Morning Reflections

This morning I took time out for QT and for some personal reflection. And I started asking myself what sort of person I am, and how consistent am I with what I believe. So I started looking to my values, and to what I always profess. Then I look at my actions, my lifestyle, and I start comparing it with what I had professed.

It wasn’t a good report card…

There really are some out there whom I believe to live a life of integrity, who don’t go out of the way to hide what they really are like, so that their thoughts, their words and their life all correspond accordingly. Bernice and Henry come to mind. So does Weixiu. And Anthony. All the rest of us tends to be pretty good with our façades, only letting in on the very best parts of our lives to others.

I always said before that one thing I hate the most is to have been lied to, and to have been cheated. If there’s one thing I find it very hard to forgive in a friend, it is to find out that they have been dishonest with me. By the same measure, friends who have showed themselves to have misrepresented themselves to me for their own benefit likewise causes me to lose a lot of my regard for them, and I find myself unable to look at them in the same light again. I’ve had occasions where long after I knew what was going on, some friends of mine kept denying the situation until it was impossible to deny it any longer. They then apologized, they tried to make it up… but on my part I had already let go of the friendship. We still talk, but I guess I no longer bother much with them anymore.

Next to that, I guess the one thing I really appreciate the best in friends is integrity. People who always can tell me how they feel. Even if their opinions are the direct contrast of mine, I value it for the sentiment of candor and openness that it conveys. It also reflects a person who isn’t out to please, but is able to be genuine and real to me, for who he/she really is. Some of the best moments of my friendships with people I got close to over the years have been built upon the basis of differing values.

Josh MacDowell once said that we all need to be careful of the things we abhor, because it is invariably because we see it in ourselves. We likewise usually value the things that we hope to cultivate in ourselves. And so I guess therein lies the clue to myself, and the kind of person I’ve been.

I’ve been a people-pleaser all my life. Never one to stamp my own opinion except pugnaciously, I’ve always been quick to give deference to what those around me actually think, and to suppress my own thoughts. It makes me to be a very easy-going friend, thus perpetuating the myth that I’m a person who readily makes friends. But such a way of relating to people tires me out. And perhaps what started out as courtesy on first acquaintance soon turns into insincerity and hypocrisy on subsequent associations.

So that’s something for me to work on myself for this year. It might be a little late for New Year resolutions, but I guess there’s no point making any back then, and no point in not making any now. Hehz…

Then I looked at the values I profess. I talk abt loving God... but He hardly ever gets a mention here. I talk abt how much I value my family, but I always let what I want take priority over my family member’s consideration. I talk abt honesty and openness amongst friends yet their common complaint of me is that I’m almost impossible to get to know cos I always close up. I talk abt serving in church yet until now the fact is I still don’t think I’m serving in a ministry where my primary gifting is in, but I’m too lazy to explore the alternatives.

I don’t know if anyone else out there suffers from these same sentiments or struggles as I do. I just know that this probably goes a long way to explaining why I always feel so lousy, so tired, and why I hate myself so much at times.

Honestly, I think I’ve tried.

What’s left now?

Try harder?