I am writing this post really late tonight. There is a reason for this. A reason bigger than that it was Open Share night at CR and I always come home late and too wound up to go straight to bed. The real reason is I am trying to make myself extra tired for tomorrow. I figure if I can make myself tired enough tomorrow, I will not be able to function properly in the morning when I am scheduled to finish my spiritual inventory so I will not have to do it.
I started it this afternoon. It was perfectly dreadful, which I am sure is an oxymoron. It was awful. I did okay working on the person, the cause and my part columns. I did terrible writing in the effect and the damage columns. Yuck.
I just wrote the columns across a notebook and wrote that way. I have 13 people and three pages started. I had to stop. It was really awful. Who wants to see all the worse parts of their life on paper? Think of all the people you resent and all the people who resent you. Now write down all their names, why they resent you (or vice versa), take responsibility for your part, and eventually make plans to talk to them about it. Putting it that way, I can see why I did not enjoy my afternoon. Yuck.
It was perfectly dreadful. I did all this a year ago. I never talked to everyone on the list. In truth some of them I talked to five years ago. Some of them, it is just not time yet. CR steps allow room for God’s timing for conversations. It is a good thing because else I would be admitting to a whole lot less on paper!
I thought it was interesting that this year’s inventory seems more honest than last year’s. Honestly, last year’s was as honest as I could be last year. It was all I knew. It was where I was at. I was telling the whole truth as I knew it. This year I am doing it again. Telling the whole truth as I know it. The truth of the past 29 years is pretty nasty!
I know we are supposed to be keeping a balanced moral inventory. We are supposed to write down all the good things we have done and that were done to us, too. I have always liked to get the dirty work out of the way first, so I can focus on having fun when I am having fun instead of focusing on the dirty work I have yet to do when I am having fun. But I may have to write down some positive things before I continue this moral inventory. These pages are getting too hard to look at.
Positive things I have done and decisions I have made: I believed in Jesus. I used to occasionally listen to what He told me to do. Now I generally listen to what He is telling me to do because I generally was a pretty miserable person when I was occasionally listening to Him. I have become teachable. Hopefully? I think. Maybe. Am I teachable? I hope I am teachable. I try to be teachable. It’s clearly time for bed.
“Come now, let us settle the matter,” says the LORD. “Though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they are red as crimson, they shall be like wool.” – Isaiah 1:18
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