Disgusted that I'm disgusted

Whether you've grown up around church or not, it seems everyone knows that part of the Bible where Jesus says, "And why worry about a speck in your friend’s eye when you have a log in your own? How can you think of saying to your friend, 'Let me help you get rid of that speck in your eye,’ when you can’t see past the log in your own eye?" (Matt 7:3-5) It's the issue of hypocrisy.

It's an overused word - hypocrisy - and to me, it's nearly lost all meaning because of that. But I like the definition on Dictionary.com: "a pretense of having a desirable attitude" but, the implication is, not actually having said attitude. Let's just bring this down to my real life right now. Lay it on the table. I used to think I had a decent degree of self-discipline. Now that God has challenged me to step up and I'm actually growing into the practice in various areas, I realize I had way more of a pretense of having it than actual self-discipline itself. In fact, I'm not sure I exercised any at all on a regular basis. Not cool.

But I am experiencing some serious side-effects of the great Surgeon doing a little extraction in my eye. Somehow, once you get that log extracted, it is very easy to recognize that same log in someone else's eye! And not only recognize it, but also feel a little grossed out by their log, even though you had that log like YESTERDAY. I'm disgusted at that person's log, and then I'm disgusted that I'm disgusted because that is so ridiculous! Pride is a sneaky little fox, ready to swipe all my humility from having been on that operating table to begin with.

I'm not proud of this, but like I said, I'm laying it on the table. If you have kids, I know you can relate. I've experienced the same side-effect in parenting. Let's say I can't stand a certain tendency in myself. I know my weakness, and I hate it. Suddenly, I have a three year old doing the exact same thing. You'd think my reaction would be ever so gracious, seeing how I should be able to put myself in her shoes and patiently teach her the way to deal with this. Right? No, it's maddeningly the opposite! I am all the more disgusted at the miniature version, because I am now extra mad that my ugly weakness is bubbling up within my precious child.

Ugh. Where am I going with this? I don't know. Just venting my frustration with myself right now, I guess. And living one day at a time. Thankfully, God's mercies are new every morning. I hope they arrive by 6 a.m.