Pride, Betrayal, and Other Sins

Today I am going through a lot, a whole lot. This is the start of a really hard day. Gratefully, with Jesus I have the strength to go through what has been placed in my path to endure and yet I have a lot of feelings about stuff. Matthew recounts to us, in his gospel, Jesus telling us to be shrewd as snakes in this world.

“Look, I am sending you out as sheep among wolves. So, be as shrewd as snakes and harmless as doves.” Matthew 10:16

Are you kidding me??? I have felt like a sheep for so long and I think I didn’t know what the shrewd snake part really meant. A friend of mine told me one time that she asks her children if they want to be sheep when they want to do something “not good for them” because their friends were doing it. She explained that sheep will follow one another off of a cliff because they are trained to follow the leader. I’ve followed a lot of leaders in my life and starting with my parents, but unfortunately, I did not feel prepared to face anyone outside of my home. Because of how bad it was for me in my home, I thought it was just us and everyone else had it all together. The older I get the more I realize how twisted that belief really is, the grass IS NOT greener on the other side!

This week has been hard. I learned some things that will have a high cost value in emotions and friendships that I literally have no control over and can’t change, then I had a valued leader prove his humanness but unfortunately I wasn’t taken much by surprise and then he lied to me about all of the indiscretions and so that made it worse, and then my dear friend whom I love desperately got test results back that weren’t good, it’s been hard. I write today with my mind flipping channels, it’s surfing back and forth to each place like a child’s game of four square with a ball. In the meantime, I am praying for Jesus to calm it all down so that I can prepare for a fantastic vacation with my incredible gift from God, Hubby. We leave Friday for Cancun, our first time to an all inclusive and it’s all adult, we are very excited about it but the enemy has gone to work around us trying to destroy it. I guess things come in 3’s, at least I’ve experienced that a lot, but rarely do I have a vacation planned to rest and recover when my heart is breaking so badly. One of the things I know I have to do is talk about what is going on so that healing can come. I find myself bursting into tears for no real reason in the moment, I know it’s good for me but it can be embarassing in public.

The one I am going to elaborate on today is the betrayal of a valued leader. The verse tells me that I am to be a shrewd as a snake but do no harm so that is what I want to do with this today, I want to always honor God. I was raised around powerful men. I was raised by A powerful man. Narcissism runs close to home for me only I never really called it what it was. Narcissism is seeking money and power at the cost of whomever and whatever because “I” am most important, at least that is my definition. One of the reasons I have never cheated on my husband is because his heart and his interests are important to me. I believe he and I both have had opportunity to look at another person rather than one another, but we chose and that’s where we stay. I was in sales and my looks and personality didn’t hurt me in that career and he’s a doctor who I think is handsome and that turns heads. That being said, Hubby has always had my eye, my attention and I believe I have his eye and attention. Because he has my eye, he has been good to me and he is really good to me! That doesn’t even really matter to a narcissist, their kids don’t matter and their spouse doesn’t matter. There is a lot of pride in that. That being said I know I am prideful at times and I seek what I want over another but for a narcissist, they are above the wake of destruction they create and they never seem to look back. In the case of my childhood family, that is what happened, happens, and could always happen only God knows. Only time will tell in the case of my valued leader…

To the shrewd part, I believe that God protects us from the wolves while he is teaching us to recognize it sooner. I know that I learned a lot from this person in my life and I don’t regret that. The choices he has made and the ones he will make going forward will show me the character of God or the character of the world, we will know them by the fruit, right? The wake of destruction that the pride of this man has caused isn’t fully known yet but it is large, the waves are floating out to sea and into the future of his family and many others as we speak. My loss? Gratefully God shielded our family from getting too close, though that hurt at the time God handed us grace in it. Hubby is struggling in his own way with this loss and pain, but I see God’s hand of protection there all over it. From this experience we have learned to guard our hearts (Prov 4:23) better. For our prayer warriors, will you please be in prayer over our hearts, home, household, health, children, and future leadership? We appreciate it more than you know.