I would like to think, being the fine Godly Christian man that I am, tongue
in cheek, that I would always do the right thing and always make the right
decisions when faced with any circumstance that comes my way.  Yet, I have
not always made the right decision and I definitely have not always acted
Christian when faced with certain situations.  We are in the midst of a huge
family mess right now in which accusations have been made that are totally
false.  It would appear that no matter how much explanations were made, the
misunderstanding wants to stay in place.  For example, last night I was
accused of something I not only never thought but never even said.
Unfortunately for me, one thing I hate more than any other, is being accused
falsely and especially of something, as I said, I never even thought, let
alone said.  My reaction?  It wasn't anything remotely Christian in nature;
I can tell you that much for sure and it wasn't pretty.  The experience
Kathy mentioned earlier about something one of her children turned and used
against her?  What she described is small potatoes when compared to what I
am talking about.  I would explain it all to you, that is, the story and all
that has happened, but it would take days to read that email message if I
did write it all down.  Plus, it hasn't happened once but dozens of times.
Regardless, my point stands.  We can talk Christian all we want and tote the
big black Bible to church every Sunday and say Amen in the appropriate
places and sing at the top of our lungs and shake the preacher's hand on the
way out the door but let somebody, your own family for example, accuse you
and use you and then say it is all your fault when you have literally done
absolutely nothing, then let me know how you reacted to what happened.  You
may say you know what's right and you may believe it with all your heart and
you may fully intend to always do what's right but watch one of your own
children accuse and misuse his own mother and then turn around and blame her
for the whole thing, and see how calmly your Christian character comes into
play.  I have been blind for 39 years.  I have lived totally on my own,
without my family's help, for 32 of those 39 years.  I have been accused of
everything, during those years, by family members, and others outside the
family, of being bitter, of feeling sorry for myself, of being too narrow
minded, of being a liar, of being insensitive, of being too sensitive, of
being lazy, of being unchristian, and just about anything else you want to
toss on to the pile.  That was just my family.  I won't even get into people
outside the family and what they have said.  The nature of such
relationships is such that these things create pain and anger and sometimes
fear and a lot of other things.  Being the fine Christians that we are, we
bury these things because Godly people do exactly that.  Or so we are taught
to live.  Unfortunately, repressing and suppressing these things doesn't
help because years later, when another conflict arises, it stirs up those
old memories and flames them right back into life again.  I know because I
have had this happen to me so many times over the years, there is no way to
keep track of them all.  I know one thing for sure; they all hurt.  Have you
ever tried to get somebody to understand something only to discover they not
only did not understand or comprehend but didn't want to in the first place?
I explained something three or four times to someone last night who still
said he didn't get it.  Why?  Because if he said he understood it, he would
have been wrong and he did not want to be wrong.  Christmas is a wonderful
family trigger.  If you don't think the Enemy works overtime during the
Christmas season, you are in for a surprise.  I would love to say something
about this time concerning demonic activities in such things but people
already think I am a devil hunter and find a demon under every rock.  So I
will forego the spiritual darkness behind all such conflicts.  Regardless,
I'm just pointing out that any situation can press a Christian into reacting
and responding in ways they wouldn't normally.  I'm sure glad we serve a God
who cuts us a lot of slack because people don't.

Phil.