What’s your position on advice? What counts as advice? Do you find yourself peddling your life experience from time to time? Often? Rarely?

I’ve been thinking about this since this past fall. I got home from my trip, brain freshly scrubbed. I wanted everyone to know about my experience. How could I be true to myself and not talk about it?

And then my inner voice shot back, but you should feel that way about Jesus.

I wrestled with that for the next few months.

How could I have a life-changing, religious experience outside of church and outside of what most churches would deem acceptable?

How would that translate into the way I lived my life?

How could I talk about it without it being a sales pitch? And could I talk about the change in me without talking about the catalyst?

That line of thinking has took me to the wisdom scriptures.

The one who has knowledge uses words with restraint, and whoever has understanding is even-tempered. Even fools are thought wise if they keep silent, and discerning if they hold their tongues. Proverbs 17:27-28

I made a determination not to offer advice, even advice dressed up as a personal anecdote, unless I was asked, and even then, to tread  very, very carefully.

What I discovered since then is that it’s really easy to offer advice without even thinking about it. It’s also pretty easy to justify to yourself why you’re offering advice. It comes out as, “Well, when that happened to me, I….” or, “I’ve found blah blah blah works really well…”

Controlling one’s tongue is a lifelong journey for some of us. Reading certain passages in the New Testament can be like when you’re sitting in the pew at church and the pastor is preaching at you, just you, and you want to disappear.

Do not let any unwholesome talk come out of your mouths, but only what is helpful for building others up according to their needs, that it may benefit those who listen. Ephesians 4:29

As I’m growing, I’m starting to realize that the ego can cause us to hold onto some parts of our personality, even the negative parts, as if we can never change. “That’s just who I am, an anxious Martha with a sharp tongue.”

As Jesus and his disciples were on their way, he came to a village where a woman named Martha opened her home to him. She had a sister called Mary, who sat at the Lord’s feet listening to what he said. But Martha was distracted by all the preparations that had to be made. She came to him and asked, “Lord, don’t you care that my sister has left me to do the work by myself? Tell her to help me!”

“Martha, Martha,” the Lord answered, “you are worried and upset about many things, but few things are needed—or indeed only one. Mary has chosen what is better, and it will not be taken away from her.” Luke 10:38-42

Is it just in my DNA? Do I have to be Martha?

I’m discovering I don’t.

God is cultivating a Mary spirit in me, a little at a time. My default is still Martha. I can be critical and sharp-tongued, anxious and overwhelmed by “all the preparations.” But there are more and more moments of calm and circumspection.

Are there any parts of your disposition you’ve accepted as unchanging, essential to who you are? Is it possible they aren’t essential at all? Who would you be without them?

The photo is from one of our waterfall days in Tobago.