The other night, as I was waiting for the hot water for my tea, I decided that I needed to eat a handful of chocolate chips. Luckily we had a bag, so I grabbed it out of the counter and to my dismay, it was already opened… and was upside down. Chocolate chips flew everywhere.
I didn’t want chocolate chips anymore. I just wanted to kick them under the refrigerator and pretend nothing happened because I just didn’t want to pick them up.
Like when I’m at a store and even though I am SO CAREFUL about looking at the clothes on the racks, sometimes the shirts fall off the hangers. And in that moment it literally takes every single ounce of my being to pick it up and put it back on the hanger.
Or when I’m at Target with a basket full of crap I don’t need and I walk around the store talking myself out of every purchase and so Target is littered with my unwanted items because I just don’t go back to where I found them, instead I leave them randomly tucked away places.
Or how about this one.
I know that in order to keep driving my car I am going to have to put gas in it. But man do I push the limits and wait to get gas until my car practically sighs of relief when the gas cap is twisted off. Because I hate getting gas.
And confrontation.
Let’s all just agree that anybody who wants to confront other people is a psychopathic, mean, angry individual. NOBODY LIKES CONFRONTATION. If someone says they like it, get the heck away from them because they are nut cases. At best some of us are okay with it, but it takes a real sick person to like confrontation (I’m just being overdramatic here).
But it’s all stuff we’ve gotta do. I had to pick up the chocolate chips so they wouldn’t melt into the carpet and cause a huge mess. I pick up the hangers because it becomes a matter of my integrity. I’m still working on the Target thing, but I’ll say that I at least put back any perishable food items. and my car has yet to ever run out of gas.
The confrontation thing is hard and  I think the only way we start to get better at it.. is by doing it. Over and over, when the time is right. We pray that the Holy Spirit gives us the wisdom and discernment to say the right thing to the right person at the right time in the right way with the right motive. and while we’ll probably never like it, it’ll become easier to do.
