I know I like to play the “If only …” game. A game I play with the past, present, and future. If only I had done this or that at some particular time or reacted to a situation as I would have reacted to it after plenty of afterthought and analysis. It is much easier to assign various blame-weights to events and circumstances that prevent you from doing what I would have done. To think about all the pain I could have avoided.
Now that I have adequately reflected on something and identified root causes I am all ready to fix that problem; and I will do so next Monday or perhaps the Monday after that. Never put off until tomorrow what you can put off “putting off” until the day after tomorrow.
Surely, this time around I am going to get serious about the spiritual life.
I find it can be such a trap to dwell in my own woundedness. All the lacks I perceive in myself. I feel like an impostor even feeling like I might have impostor syndrome. That I will be caught in all my BS. Both craving attention and scared to death when I get any; knowing it is undeserved. In those moments of self-pity I turn to the “If only …” game to assign those blame-weights to circumstances, events, and persons.
Perhaps, some form of sanity returns when I see the mask reveal for what is keeping me from growing in holiness.
Almost all of those wounds I gripe internally about are self-inflicted. My own friendly-fire. Yet I have some gratitude for those exact same wounds. Suffering can be sanctified and directed towards helping other persons. A heightened awareness of the pains and sufferings of others, to bring me out of myself into the Body of Christ.
Plus I write things like this to poke fun at myself and my overwrought-seriousness at times. If you you learn to laugh at yourself, you will have a lifetime of laughter and plenty of opportunity for it.
