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Gentle Reader,
The spammers have found this here blog. I’ve gotten “comments” from entities offering to sell me everything from Canadian geese to…well, we just won’t go there. They aren’t even sneaky about it. Long lines of gibberish interspersed with links to suspicious websites automatically get set to the spam queue and I delete them as often as possible. For awhile I would try to wade through the nonsense to see if legitimate comments were floating around, but I don’t even mess with it anymore. It’s spam.
Junk.
As I wiped out the 111 “comments” in the queue this afternoon, I started thinking about how so much of what I’ve held on to is spam. So many of the words that run on a well-worn track through my mind aren’t worth a single millimeter of space. Not only are they in direct opposition to what God says is true about me, what actual experience says is true about me, they’re just junk. A waste. A distraction. I’ve allowed other people to pour their insecurities, frustrations, fears and plain ol’ meanness into my mind. Into my heart, really.
When you become a wastebasket for other people’s trash, soon the only thing you’re tuned in to is trash. You can’t grasp a compliment. You can’t see anything good. If someone spreads a rumor about you, the rumor must be true. If someone says a certain thing about you, that thing must be true. If someone decrees that you are ____________, then ___________ must be true.
It’s time I learned to distinguish the difference between someone who genuinely cares about me pointing out something that I need to work on and someone tearing into me because they can. I’m nobody’s dumping ground. I’m not the source of all the problems in other people’s lives. I’m not responsible for anyone’s happiness, success or relational satisfaction. I can’t make choices for anyone other than myself.
It’s time to see spam for what it is.
And delete it.
This post also appeared on the Far East Broadcasting Company Gospel Blog on April 7, 2014.