Contemplating Life

I have been told repeatedly that I have a gifting with words. I was once even called a “wordsmith”. I have been told that I am an excellent communicator. I think maybe these things are true because God made them true within me, but today…..today was one of those days when I felt like I completely failed with my words. I was trying so hard to communicate something, and I just couldn’t find the way. I was trying to explain to a friend what it means to “see yourself through God’s eyes and not through the eyes of self or of others”. It’s something I’ve been experiencing for only a short time, but it is something that has been phenomenally life changing . And I want everyone I know to experience it if they haven’t. I have lived so much of my life geared in a mindset of self-loathing. I have always been quick to pick up the negative narrations from others about who I am, and I allowed those narrations to own me. I have loathed myself so much that there were moments when I would literally

  I was lying in the dark this morning when I felt like I had another one of those “gentle teachings of the Spirit". I had been awake for a few hours (I am starting to feel the physical fatigue of just not resting enough), but this morning I wasn’t wrestling with God, I was just drifting in thought. I began to think about forgiveness, and in the course of my thoughts something that has been a kernel of thought for a while took full bloom. I hope I can explain it at least somewhat well. Scripture tells us that we are to forgive one another. Forgiveness isn’t a suggestion – it is a must. Ephesians 4:32 – ‘forgive as Christ forgave you’. Colossians 3:13 – the same – ‘as you have been forgiven’. I could list a myriad of scriptures on the ‘must’ of forgiving. I know from experience that when we forgive it graces us with a freedom from the bondage of sin. I have, with God’s help, forgiven some egregious offenses against me, and I have experienced what happens within me when I forgive