Outside

Cause inside you're ugly, you're ugly like me. -Staind

A root of bitterness. A generational stronghold. I perceive it in myself. These are the sins of the fathers (and mothers) and my teeth are set on edge. Have I passed it on to my own children? I pray not.

This outpost of evil attitudes in my heart prompts me to return evil for evil. Coupled with a competitive nature (in itself a temptation to sin), it drives me to claim the last word in an argument.

But this is not who I am in Christ. Strengthened by the Spirit, I assault the works of the enemy and brick-by-brick demolish them.

May I turn my cheek to real slights and more importantly, refuse to project my feelings onto the words of another, turning them into imagined slights.

I have both known and seen the corrosive effects of anger and its afterbirth of bitterness. Soul destroying and life stealing are these twins.

I am blessed with a woman of the sweetest and most forgiving nature. I try both these attributes to the limit. Since I noted these qualities in both her parents, I think that goodness and mercy can be passed from generation to generation as well.

I pray for my girls that goodness and mercy flow from them as well as to them.

And I fight the good fight, falling back bloody some days, victorious on others.

God grant me strength to destroy the ugliness within me and forgive that of others, my own having been forgiven.

Be it so.