Day 051: June is Known for Many Things What Are You Known For?
In America, June is known as pride month, but that is not all June is known for. Since the overturning of Roe v. Wade, June is also known as Pro Abundant Life Month. It is known as Alzheimer’s Awareness Month for those concerned about loved ones suffering from this horrible disease. Saving the best for last, June is also known as The Sacred Heart of Jesus Month for those who love The Savior. Knowing this, it is hard to imagine why anyone would choose to label such a beautiful month pride over life, healing, and Love.
Pride is one of the seven deadly sins. It is not virtuous. It is not something we should celebrate. It is not something we should promote. Pride is a hungry beast. Once enraptured by it, one never has enough. Pride always seeks to devour more. Pride is the promotion and gratification of self. Pride is wanting to be recognized, not for accomplishments you’ve had, situations you’ve overcome, or in gratitude for gifts God has given you. Pride in America celebrates sin and sexual deviancy and pushes others to celebrate it as well. Sin never wants to party alone. It always wants to drag down others with it.
Sadly, many of those promoting pride have suffered trauma. What’s worse is that much of that trauma occurred during childhood and revolved around the very sexual deviancy victims unwittingly promote.
Others who promote pride may do so because of the confusion of the culture, the family, the church, the education system, or for any number of other reasons. Today it is confusing for girls who like to fish, play football, or do traditionally boy-type things. These girls were once called tomboys. Now they are told they were wrongly created. The same is true of a boy who likes to read, draw, or sing. Confusion ensues, and satan reigns.
Most of those promoting pride simply want to be loved. Human beings are created for beauty, joy, and love. Our souls long for this and so we reach out to grasp what is offered to us. In reflecting the Father’s, creativity, we desire, art, music, and celebration and fall for bright shiny object syndrome. Right now, that bright shiny object is pride.
To Live, Not Ordinary, we must look deeper. June is a beautiful month in America, yet we know God never makes inanimate concepts more precious than He makes His own children. Trauma victims are God’s children; they are even more precious than time itself. By embracing the false worship of pride, we accept the world’s labels instead of the beauty of June. It is difficult for those caught up in the movement to see just as it is difficult for trauma survivors to see when they are caught up in a movement.
June is an inanimate concept. It has no direction and no processing capabilities. It merely is, and then it is not until it is again. We are different. We do not merely exist until we do not and then come back again at the same time next year. We get one shot at life. How we aim that shot determines our trajectories and then our eternities. What’s more is that, like June, each of us is given many labels; however unlike June, our labels affect us. They tear us up and put us down or remind us that we are created for love and greatness.
If you’ve been a victim of trauma and have had others label you wrongly the soul God gave you cries out for love, acceptance, and joy. This is even more true if the trauma was caused by someone who should have loved you. There is a temptation to reach for the bright shiny object, but you were not made for quick and easy “fixes” that don’t last.
Instead, choose to Live, Not Ordinary by spending time in silence and prayer. Write down all your labels, all the things you have been called or made to feel. Do this for good and bad labels. When you are done, choose those labels you want to associate with. Then take steps to become the type of person who become that person.
Choose your labels wisely. Choose what is humble and good. Submit yourself to Love and see what happens. It will not be easy, but the gains last into eternity. You fearfully and wonderfully made. Accept no label that attempts to make you less.
Prayer: Dear Jesus, You are the one this month is made for. You are the one who offers us the bright, shiny consistent Love. Forgive our distractions and inability to see this. Help us redefine ourselves with labels You would embrace. O Sacred Heart of Jesus define us. Amen.
God Bless…
Gratitude Journal – June 1, 2023
Thank You Lord for…
- Getting my run in.
- My Guardian Angel saying the second Rosary with me.
- A day without students so I could plan the rest of the year.
- Getting the review packets done!
- C. for taking me out after school.
- For C. waiting patiently while I went out after school.
- For Z. taking C. to workout.
- For Z picking up garbage bags.
- For C. taking in the flag.
- For R sitting close to me on the couch and hugging me and just general sweetness.
- For staying up waaaaaay too late to read again! I so love that kid!!! Lol
- For it being almost the end of the school year!
- For Z taking tomorrow off.