Being called a bald-faced liar is not a bad thing if we're not a bald-faced liar. (Or, if we are, we maybe need to hear it and change our ways.) But if we're not, it only becomes a bad thing when we pick it up...when we rise up in righteous indignant resistance to being called a bald-faced liar.
That's when we own it...that very resistance makes that which we are resisting ours. We have just wrapped our arms around the tar baby and kissed it on the lips. We have become the tar baby's tar baby.
That's why its so important to not just agree with spiritual directives, sort of like loving them from afar, but we need to love them unto living them. "We have ceased fighting anything and anybody" is an excellent example of a spiritual directive that defies our reasoning mind but makes the crooked places straight when we live it.
A short time back, I was, in fact, called a bald-faced liar. By a friend. My ego Lucy immediately thought "I am being called a bald-faced liar by a bald-faced liar...for what is being said about me by her is a bald-faced lie." I am grateful that God slapped his hand over my mouth and that stayed a thought so I only needed to say I disagreed but that she was welcome to her opinion.
Another thought was that it's sad that she never learned "restraint of tongue." I later realized if she had, I would have missed this experience...which is pure gold to me. For the rest of the story is: Our relationship shifted, she apologized, and...the proof of the pudding...we're still friends only closer friends than we had been.
We know God's hand is in it when everybody comes out the winner.
Thank you.
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