Pride & Consequence

Ever since we arrived to Spain it has occurred to me that apparently I have way more pride than I was aware of.  I’m sure God will continue to reveal that to me but He already has so many times.

Every day I fail at language here.  Every. Single. Day. You know why? Because if I don’t get knocked down on a regular basis I can get a big head about me.  I just didn’t know I needed to be knocked down every day.

However, God uses that in beautiful ways.  I talked with our regional director about a year ago and said I felt I had a different personality here in Spain.  I was more timid and shy bc of my lack of language ability.

That changed the other day.  I’m becoming more of my ‘regular self’ in terms of talking with others and being more outgoing.  I talked to a couple of taxistas in Madrid and then I talked to a complete stranger in the middle of the night when I couldn’t sleep and decided to grab a burger since it was the weekend.  I asked him to help explain something from the book of Proverbs to me, can you imagine?!

It’s comforting to see some of the ‘old me’ shine through in terms of personality.  Simultaneously, I don’t want to see the ‘old me’ in terms of pride and other ways. We are being remade on a daily basis, the old has gone the new has come.  Our pastor of our house church here pointed out that those verbs are present continual. As in, the old is being passed away and the new is being made.

So, if we want to become humble like Christ, for some of us that means being humiliated.  Some people can just become humble bc they submit to Christ on a regular basis. Then there are others who need to get knocked down repeatedly to learn their lesson.  And then learn the same lesson again, and again, and again… :) Christ uses that though, doesn’t He?

He never gives up on us even though we have stubborn hearts that continually try to shut Him out until we get to the end of our rope and realize once again that we’re nothing without Him.  Many people wonder how the Israelites kept going away from God in the Old Testament but I’ve always related somewhat too well to them I suppose.

Thankfully, I’ve got a wonderful Christ who loved me enough to die for my sins and reconcile me to God.  May we make much of Him this week during Holy Week and every week. Amen.

Never Say Never

By now, I’ve all but lost track of just how many times I’ve said, “I’ll never…” and then done that exact thing.  There are the more obvious ones like marriage and having kids.  There are also some weird ones that have become apparent recently.

For those of you who may not know, roundabouts are hugely popular here in Spain and in Europe in general.  As a red-blooded American male I never thought I’d come to prefer them to traffic lights.  Can you imagine?  There are a couple reasons that make sense to me; no head on collisions like at traffic lights and you don’t have to wait forever at a red light.  

In the same vein, I never thought I’d drive a stick shift.  Well, I do that regularly now.  Never thought I’d learn how to drive a stick shift, particularly as a 35 year old male  :)

When people used to ask me if there was anywhere I didn’t want to travel to, I’d answer quickly with “South East Asia.  I have no desire to go there.”  Then I end up spending 10 months over the course of 2 years there.

What do I end up doing over there?  Helping out at an entrepreneurship school.  Which leads me to my next example; when I left for college I didn’t know what I wanted to study but I was certain I never wanted to go into business.  For the past several years all I’ve wanted to do is help others start businesses by any means possible.

Most recently is a partial vegan diet we’re doing.  I’m normally a carnivore who loves meat.  However, after watching another food documentary (What the Health?) I’m more and more convinced cutting back on meat intake is a good idea.  So, we’re trying to eat vegan during the weekdays and then on the weekend let up on the gas and have a nice burger or other animal product.  We’ll see if we can keep it up.  So far it’s working great; I’ve lost 24 lbs and am almost never hungry since we’re getting all the proteins, carbs and fats still.  I think anytime a diet is ‘no ____’ it’s more likely to fail.  So, I call this our ‘low meat, low sugar’ diet.  Hopefully it will be more of a lifestyle change as a direct result.  Last week I wasn’t so hot on the low sugar part of it.

Maybe I’ll even get down to my high school weight and waist.  I remember thinking in high school I never wanted to have a larger waist than length on my jeans.  I was 32 x 32 for a long time.  No mas  :(  But, I did recently have to buy a new pair of jeans bc I lost at least a couple inches.

“Never say never” - there’s a reason that cliche exists, isn’t there?  :)