Call 1-800-suicide (800-784-2433) or 911 or any other crisis line you have been provided with.
• Avoid situations, places, and objects which would be used for suicidal purposes.
• Especially if your thinking goes from contemplating to planning or intending, tell someone.
• Feelings pass usually and so if a professional is helping you and it has worked in the past, do something, anything to take your mind off the inward focus and on to something else. Notice the things outside you more that the feelings inside you.

Now, the above advice is for people in crisis who are not just feeling like dying but also planning and intending to do something that they are able to do, and that will work to end their life. I want to talk about those other times, when there is just the feeling, or what mental health professionals call “passive suicidality.” In other words, you are not going to take any actions prompted by those feelings but still you say inside where no one can hear,”What if I feel like dying?”

• What does this mean about you?
• What does it mean about your life?
• What does it mean about who God is and how he works?

Consider the model for suffering that we have in the Old Testament, Job. Many theologians see Job as offering us an answer to the question, “How should we handle suffering?” There is so much material in the Book of Job about suffering but I want to just point out a few verses and the context. Job is suffering and expressing it graphically, and his friends are not handling it well. Here are a few of the verses where Job describes the intensity of his suffering and what it leads him to think of.

Job 7:13-15

New International Version (NIV)

- source unknown

1. I believed the sun would rise tomorrow.
2. I tried to control my tongue.
3. I hugged my wife when I came home from work.
4. I tried to love God.
5. I cared about other people’s problems.
6. I sang along in church.
7. I closed my eyes in prayer.
8. I held it together.
9. I kept going.
10. I spent time with my kids.

I regret that I spent time with my kids.

The issue I have with spending time with my kids has to do with the word “time” when what it should be is “life.”

There is an old saying that time is money, but life comes much closer to being money than time does. When we accept employment somewhere we are agreeing to give away slices or chunks of our life.

No matter how old or young, healthy or sick, each of us is in the process of spending out our life.

Our life will be all poured out someday. We cannot hoard it, though we act as though we can.

Much of the anxiety and depression that I see in my clinical work has an element of wrestling with the issue of pouring out our life.  When we deny that something is happening, when we try not to be where we are, when we hold back on today flowing into tomorrow, when we can’t accept the reality of a trauma or regretful action in the past… we are trying, futility, not to allow our life to be poured out.

I remember when I was in elementary school in a small town in the central valley of California, selling tickets for a pancake breakfast, or trying to sell them. Before I began, I could imagine all the houses I would go to and all the tickets I would sell. But once I actually went up to that first house, they might say no and there would be one less house that could buy a ticket. I hesitated to start. I was trying to stop something from pouring out, trying not to spend something that had to be spent. I was trying to hold something back from happening, wanting it to go the right way, I suppose.

That particular holding back had something to do with my idealism. It may be something else with you. But life will pour out. We cannot stop it. We can only cause ourselves and those around us more pain by denying the process and trying to spend it in a miserly way.

I want to think that, sometimes, in my best days, I am not spending time with my kids but that I am pouring out my life for them and with them, spending my life on them. I think of holding a flask of priceless liquid and pouring it out lavishly on my children, soaking them in it until it pools around them. It is not mine to keep. Sadly there are times when I am only or mainly thinking of spending time, not my life.

I regret I spent time with my kids.

I don’t want to regret continuing on blindly with this plan to post my top 10 regrets. So, I’ve decided to skip #9.

(Although, as the perspicacious among you have noticed, I haven’t really skipped it, since I wrote this.)

1. I believed the sun would rise tomorrow.
2. I tried to control my tongue.
3. I hugged my wife when I came home from work.
4. I tried to love God.
5. I cared about other people’s problems.
6. I sang along in church.
7. I closed my eyes in prayer.
8. I held it together.
9. I kept going.
10. I spent time with my kids.

I regret that I held it together.

Consider these words from the wisdom of Solomon, especially the phrases in bold.

There is a time for everything,

and a season for every activity under the heavens:

a time to be born and a time to die,

a time to plant and a time to uproot,

a time to kill and a time to heal,

a time to tear down and a time to build,

a time to weep and a time to laugh,

a time to mourn and a time to dance,

a time to scatter stones and a time to gather them,

a time to embrace and a time to refrain from embracing,

a time to search and a time to give up,

a time to keep and a time to throw away, 

a time to tear and a time to mend,

a time to be silent and a time to speak,

a time to love and a time to hate,

a time for war and a time for peace.

 

When you picture someone “holding it together” do you picture someone weeping? someone laughing? someone mourning? someone dancing?

Think about an admonition like this:

“Hold it together, boy. Stop weeping!”

Now replace “weeping” with laughing, mourning, or dancing. Now we have four behaviors we may refer to as losing it.

DANCING A person dancing is certainly not holding it together. The dancer is in fact letting something out, not quite so under control that they stand motionless. They allow their body to express emotions, usually positive ones, but not always. When did you dance last spontaneously? When did I?

WEEPING I don’t know about you, but I don’t have everything under control when I’m weeping. I’m pretty sure that I even make some sounds I don’t usually make. I can’t see very well and probably shouldn’t be driving or working with heavy machinery. I am taking a break from holding it together when I am weeping. When was the last time you really wept? When did I?

LAUGHING There are many different kinds of laughs, I think Mary Poppins and friends say it best.

When was the last time you really had a good laugh? When did I?

MOURNING Mourning may be a a little harder for us to see as not holding it together. We picture adults standing solemnly, and silently by a casket, wiping the occasional tear. I said tear, not tears. But, it was not uncommon for people in the past and in other cultures today to rip their clothes, put a covering on their face, dump dirt on their heads, roll themselves in the dust or sit in a heap of ashes, wailing loudly. Most of us would not consider that holding it together. We might even go so far as calling it “losing it.”

Often when psychologists meet with a patient for the first time, they document if the person’s emotions are blunted, constricted. In other words, does this patient hold it together a little more that they should. There are times and situations in life where holding it together is exactly the wrong thing to do.

According to Solomon, a wiser man that I, there is a time to lose it.

There have been times in my life when losing it in one of these four ways would have been the right thing to do, but I didn’t.

I regret that I held it together.

How here, where grace allowed, for a season,
the loved to endure unthinkable treason
by our twisted motive, and our broken reason,
could we sire bedlam from what has been made
so earth’s seams now are torn and edges are frayed?

How here, where ancestral seed, in the garden
of Eden, was granted undeserved pardon,
could we lust for darkness, allowing to harden
our hearts to hideous acts and to crave
things of the night, and the pit, and the grave?

How now, among history’s pages of greed
and corruption and vice and every misdeed
from malfeasance to terror, from squander to need,
could we not, though shrouded in gathering pall,
as one, ache for final Redemption of all?

Reblogged from Writing Sisters:

Image via Wikipedia

“Imagine yourself as a living house. God comes in to rebuild that house. At first, perhaps, you can understand what He is doing. He is getting the drains right and stopping the leaks in the roof and so on; you knew that those jobs needed doing and so you are not surprised. But presently He starts knocking the house about in a way that hurts abominably and does not seem to make any sense.

Read more… 72 more words

Hadn't remembered this from Lewis but of course, as with most of his writing, it is just the thing to say.

Of course we can’t even ask this question unless we admit something:

Humans are capable of being deeply loved and, all the while, not feel it or even believe it.

I have not doubt that that statement is true and yet I have never put it in words and looked at in on a page until a few years ago. But, it’s so important to know because it makes us aware of one of the most tragic mistakes that humans can make – walking around, going through life as if they are not loved when in reality they are, and deeply so, by their creator, and often in addition, one or two people on the planet. How sad a story that makes. It’s like the old story of the woman who dies destitute, penniless, cold, and alone, not knowing that she is an heiress to a million-dollar pile of cash in the bank a few blocks from the alley where she dies.

I’m aware that some reading this are starting to bristle because they do not value very highly the seeking after certain feelings. You are not sure we should try to feel a certain emotion. You may even think of it as somehow not compatible with spiritual maturity. Certain Eastern Mystical traditions also tell us not to seek certain feelings. The next section is for you, though I doubt it is enough to persuade the strongly entrenched. But here goes…

My Brief Argument for Seeking to Feel Something

What does the Bible say about feelings? Consider Romans 1:12. In the King James Version of the Bible, the phrase is translated, ” that I may be comforted together with you”. The author, St. Paul, wanted that. His goal was for both he and the recipients of his letter to feel something – comfort. Comfort is certainly a feeling. Later in Romans 12 we are asked to be cheerful and to give encouragement to others. As far as I know it is not possible for someone to go from discouraged to encouraged without a feeling changing. We are asked to try to make that happen in other people. I will admit there are better and worse ways to try to change our emotions, even wrong dangerous ways. There are wrong ways to breathe, something I learned in voice lessons, but that’s not going to convince me that I shouldn’t breathe. If someone has convinced you not to seek to feel a certain way, please don’t tell them there is a wrong way to breathe. I’d hate to consider the advice that might lead them to give you.

So, if everyone is on board now with the idea that it is OK to want to feel loved…

How could we not feel loved, when we are loved, and how do we fix this?

The answer to this question is often a central part of the work we do in counseling. Sometimes it’s complicated and takes a while. All I can do here is give a lightly printed outline of some important parts to the answer. Some of these I may be able to unpack a little more in another post. Especially the “How do we fix it?” is so involved that I can only hint at it here.

Other feelings have overshadowed love. Anger in particular can be such a strong emotion that it overshadows other emotions. A very angry person simply does not have the attention to spend on noticing a feeling of being loved. It’s all being spent on anger. Fear also is powerful enough to overshadow the feeling of being loved. It’s hard to feel loved when we don’t feel safe.

We are numb. Our ability to be aware of our emotions – to feel them – can be damaged in a number of ways. Here are a couple of ways.

1. There are specific brain injuries that lead to an experience explained to me as “I open up the valve of feeling and nothing comes out. I know I should be feeling something but I just don’t.”
2. Numbing of our emotions can be part of a trauma reaction. We have experienced a trauma that overwhelmed us, maybe even a long time ago and haven’t fully recovered. It’s as if our brain has decided we’ve had more than enough feelings to last us a while, painful feelings, so our brain turns our” feeling volume knob” way down to where we can’t even hear it. It seems to our brain that it’s in our best interest. And it probably is for a while, during and after a trauma, but the volume just never gets turned up again.

Our belief system is filtering it out. Again I will mention a few ways this happens.

1. Depression is a strong filter and influences our interpretations of things around us. If we interpret events around us as proof that we are not loved, the feeling gets filtered out. How could a loved person have to experience X, Y, or Z? Right?
2. Through our life experiences or the influence of strategic people in our lives, or out of a sense of guilt, we see ourselves as damaged. We feel so damaged without the possibility of repair, that we are unlovable. Any feeling we may get about being loved must be a mistake. That’s our conclusion and our feeling. We filter out, or discount as mistaken, any feeling of being loved.

If you think any of these reasons mentioned above apply to you, you are not strange or weird, or crazy. You make sense and there are plenty of others like you. And many of them have found a way past it. God has guided them out in various ways. Sometimes you can work on this on your own, sometimes with the help of those close to you, sometimes with the help of a mental health professional.

But the truth is you are deeply loved.

I started to spout off some in reply to a reader’s comment and thought they might deserve a post of their own. (Thanks, Amy!)  I have to admit that as I wrote these, I became aware of changes I need to make in my own prayer life.

I will be trying these. Are you willing to try along with me?

1. Look at your child sleeping in bed as you pray for that child.
2. Look your spouse in the eyes as you pray for them.
3. Look at yourself in the mirror as you pray a prayer for God’s blessing or as you offer yourself to God.
4. Look at the person sick in the hospital bed as you pray for God’s healing.
5. Look at the people walking, sitting, standing, or begging, the poorest people in your city or town, as you pray a prayer of thanksgiving or a commitment to self-sacrifice and service.
6. Look around your office, or whatever space you work in, as you pray to be used by God in your workplace.
7. Look at the words of scripture as you pray to absorb the message God has for you.
8. Look at a pile of money, or a pile of bills, as you ask God to help you handle your finances better.
9. Look at a gravestone in a cemetery as you pray for God to make the most of your life.
10. Look at the place your enemies live or work as you pray for them and for grace to forgive them.

As always, please leave a comment on how these 10 suggestions worked out for you. I really want to know. Or tell us other ways that you have found to open your eyes in prayer.

Please don’t underestimate the importance of your comments to me and the help they are in my writing. And if you have found these helpful, share them with a friend.

1. I believed the sun would rise tomorrow.
2. I tried to control my tongue.
3. I hugged my wife when I came home from work.
4. I tried to love God.
5. I cared about other people’s problems.
6. I sang along in church.
7. I closed my eyes in prayer.
8. I held it together.
9. I kept going.
10. I spent time with my kids.

I regret that I closed my eyes in prayer.

If you’ve read my regret #6 you will find this regret to be similar but different enough that I thought I should count them separately.

Any of us who grew up in a home where prayers were said were told we should close our eyes when we pray. I suspect the real reason was to help us at that young age manage the competing stimuli better so we could may attention to the prayer. Then, like many things we learned when we were young, we just kept it up. It just seemed like the right thing.

Just a simple google search finds examples of prayer in the Bible where eyes were definitely not closed. Here are a some.

In the story handed down to us from what is believed to be the earliest of the four Gospels, The Gospel of Mark, Jesus heals a man who could not hear or speak. At the moment when Jesus commands his ears to be open, He is said to look up to heavens.

In a prayer for mercy and protection, (Psalm 123), the prayer is “Lord, I look up to you, up to heaven, where you rule.”

Someday I’d like to search out a few more examples and please, if you know of more examples, let us know in your comments.

At the very least, I think we can say that there are some times when it is OK to open our eyes in prayer. I have to confess that these verses and others like them were not what got me to get in the habit of opening my eyes more often during prayer in church, and other situations. Of course there’s the open-eyed prayer that we might do in the restaurant out of self-consciousness, not wanting to seek admiration (or scorn) from being seen praying. And then there is the server who doesn’t seem to know the basic manners of prayer and jumps right in talking to a group of people who all have their heads bowed in prayer…

But opening my eyes more has a couple of reasons other than the ones mentioned. I want to feel a part of a community of worshipers, to know myself to be a part of the body of Christ coming to Him in prayer. It helps me to see others around me. The other reason is that I realize that the one leading us in prayer is speaking for me and I want to know what this person is really saying, including all the non-verbal information.  The leader is communicating things I want to say “Amen” to. I want to be as fully involved and in-tune with the leader’s communication as possible.

I regret it took me this long to feel like it was OK to open my eyes in prayer.

I bet some of you have other examples and other reasons why you have found it helpful to open your eyes in prayer. What about walking outdoors looking around and praising God for the beauty and creativity around us?

Please tell us about those by leaving a comment.

1. I believed the sun would rise tomorrow.
2. I tried to control my tongue.
3. I hugged my wife when I came home from work.
4. I tried to love God.
5. I cared about other people’s problems.
6. I sang along in church.
7. I closed my eyes in prayer.
8. I held it together.
9. I kept going.
10. I spent time with my kids.

Regret #6: I sang along in church.

This may be a very simple observation that you all have made before so forgive me if I have been slow to catch on.

I was a voice major in college and have always enjoyed singing in church, choirs, etc.. So, I always sang along in church. I liked to do it. And also felt like it would be rude or give the wrong impression to not sing along. I’ve been up on stage before leading singing and know that seeing people just standing there (or sitting) and not singing did not do anything good for the overall level of energy in the room.

But then there came a time in my life, a few years ago, after a significant loss when I was grieving and didn’t feel like I could sing. It just didn’t feel right and I don’t know if I was physically able to sing along – there was something that drained the energy out of me at just the thought of it. There was no song in me.

So I didn’t sing.

What I did do was something I had never done before – it never crossed my mind as acceptable behavior. As the people gathered around me, young and old, sang together, I alternated between looking around at others singing and closing my eyes to just listen. I was allowing myself soak in the community of worship I was in the midst of. I allowed the church, the body of Christ, to worship for me and feel myself being carried along by the community. It was almost like being baptized into the worship experience. I felt thankful for the expression of faith and commitment, the worship, that was being expressed all around me while I could just bathe in it. There was something about it that I may not be able to explain well. I think the closest I can come is to say that something lifted me and carried me at a time when I needed to be lifted and carried.

I wished that I had allowed myself this experience years before. If you have not allowed yourself this experience I encourage you to try it.

I regret that I sang along in church.

I know I have 5 more regrets to cover but I thought maybe it would be a good time to throw in some variety. I came across a blog lately that I think some of you might like. I haven’t been reading it for long but it looks worth checking out.

It seems that  Loxlia is acquainted with pain and working hard to be acquainted with grace in the real world.

Take a look.

Here is how Loxlia introduces herself:

 I am a mess. A beautiful, simple mess. I cling to Grace. Each day I discover more of my immeasurable need of Him.

 I want more. More of my Heart. More of who I was designed to be. I want to Love with His love. I want to pour it out.

Here’s an except from a post.

when your knight won’t fight

You can click here to read more. Oh, I should tell you that it’s one of those web pages that starts playing music when you load it. So, if that kinda bugs you. (It does me even though I have to admit it is a good choice of music.) Just turn down your sound before you click over to read the blog.

1. I believed the sun would rise tomorrow.
2. I tried to control my tongue.
3. I hugged my wife when I came home from work.
4. I tried to love God.
5. I cared about other people’s problems.
6. I sang along in church.
7. I closed my eyes in prayer.
8. I held it together.
9. I kept going.
10. I spent time with my kids.

Regret number 5 is …I cared about other people’s problems.

People have problems. That’s almost as certain as death and taxes.

Cars break down. Babies cry. And people have problems.

Almost all of us would like to think of ourselves as caring people who would, when possible care about another person’s problem. We tend to think of many problems as things that come and go, at least the ones we would like to deal with. We talk about how many people may have a particular problem. We say, “I knew someone who had the same problem you’re having and here’s what he did…” We may even pray for a person’s problem.

I would really rather be in the habit of caring about people’s lives.

Oh, how lofty and grand! He wants us to care about people’s lives. As if we don’t now?! Be more loving… blah, blah, blah…  Okay… I can skip the rest of this post.

If that, or something similar just ran through your mind, or your mouth, I hope that you will hang on for a minute longer.

Think about a life. Everybody living has one. E V E R Y B O D Y. Everybody is moving through one or to the end of one, just realizing they have one. Everybody sees the world through the vantage point of their life. The individual is the ONLY person who has been there for it ALL. They know their life like no one else can.

One of the things we want… I put this in the category of basic needs… is to have someone be a witness to our life. We want there to be someone who knows it, not as well as we do, but still is looking at it with us… to see it together.

(I have to say at this point that I also believe there are some individuals for whom that would be one of the most anxiety provoking thing they can think of. They tell themselves the thing they want most is to be left alone… to be unknown. They think that is what they want. There is more to say about these individuals but it will have to wait for another day.)

To be a person who cares about another person’s life is to be a person willing to have their own life changed. That’s how powerful the dynamic of caring about a life is. We can care about people’s problems and come away with our lives mostly unchanged… our course still secure and on schedule.

To care about another person’s life leads us to drop our shields, maybe without even knowing it, which of course makes us vulnerable. I wish I could say that the vulnerability is only a psychological phase and then we are safe again. But, the truth is that really caring about another person’s life can hurt you. I don’t believe it can hurt your life, in the sense of damaging it, and making it worth less or mean less. But there can be pain that will change your life, its course and its… size and shape and texture. Those are the closest words I can find.

This is not for the faint of heart, this true caring about a life. But fortunately God only gives us enough of the path ahead to keep going, but not enough to scare us too much.

If you are committed to keeping your life as unchanged as possible, go ahead and care about people’s problems. But, avoid at all cost, actually caring about their life enough to become a witness to it.

I regret that I cared about other people’s problems instead of being brave enough to care about their life.

1. I believed the sun would rise tomorrow.
2. I tried to control my tongue.
3. I hugged my wife when I came home from work.
4. I tried to love God.
5. I cared about other people’s problems.
6. I sang along in church.
7. I closed my eyes in prayer.
8. I held it together.
9. I kept going.
10. I spent time with my kids.

Number four is… I regret I tried to love God.

What ever could be wrong with that?

The love between God and His child is a unique type of love. It is the love that we know is characteristic of God Himself. It is an attribute of God. It is God giving Himself to us. We do not bring it to the relationship. We do not manufacture it or grow it or develop it in the relationship. We participate in it and partake of it.

Think about the sun and the moon… and light.

The moon does not try to light up the sun. The moon participates in the light of the sun. The moon does not grow it or develop it. And yet the moon provides light in the night sky, not by trying, but by receiving the sun’s light and reflecting.

If I am trying to love God, I misunderstand the difference between the sun and the moon. What I can do is turn my face toward Him and allow him to love me. I can come to know His love and experience his love and reflect it back.

Have I allowed myself to be loved by God, believing that He will never love me any more or less than He does right now? Believing that He is the one that generates the love that I reflect back to Him (and to the rest of the night sky).

Have I really opened myself up that widely to Him? Really faced Him? Reflected back His love?

I want to constantly turn my face toward His love for me, knowing He brings love to the table… not me.

I regret that I tried to love God.

as many years as they have been
as close as any dearest kin
as like in ways as twin to twin
They still loved from a distance.

but both held hope with every spin
of earth’s great clock, day out, day in
that they could over ages win
The calendar’s resistance.

yet time itself upheld the fate
that kept them coming always late
kept them on any mutual date
From standing face to face

though now for years they’ve never met
they vowed as one to always let
the common joy that children get
Feel as their lost embrace

1. I believed the sun would rise tomorrow.
2. I tried to control my tongue.
3. I hugged my wife when I came home from work.
4. I tried to love God.
5. I cared about other people’s problems.
6. I sang along in church.
7. I closed my eyes in prayer.
8. I held it together.
9. I kept going.
10. I spent time with my kids.

I want to talk about regret #3, hugging my wife when I came home from work.

It is one of my responsibilities, right, to hug her when I get home? That and taking out the trash pretty much rounds out my job description as a husband, right?

The kid’s can all see it. “There goes dad hugging mom again.”  I’m “modeling” a loving husband for them. Perfect.

Not quite.

I do actually think it is a good thing to hug my wife sometimes when I get home. What I mean here is doing it without thinking or really being there mentally and emotionally for her. I regret the times it has been like that.

I want to love my wife and see my wife and hear my wife when I come home from work. Those are all things that my children can’t really see as easily as a hug. The modeling starts to get a little complicated now.

There are days and moments for all of us when the last thing we want is for someone to restrain us with a hug! At moments like that I guarantee the person being hugged will not feel more loved after the hug. At that other times during the day when a hug would be just what she needs, do I have it to give then, not on schedule? That’s where the seeing and listening come in.

What is it that my spouse is doing, was doing, will be doing, wants to be doing?

What is it that she felt today, is feeling now, wants to feel right now?

What is she saying, wants to be saying, is afraid of saying?

What does she need to be hearing, hope to be hearing, (usually hearing) from you?

You guys reading this now are saying “Dude, you just gave me another part-time job! This is over the top! When I come home I want to be off the clock! I told her in our wedding that I loved her. Can’t I just tell her if I ever change my mind? She knows I love her.“

I want to say back, “Hey, I might be digging my own grave here too! She reads this stuff you know!”

I regret that I just  hugged my wife when I came home from work. (And there probably were days she did too!)

1. I believed the sun would rise tomorrow.
2. I tried to control my tongue.
3. I hugged my wife when I came home from work.
4. I tried to love God.
5. I cared about other people’s problems.
6. I sang along in church.
7. I closed my eyes in prayer.
8. I held it together.
9. I kept going.
10. I spent time with my kids.

My second regret is that I tried to control my tongue.

Why would I regret that I tried to control my tongue? I’ve posted quite a bit on this blog regarding controlling the tongue, as I made a case for better communication, especially in couples.

See, for example:

The Freshwater Challenge from James,

I can’t talk to my husband!

 I can’t talk to my wife!

Just learn to talk to each other? Really?

But, yes, I regret trying to control my tongue. Here’s why…

But, the tongue speaks the things that overflow from the heart.

I regret trying to control my tongue in place of trying to control my heart, passions, and desires. Controlling these other things takes a little more work and a little more time than controlling the tongue. OK, actually it takes a lot more work and a lot more time, but I don’t want to scare you off from something that is so worthwhile.  It takes some inner searching and honesty about motivations, dreams, and attachments. I hesitate to tackle that.

It’s one thing to realize I have said a word that is… unattractive? But it is another thing to find twisted and broken things deep inside me, ugly things, maybe at times, evil things. In the Psalms, David opened himself up to this kind of searching and asked for God’s help to go through the rubbish with him. David was not asking for help controlling his tongue.

So, my car is belching out black smoke from the tail pipe. I go to my mechanic to “control” it. I can’t be driving around with black smoke billowing out of my exhaust pipe! What would people think? My mechanic finds a cork just the right size and jams it into the end of my exhaust system. The outlet has been sealed, controlled, but we all know my car is no better off, and probably worse, in a way that my limited auto mechanics knowledge cannot explain. (But for a VERY short time I will look better going down the road.)

That mechanical shortcut would be like me only getting a better and better filter for my mouth, evoking observations like “I’ve never heard an unkind word out of his mouth!” It does give me a perceived advantage when I get to condemn the ill-chosen words of others, which is a closely related regret of mine that I’m sure the person still remembers.  But never being willing to look at my heart, passions, desires, motivations, dreams, and attachments? That will only help me look good as I go down the road of life and I’m in this to win the right sort of prize.

I don’t want to look better as I go through life. I want to co-create with God a better life. This will require that I examine and better control my heart, passions, desires, motivations, dreams, and attachments.

Search me, God, and know my heart;
test me and know my anxious thoughts.
See if there is any offensive way in me,
and lead me in the way everlasting

I regret that I tried to control my tongue.