Living With Integrity

I have a big problem trusting people lately.  I guess after so many times of having faith in people and believing they will do the right thing, only to get burned in the end by an outcome I never imagined, has ruined me. Gone are the good ole days.  A person's word isn't worth much anymore. It is sad that you pretty much always have to have a binding contract to protect yourself.  What happened to integrity? What happened to doing the right thing? Why is everyone so caught up in personal gain that they don't care to compromise their character to get ahead?  What happened to being honest?  Why are we blind to our on faults, yet cast blame on others?

My son, Knox, sings a little Sunday school song that I sang myself as a child, and I am certain just about every child raised in a southern church did as well, about the wise man and the foolish man. If you don't know the song it basically says, the wise man built his house on the rock, the rains came, the floods came, and his house stood firm. On the other hand the foolish man built his house on the sand, and when the rains and floods came it went PLOP! (that was always my favorite part as a child because we could be loud and clap our hands together to make the PLOP!) Now I have never given much thought to the song, and interpreting what it meant in depth. I always just thought wise people build their houses on The Rock, which is Jesus, and the foolish people choose the sand, which is the Devil. The other night I woke up with this particular song was in my head, and a new more in depth interpretation came to me. If we build our lives around morals, principles, truth, and righteousness, we have a firm foundation that will not fall. We shouldn't compromise any of this for personal gain, you know keep our conscience and character clean.  On the other hand when we build our lives around deceitfulness, corruption, and crooked ways we will fall. We may not fall immediately, but eventually we will fall.

This isn't to say that sticking to your guns, is all sunshine and roses. Doing what's right, isn't always the popular thing or the easiest.  Often times staying true to yourself makes life harder.  I for one would rather have a clear conscience, knowing I stayed true to myself, than come out ahead by compromising my character. Besides that coming out ahead in the initial circumstance, has no meaning if in the end we fall.

At our house we have BIG hearts. We always tend to have faith in people, to have it blow up in our faces.  We do unto others, how we'd like to be treated, only to have them at times treat us poorly.  That hurts, ya know!  You know what else we know?  We are only responsible for how we treat others.  The way they treat us, that's their karma.

"Better is a poor man who walks in his integrity, than a rich man who is crooked in his ways"- Proverbs 28:6

Integrity- Choosing your thoughts, words, and actions based on what's right rather than what's in it for you.

"Act with integrity in all your interactions and you'll be able to maintain poise and self- respect regardless of the outcome."- Peggy Carlaw

"Live so that when your children think of fairness, caring, and integrity, they think of you."

- H. Jackson Brown, Jr.