Something that God has been working on me a lot lately is my pride. I've never thought of myself as good-looking so that's never been a problem. But growing up I was always the leader of the pack. I could run the fastest and farthest, I was the strongest, the best fighter. In virtually every competition or fight I came out the victor. This caused two things; one: I became very prideful. two: I began to wrap my identity up with my physical ability to beat people in competitions. I was already very competitive to begin with, but that was nothing compared to what it became. I got to the point that I refused to lose. If I was in a game and it looked like my opponent was beginning to get an advantage on me I would become more and more serious, more and more angry. My entire focus would center on crushing not just beating my opponent. When I was really young my dad and I would sometimes play Age of Empires together. I would become so frustrated by my inability to beat him that I would actually burst into angry tears. This attitude carried into my late grade school years when I started playing baseball on a little league team. I think that the first time I used cuss words was on that team. After that year I decided that I didn't want to do any team sports anymore because I could see how I lashed out at others when I was losing. Of course that didn't solve my pride problem. It just made it not as noticeable. It also started to shift focus. Instead of being mainly all about my physical abilities, it started to be more about my mental abilities. I began to look down on people who were slower then I was or couldn't see a solution to something that was obvious to me. I've always been a good writer and even this started to become a pride outlet. Because I was always writing stories I was always making stories up in my head. These stories started to center on me as the hero (after all, the rest of life centered on me, didn't it?). If I had just watched LOTR I would fantasize that I was in medieval times. If I had just read a Star Wars book I would fantasize that I was a bounty hunter. I was always the daring, yet tragic, hero who slew hundreds of orcs, aliens, etc. (and yes, I always got the girl. what can I say? I'm a guy.) Anywho...when I became a follower of Jesus I started to get convicted of my pride. I realized that God had given me my abilities and talents and that he was the one who should receive glory from the use of them. Not me. It hasn't been easy to let my pride go (and I still haven't succeeded completely) but by the grace of God I am making progress. Some of that progress involved apologizing to people that I had been completely arrogant to. It's definitely not an easy journey but so far it has been rewarding.