Reasons and excuses. A bit of loose psychology and a bit of what God says on the subject.

I have been deep in thought a lot lately.

 I have been thinking about the reasons that I, and other people do things. It's actually not as complicated as I first thought. Recently I invited two people to a drama performance that my daughter is in. I thought that as these people are family members, of course they would want to come. Over time, every excuse that these people could use to get out of coming, came out.

This leads me to an interesting place. A difficult place, but definitely one of interest. If these people genuinely wanted to come, then I imagine that wild horses wouldn't stop them but as this is not the case it has led me to believe that they simply don't want to come. Now I think it would've been better to have just said that in the first place rather than have us believe that they actually wanted to be there.

Why don't people say what they mean and mean what they say? If one of them had said at the outset, "actually thanks for the invite but I don't really want to", ok I might've been slightly taken aback but it would've made things clearer, rather than 3 weeks down the line, coming up with every excuse under the sun and then us coming up with possible solutions for them, that actually, they don't want anyway.

I do get so tired with dithering about with people who are not clear about their intentions. Initially the invitation was like this; " Daughter's in drama performance, would you like to come?" It could've been stopped at the beginning with something like "That's kind that you invited me, but no thanks, I don't think I will." I wouldn't have asked for justification, I would've just said, "Ok, would you like me to invite you to future ones or would you rather I just didn't ask." The trouble is with these particular people, one is quite forthright and the other "hides", the second person usually says yes and then obviously wishes that they hadn't, but if they could just find the word no and use it in a non-aggressive way it would be fine and then they wouldn't need to find, not reasons, but excuses, weeks later.

Of course, this is also a case that I have to take responsibility also. I have to do a bit of careful self-examination and ask myself, "How many times have I taken on things, tasks and attended functions that I really wasn't happy about?" The answer to that is lots of times. I have often taken on commitments that I wasn't really happy to commit to, and it has left me feeling resentful and angry at myself. Angry because I felt that I was unable to say no at the time and ended up kicking myself later because it was more than I was happy to give. It also left me feeling unrighteously angry at the person who asked me because I wished they hadn't. I could've said no, of course I could but I now know that I was scared of what people might think of me and if they might think that I didn't like them enough to put myself out or if I was purely selfish.

God says that he loves a "Cheerful Giver", so for me the bottom line is this, from here-on-in, if I am happy to give something, time energy, finance etc then I will give it gladly, but if there is an uneasy, restless feeling in me somewhere, I will go back to God and talk to Him before I make any decisions that could be potentially harmful to me or others. I am a work in progress and am glad of that.

++Thank you Lord Jesus that you always communicate to me in a way that I can understand, thank you for putting people in place, who help me unravel my tangled mess and put it into an order that is more useful. Thank you that I am growing as a person and please help me to be less fearful of man and to remember that "No weapon formed against me will prosper".

Amen xx