Red Pen

As an editor, sometimes I think editing really messes with my perspective. I'm so accustomed to looking over a text and merely reading to catch the mistakes that I feel this mentality can sometimes cross over to my everyday life. Automatically I look for what's wrong and what can be fixed instead of enjoying the good, the well-written parts [if you will] of my life. Even worse, I take my red pen and go into an editing frenzy on other people's lives. Scratch that. Rewrite this. Delete, delete, delete. I'm absolutely brutal.

It's a dangerous path to tread. It's the difference, I believe, between hurt and hope. If we choose to tango with discontentment, we will be disheartened. We will always be looking for what can be altered and ways to improve our situations; we will never be satisfied. If we rip people to shreds, coloring their worlds with our unforgiving pen marks, we will never be able to truly love them. We'll skip to the end, or skim. We won't pay attention.

We must choose contentment, stilling the anxious "red pen" in our hearts that desires to rewrite the story God has already written for us and for others. The perfect story that requires no editing.

I wrote this a while ago, but was reminded of it today. I wish I was better at this.