Reflection

Ten Not-so-nice Truths about me: (this started as FIVE but there are too many)

1. I bite my fingernails.
2. I twist my hair even though my Daddy has been telling me to stop for years.
3. I am very selfish and think of myself first before others.
4. I judge others too harshly and myself not enough. I am very black and white and have little compassion.
   
5. I forget to pray a lot. When I pray, I forget to listen and spend most of the time telling God what I want.
6. I would rather be by myself with a book than with people most of the time.
7. I have zero self-control where chocolate and cookie dough are concerned.
8. I am lazy about keeping in touch with people, even people I care about deeply.
9. I deal daily with depression, take medicine for it (most of the time), and cycle through periods when I think I can "do it myself" without the medicine, even though I know I can't.
10. Every single month I hope we will miraculously get pregnant without needing infertility treatments, and every single month there is a part of me that is disappointed that we haven't.

Ten Nicer Truths About Me: (These were harder to come up with than those above.)

1. I am a good mom. I love Luke and thank God for him every single day, and I try to take nothing for granted.
2. I am still Jason's best friend, and he is still mine.
3. I make really good desserts (homemade peach cobbler, apple crisp, cookies, chocolate butter roll...yum! I am getting hungry now!) and Very Delicious Pizza!
4. I am still a good teacher. (Yes, I did fear I'd lost my touch.) Last week for parent/teacher conferences, I had one mom whose little girl gave her WRITTEN instructions on how to get to my room and informed her that she MUST go meet the art teacher because art is her favorite class!
5. I love my friends with all my heart. I am not always good at corresponding, but I have a best friend from every season of my life and am thankful for each one.
6. I am a good daughter. Even though my parents aren't happy about us living so far away from home, I still live each day with the thought that I want to make them proud. I remember who I am, Daddy.
7. I am creative.
8. I am not too old to be goofy and silly and dance crazy. Hopefully I will never grow out of it.
   
9. I am a good judge of character.*
10. When God looks at me, he doesn't see those ten not-so-nice things (and the hundreds more I did not share). He sees my belief in Him and credits it to me as righteousness. Not because of anything I have done, or because of who I am, or because of what I say or write. But because I believe in Jesus.
    

Galatians 3:5-6 (from The Message) Answer this question: Does the God who lavishly provides you with his own presence, his Holy Spirit, working things in your lives you could never do for yourselves, does he do these things because of your strenuous moral striving or because you trust him to do them in you? Don't these things happen among you just as they happened with Abraham? He believed God, and that act of belief was turned into a life that was right with God.

I am so flawed. So not perfect, no matter how hard I try to appear to be. But I believe God. I believe He loves me, He sent Jesus to redeem me, He continues to forgive me, to teach me, discipline me, and draw me nearer to Him. I pray for a life that is right with God.



*one exception duly noted