Poor Commas

So I get this daily devotional thing. It's actually pretty good and often eerily relevant to my life. If you wish, you can sign up here.

Today, the author was talking about "Letting Go of Old Identities."
Near the end of his devotional, he suggested the reader write three columns with five items each. I'm not sure how to make a table in Blogger, so I'll just do a listy thing.

• OLD IDENTITY
• Doomed to death.
• Trapped in a downward spiral of loneliness.
• Insignificant/meaningless.
• Powerless.
• Expendable burden.
• NEW IDENTITY
• Destined for life.
• Part of a community.
• Co-heir with Christ.
• Recipient of love.
• Desired.
• What would I believe differently about myself if I believed I really were this new person?
• (This is the first thing I wrote.) That I'm not doomed to fail everything.
• That I have a responsibility to go out and share the good news.
• That I can trust others to share my burdens.
• That I can trust others to see beyond my weaknesses.
• That I am safe regardless of circumstances.

I'm not really sure if I did it right, but I just kinda wung it. ("Wung" is the past non-perfect of "wing.")

I also tried to write the first things that came to mind. I was especially struck when I wrote the two "I can trust others" phrases. I suspect I haven't been trusting people – only hoping someone might offer me some relief or something. I'm pretty sure I have been expecting people to reject me as too much of a mess. Haha, in part, I reject me as too much of a mess – or at least I had been.

I most recently described myself as vaguely undulating between fatalistic and jubilant for the future.

Also, due to a train of thought I don't feel like writing just now, STOP USING THE WORD "utilize"! Using said word, at best, suggests that one is an unreflective writer. More commonly, it suggests that one is a dweeb.

Also, the Oxford comma makes so much more bloody sense.

Poor commas.

I'm off to contact students now.