“Swallowing your pride seldom leads to indigestion.”~anonymous Pride is quite sneaky and deceptive. It leads us to believe that we can do it all and have it all in our own strength. Pride tells us that we alone are enough. It partners well with stubbornness. Proverbs 16:18 tells us “Pride goes before destruction, and a haughty spirit before a fall.” I like The Message translation of this verse, “First pride, then the crash—the bigger the ego, the harder the fall.” If we want to live our lives completely surrendered to God, then we will have to let go of pride.

let it go – the ~e.e. cummings let it go – the smashed word broken open vow or the oath cracked length wise – let it go it was sworn to go let them go – the truthful liars and the false fair friends and the boths and neithers – you must let them go they were born to go let all go – the big small middling tall bigger really the biggest and all things – let all go dear so comes love

“The comfort zone is the great enemy to creativity; moving beyond it necessitates intuition, which in turn configures new perspectives and conquers fears.” ~Dan Stevens Each of us has that safe, cozy place in our lives we call our “comfort zone.” We already know the routine, we know our role, and we know how to meet the expectations there. It’s easy and we are successful in that place.  Unfortunately, comfort zones are not places where we can grow. There is no challenge, nothing new to learn or experience. If we want to grow, we have got to step out of

Choices. Life is made up of choices. Sometimes we choose wisely and everything works out great. Sometimes we make a choice that results in an undesirable consequence for ourselves and possibly others. Maybe we didn’t anticipate what the consequence would be, or maybe we did, but we didn’t want to face reality. In any case, we often find ourselves filled with regret following a bad decision.  Yes, it is important to take responsibility for our actions. Yes, it is important to learn from our mistakes so that we, hopefully, won’t repeat them. However, regret keeps us from moving on. Regret