In case you haven’t noticed, I’m competitive. I LOVE to win. I like anything that involves keeping score, but try to avoid participation in anything I’m not good at. And if I can find a way to keep score on something to turn it into a game it makes me more motivated.
If you were to go back in time with me to 1979 you’d see me at my first job. Interestingly, I was a secretary at a place called Denver Girls which was similar to Big Sisters and I was the secretary. I was typing case notes at 16! They just weren’t mine.
But if you were to go back in time and open the top door of that desk you would find a small stenographers notebook with the words “Secretarial Olympics” written on the front. In there I kept my stats. How many envelopes could I stuff in 5 minutes? How many labels could I put on in 3? How many letters could be folded in 10 minutes? And I timed and tracked it every time — always working to beat my own record. All at the age of 16. I’ve changed some, but not much since then. :-)
So that may give you a little insight into the way my brain works. So with a brain like that, that tracks everything, I have to work really hard not to keep track of the ways I’ve been wronged.
I think all of us, to some degree, start to build a negative script about a person that we simply add to. We interpret the behavior of others based on that script. We then start to see them as the person we have created them to be in our minds and start to build a case against them.
Love doesn’t do that. Love offers grace. Love assumes the best. Love gives people the benefit of the doubt every time.
When attempting to love the way God wants us to, it’s easy to feel defeated, like we will never get there. But the good news is that as we grow closer to God and allow the Holy Spirit to work in and through us, it’s Him working through us, and we don’t need to depend on our own strength.
This song says it well:
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