On Praise

Growing up I might have had one too many let downs to handle on my own- and I certainly did not go try and get any help- I was a kid, I didn't know what was going on. I started to expect the worse after I had a few bad experiences "early in the game", so to speak. I have not really escaped that one. There are still some chickens in the coop (if you know what I mean). But anyways, I did not trust very easily (like a beaten dog, I suppose) and once I stopped trusting myself, it got much worse. There was really no need to convince me of the total depravity of Man. In fact, I wouldn't hear anything else. By the time I was ten, I knew that life was mean, nasty, and brutish. By the time I was twelve, I was already reading, drinking coffee everyday, writing poetry, and brooding constantly. If you had put me in a black turtleneck sweater and given me a pipe- you would have believed I was an old man with some sort of genetic disease that made me look young. You did not have to diagnose the problem when you were presenting me with the Gospel- I already knew I was dead if I was left to my own devices- and I knew the rest of you were too.
It was hard to grasp anything. I searched in books for things you cannot find in books. I forsook children my own age and sought out instead my elders to converse with. I was lost in pain. Really, I was quite a disturbing child- not that it was readily apparent for all to see- but I am just letting you know. So when I say that I found it ackward to be praised or complimented I hope that you will perhaps have a better understanding of why. Now this is the thing. I still do not usually take compliments well. If you are lucky, I will just shrug it off as a joke and insignificant. If you are not so lucky, I will distrust you, thinking that you probably want something that I would not approve of. Yes it is possible (as absurd as it sounds) to compliment me and then watch those words turn sour in my insides. It is possible to be kind and have me take it as meanness. What is the point of all this? you may wonder. The point is this: "Every good gift, and every perfect gift comes from up above from the father of heavenly lights with whom there is no shadow of turning." (James 1)
I do not write here to vent and gain some sort of cathartic healing. I no longer am under the illusion that my problems are, were, or will be unique in the world. I do not just write for myself. The Lord is the giver of good gifts. This is not important only for me. At some point, if you truly have faith in Jesus Christ and believe that His word is true in what it says about Him, you will have to be affected in your mind. I cannot go on forever in this life always thinking that gifts are a trick or a test. And neither can anyone reading this. Now I have been recently surprised when I was complimented and praised in what normally I would have considered an extravigant manner. But the Lord is God; the Lord is one. I was surprised because I believed the person. I will not say the praise did not make me nervous- but for the first time in a long time, I believed someone who had something nice to say. This is the work of God. I did not think the person was lying, or looking for something, or that their praise did not matter. I may have tried to dismiss it with my mouth- but in my heart I was actually stunned with my acceptance of it and of the implications that that had. How perfectly this ties into the first chapter of James. How important it is that God does not change. He can be trusted- and a wound from someone you trust is worth a lot more than gold from an enemy. But God is no enemy of mine- and what then is it to have a good gift from Him? It is life.