P…oison

PRIDE—Week 2.

P…oison

As I created an acronym for what negative P.R.I.D.E could stand for, the first word that came to my head when I thought of the letter P was POISON. I can’t think of a clearer word of what negative pride begins to do in our lives. Pride affects every area of our lives. It affects our thoughts, actions, relationships, how we receive information and how we give information. It will affect what is important to us and how we will spend time trying to achieve whatever that is. When we all allow negative pride to enter into our lives unchecked it begins to spread under the surface of our lives unnoticed, at first, until the poison spreads so far that it finally becomes apparent externally as well.

When I think of poison, I think of a slow killer. It can work fast but normally people don’t seek to take poison to do self-harm. Normally, people who are poisoned or are exposed to poison do not even know it until there are other issues that affect them so they finally seek help from a physician to diagnose their pain. The same is true in our lives. I have never met anyone who purposely desires to be prideful and looks for every way possible to push this poison in their lives so that it will destroy them. However, I have met hundreds if not thousands of people who allowed pride to enter into their lives (many times unbeknownst to them) until it started causing enough pain in their lives that they finally sought help from a counselor, pastor, accountability partner, friend, consultant, life coach, etc. Poison also does not just come into our lives slowly, at least in my experience, it also takes time to get it out of our lives as well. You don’t gain 20 pounds overnight and you can lose them overnight either.

Once the poison of pride is diagnosed and accepted, then the hard work begins of building new boundaries, priorities, and behaviors to embrace change. In my experience, it causes me to go to people I have relationships with and apologize and begin the rebuilding process of trust. One of the areas that is the hardest to change is our thoughts. They are like a tape recorder (Google that if you are under 20) that has continued to re-record message after message, after message, after message. Eventually, even though you can record a positive message over the old negative prideful ones—just like when you record over an old song on a tape recorder—you can hear the old message under the new one. I remember when I was a teenager and we used to make “mixed” music tapes by listening to the radio and recording on a tape player our favorite songs. This took some serious skill! You had to wait patiently listening to the radio all night and have your tape recorder set and ready to push record. Inevitably I would either start it a little early and get the DJ talking or a couple of seconds late and miss the first part of the song. I still have a box of these tapes in my attic for some reason. Most of these tapes have been recorded 6-7 times and as you listen to them, every so often you can hear the music behind the music of other things that I recorded.

That is how our thoughts are! I have old negative thoughts that have been recorded over and over and over and now I am listening to new positive ones, but then… all of a sudden an old thought pops through. My actions have changed. My behaviors have changed. My relationships are good. But my thoughts keep creeping back in no matter what I do. They don’t control me like they used to, but they slow me down and remind me of who I really am. I am prideful and selfish and if given the right circumstances, I can become very negative if things go unchecked in my life.

I hope that is not you, but I would dare to bet pieces of it may be. I am trying to learn to use these thoughts that creep in as a warning light in my life. Like when a warning light comes on in your car, you slow down and pull it in the shop to figure out what is wrong so that you don’t cause more damage. This is what I try to do with my life as well. But if I am really honest, slowing down is not easy for me. At least in a productive way. It is easy for me to sit down and watch hours of mindless TV, but not necessarily slow down to have the conversations I need to have to diagnose where these thoughts are coming from. Therefore the poison of pride will keep spreading until I mix the right things together in my life to form an antidote.