Willpower Versus a Heart Change

I sat there in my car, with the engine running, for quite some time.  Staring at the phone screen.  There were so many things I wanted to say in response to the mean and underhanded text I had received.  True things.  Things that I had a right to respond with.  Things that would have made the reader on the other end pause perhaps, and realize the stupidity or hypocrisy of what they had sent.

There have been times I have responded that way-and there have been times those stinging, criticizing texts have elicited the response I was looking for.  An apology.  A put-them-in-their-place success.  There have been many more times it just made things worse.  But does it matter if it makes it worse?  I should stick up for myself, right?  I should fight for the justice in every situation, right?  I mean, I'll turn the left cheek eventually but I have some things to say while I rotate my face from one side to the other.

For a long time I thought grace was just something some people were naturally better at practicing than others.  I thought "taking the high road" and "live and let live" were things happy-go-lucky types told the rest of us to do when it was just easy for them, and who were they to tell other people, who weren't built like that, how to respond to buttheads?  Someone has to say it like it is.  Jesus upended tables to make a point for crying out loud.  Sometimes someone has to throw tables around.

I personally have often looked pretty good at administering grace for the simple fact that I absolutely loathe conflict.  Unless it's with those absolutely closest to me (my husband and kids) I would rather lay myself down over broken glass for people to walk over than argue about (or listen to an argument about) who should clean it up.  I'd rather lay myself down over broken glass for other people to walk over than politely ask the person responsible to grab a broom!  You could call me gutless, I suppose.  But it looks like grace from the outside.

But that's ok, right?  Fake it til you make it?  It's got to be better, more righteous, than punching people in the face.  But it didn't feel much better.  On the inside, I'd be boiling.  I'd be wishing they get what they deserve.  I'd get malicious, gossipy, and.......angry.  I thus traveled through many years of life with a smile on my face and burning anger just under the surface.

Thoughts come from the heart.  Words come from the heart.  Sometimes they stay in there, and sometimes they make it farther-like my mind, or eventually my mouth.  Whatever is in the heart reveals itself at some point, one way or another.

 A while ago I started setting my alarm, making coffee, and talking to Jesus .  There's no formula for this time really, but typically I'll say, "Good morning, Lord, thank you so much for this day.  Be Lord of my life today."  Or something along those lines.  And then we chat.  Sometimes I read the whole time, other days I pray the whole time.  Honestly it started because I just needed more time to pray about all of the things that were on my list!  I didn't change anything else.  I didn't make a list of things I wanted to stop doing and then try to white knuckle it through to being a better person.

But lots of things changed in my heart as I kept setting my alarm, making coffee, and talking to Jesus.

A couple weeks ago I ran into one of my friends at the post office.  Our family had, shall we say a "rough" winter, and I had been out from work on sick leave for a month.   She asked me if I'd been using the f word a lot to get through it.  She kind of caught me off guard.  I must have looked confused because she continued saying, "Because you used to cuss up a storm at staffings and it seems like you've really tried to reign back."  First, I was embarrassed because I didn't think my language was that bad (it was).  Second, I hadn't tried to cut back on anything.

In the car on the way home it occurred to me that grace had been the same way.  I hadn't tried to be a more gracious person, or practiced smiling when in my head I wanted to punch everyone in the face.  The truth was I just didn't feel like punching as many people in the face anymore.  The thought hadn't crossed my mind because it wasn't in my heart to begin with.  Very very different thoughts had been crossing my mind.  It seems like more and more when I get the text, or the shove, or the accusation, my first reaction is sympathy.  Kindness.  What happened?  What makes you act out this way?  And even more recently a response like "BRING IT."  As in, "Whoa Nelly, I am going to figure out how to pour so much grace and love and light into your life you're not even gonna know the left cheek from the right cheek!"

Out of the overflow of the heart the mouth speaks.  I suppose we could modernize the truth and say that out of the overflow of the heart the fingers text, or the hand punches people in the face.  Either way, it turns out that spending more time with the Lord changes the heart.  And it's much more enjoyable to use my hand to hold a cup of coffee as I chat with Jesus than it is to clench it in anger as I paste a fake smile on my face.

"In my heart and my soul I give you control, consume me from the inside out Lord.  Let justice and praise become my embrace, to love you from the inside out."