Throwing Stones

There was a group of us. Perhaps five or six if memory serves me correct.  Pre-teen girls on the verge of an adolescent jungle.  It was my twelfth birthday and we sat, semi circled in my basement.  Sleeping bags stretched up to our chins.  Awake on excitement and pick-a-pop drinks.  Our first birthday sleepover.

The night brimmed with group giggles and excitement.  Movies, pizza, and the long night ahead to whisper our unspoken dreams to one another.  But in between the innocence and experience lingered within me a one-up-man-ship.  Not knowing where it came from, or what to do with it, I tried to hide an ugly side that I knew was not conducive to pink ribbons and painted toe nails; I pretended it didn’t exist.

I’m not sure whose idea it was to start the game.  Pride and self righteousness shield me from the possibility that it could have been me.  The details are fuzzy, but the content clear; share one thing you don’t like about the person sitting next to you. It was dressed up, in pre-adolescent girl fashion to be paradoxically, an aide; words that will separate wheat from chaff so fruit can bear in our friend.  But, we all knew it wasn’t about that. It was about tearing down, not building up.  A way to take our ugliness and have it transformed and mantled on a pedestal above our neighbor. Somehow in the knocking down, we imagined we were beautified.  A lot of broken hearts left the next day.

This image replayed itself in varying forms throughout our teenage years; this throwing of stones at our neighbor.  Hallway drama, backdoor gossip, hurtful exchanges, subtle glances.  All in an attempt to make ourselves somehow bigger, somehow better, somehow more important.

As adults the stones continue to be thrown in neighborhoods, in nations, and in families.  We knock each other down all in an attempt to glorify ourselves.  We continue to pretend that the ugly side just doesn’t exist. We dress it up.  We masquerade in love and well wishes. We fight for good causes.  We stand for human rights.  We show compassion.  But, if we are honest with ourselves and the states of our hearts and thoughts, we find a side that we don’t know what to do with.  We ignore it.  We cover it.  We deny it.  But, then we find our neighbors window broken and the rocks falling loosely from our hands.

With age, and broken windows myself, I am able a little more, to acknowledge my ugly side. My humanness wants badly to reconcile and improve this weakness myself.  But, regardless of how hard I try, I strike out in vain attempts to get it together.  I’m accepting a little more, that I alone, can’t get it together.  That I am in need of something, somebody , to save me from myself.  My tendency is to want to remain in my glass fortress above others.  My ugly side; it's a relief to give it to Him and somehow my messes are made more beautiful.  And I still screw up, fall short, fall down, and need forgiveness, but I don't need to hide this anymore for I've got someone who can handle it and my stones.  Oh, what a savior.

~I refresh the humble and give new courage to those with repentant hearts~Isaiah 57:15