Your own mouth condemns you, not mine; your own lips testify against you. – Job 15:6

Today’s Scripture Reading (March 26, 2012): Job 15

Sometimes I practice what I am going to say. I really don`t mean to, it just happens – especially when I am stressed. I don`t know if it is normal (I admit, I think it might be) but I do know that it isn`t healthy. And I have never had a conversation that I had practiced turn out the way that I thought it might. But I have had conversations that went horribly wrong, all because I had practiced my words.

A number of years ago I received some bad news about a colleague. I knew that I was going to have to talk to some of the people that were acquaintances of both of us. And I was nervous about the meeting. I knew that it was not the best idea to rehearse the conversations that were to come, but I involuntarily started to practice my responses to the questions that anticipated would come up at the meeting. I started to rehearse all of the things that I thought might be said. I said the phrases in my mind with the appropriate righteous indignation. How dare they say those kinds of things against my friend? (Okay, I know that at this point no one had said anything, all of the conversations were still just in my mind.)

Later, I met with another friend, and the negative news came up in the conversation. And somehow I found myself spouting the very words that I had placed in the mouths of my critics. I hadn`t even realized when I was rehearsing the conversations that maybe I held some of the same concerns as I thought the critics would. I was condemned by my own words – words that I had unwittingly already rehearsed.

In our unguarded moments, we often speak the words that come from the core of our being – words that reflect a belief that we hold, one that is affecting our behavior, and we don’t even realize it. Most of us become very practiced at building up walls so that we never have to reveal who we really are. These walls protect the things that we would change if we could. But maybe the path to real change is to simply listen to our unguarded voice, and examine the inward beliefs that it conceals.

     

Tomorrow’s Scripture Reading: Job 16