I love my brothers

My brothers have been an incredible resource of friendship and life-lessons learned. One great lesson I’ve learned from my awesome brothers are, no matter how tough they appear to be, no matter how cool they seem, they usually struggle with the same issues as myself, and even struggle more with some things that I may have better control over. (And that goes the other way as well - they rock at things where I stink at). It doesn’t matter how long they’ve been disciples… It doesn’t matter their skin color or the tax bracket that they are in… We all seem to struggle with anger, purity, and insecurities (GASP!!!)

"Male pride" is an incredible thing. It’s like. This self-perpetuating organism that keeps feeding the lie that lives within each of us. From "not asking for directions" to (forget "we don’t share our feelings" but) "we don’t hug". I find it interesting that, to remain as "men," we must have our walls up, where it's not to keep people out, but keep our problems & insecurities in.

Now, don’t get me wrong - I am definitely not saying that we need to be this "crying, spew-venting where it would make 80’s goth kids look like the kids in a Sesame Street episode". I don’t see much of a point to this - I thin that this is the polar opposite with this "tough guy" persona that I’ve described. While I’m for being real, I don’t think that this "cry out endlessly" session is effective because there is no direction out from the negative. Yes, there is hurt. And there may even be regret. But just as we are not meant to ignore it within our walls and fake our appearance to the ones around us, we are also not meant to stay in this negative. They’re basically the same thing, it’s just that the "tough guy" approach makes this acceptable.

There was something I had learned when I was in my 30’s:

And I’d like to think that that’s how God sees men.

Pride is a thing that God despises. How can we truly worship God\call ourselves "disciples" when we we literally "lie" to others, if not ourselves? We hurt, we become afraid, we all have issues… So learn to accept this and find out what it is each of us must do to overcome these obstacles while drawing ourselves closer to God.

In the end, you are responsible for your actions & life, and each of us will have to explain all of this to our Father at the endow our walk in life. And if we remember that we are imperfect & constantly sinful, then I can say that we will never get things right. But as disciples, we need to keep investigate our failure, and see what we can do to produce better outcomes. Ignorance, or throwing these moments into a closet, never to speak of them again, will not work!

Brothers, we’re all busted. But that’s how God wants us. It’s with our broken pieces that God can rebuild us into the man He sees us to be.