Good Morning Girls!  I woke up with a terrible taste in my mouth this morning.  I'm sure it was something I ate last night.  Does that ever happen to you?  You eat ranch dressing, or something garlicky before bed and in the morning you can hardly stand it?  You brush your teeth over and over again, trying to get the taste out.  As you have probably experienced, you can't get the taste out.  You can cover it up a bit, but you cannot get rid of it.  The reason you cannot get rid of the taste (or even the smell sometimes), is because the taste is not coming from your mouth.  It is coming from deep within your digestive system.  It is coming out of your belly.  The only thing you can do is drink a lot of water and wait as your body processes and flushes the source of the stink out. 
So what did I eat late last night that has left me with this stink?  That would be an argument with Tom sandwich followed by ruminating cake covered in a decadent anger frosting.  Yes, that was my midnight snack......and it has left me with a most unpleasant after taste!  Now, I don't often use the word ruminating, so after I typed it, I decided to look it up in Websters to see what it meant exactly.  I really only remember the word from an old psych class in college.  Here's what Web has to say: ruminate- 1. to turn a matter over and over in the mind 2. to chew cud.  To chew cud?!  Okay Girls, just yesterday I told you all to spit out anything that is not of value.....now here I am chewing on words of bitterness and frustration.  I am chewing cud.  Do you know what chews cud?  Cows chew cud!  So picture me, a white and black heifer lying in my bed chewing cud made out of anger, frustration, and a little bit of self pity!  It's quite the visual.
 Let me paint the picture a little more....I just looked up the word cud.  It means food regurgitated from the first stomach to the mouth to be chewed again.  You know how sometimes out of nowhere you throw up a tiny bit in your mouth and you are caught off guard and you quickly swallow and then turn to whoever is next to you and they are looking at you strange because they can tell something weird just happened to you.....and you say to them "I just threw up a little bit in my mouth", and they say "oh, I hate it when that happens!".  And then you continue with whatever it was you were doing?  Oh please dear Lord may you all know what I am talking about or else I feel like a total loser right now.....okay, on faith I am believing you have all experienced or at least witnessed this strange phenomenon.  Well, in the case of the cud chewers, they throw up in their mouths so they can chew on the food some more!  Seriously, how disgusting is that!
So lets review this picture.....I am lying in bed, a spotted black and white heifer, in green flannel pajamas, throwing up the words that were said and received along with all the reasons he is a jerk, and I am not, and I chew on them a bit more, swallow them again, and then throw them up again so I may chew on them over and over again!  Now I share this disgusting image with you all so that next time you are tempted to do the same, you will remind yourself you are not a heifer.....you do not like chewing on vomit.....and out of your belly flows the Living Water of the Holy Spirit......not anger and resentment!
It's funny how last night as I was chewing my cud I completely forgot that just 12 hours earlier I had written about the importance of what we chew on.......Not funny as in ha-ha, but funny as in  "this stinks, now I have to go rinse with some humble mouthwash and try to get rid of the pride that is lingering in my mouth".  Oh, but in some ways it takes so good........but like carrot cake with cream cheese frosting, it too will betray me in the end! 

John 4:14 " But those who drink the water I give will never be thirsty again.  It becomes a fresh, bubbling spring within them, giving them eternal life"......(and no bad morning breath)

Love you all-
Jen