​19. Feasting on My Own Heart

If I am not with Him, I am against Him.

I think I’m having a hard time, however, determining who is really with Him.

Myself included.

I’ve always been a bit more cynical than your average bear. Even my husband didn’t see me cry until roughly five years ago, give or take. I’ve always prided myself on my mental acumen, a stony facade built stone by stone until my cuticles wore raw.

I’ll smile at you all day long until the cows come home.

But I don’t necessarily mean it.

This is my sin. One of many. This is what I put beneath microscope to study and learn. This is the point where I sharpen my scalpel to put it out of its (and my) misery.

I pray for an authentic kind of kindness all the time. It rather flabbergasts me how many people mention how nice I am. All those acting classes my parents paid for have really paid off, apparently. But I’ve been digging and sorting through the real and unreal. It’s not the cynicism that God has an issue with. A little side eye never hurts keeping His kingdom pure. Shrewd as serpents and whatnot.

I know what the real concern is: the way I take pleasure in feasting on my own heart.

The joy in tasting its bitterness.

May God release me of my own delusions. May I take down a stone or two to peer into the inside.

May I clutch that scalpel and remove the source of my bitter cynicism and hand it over to the One who created it.