I got an interesting e-mail from one of my best friends today. She says that there is this lady at her work who is struggling financially. This woman is recently single, as her husband left her, and finds herself spiraling towards debt.

The e-mail was asking me for money. My friend wanted to know if I would be willing to help this lady out by buying her a gift card.

Now, let me tell you: this was one of the best e-mails I have ever received.

I was overwhelmed by this e-mail, it really brought tears to my eyes that there are people out there who really do care for their neighbors and who are being Jesus to people every day. It actually even surprised me at first, that there were actually people out there who are active in their pursuit of good things. Lately I have been grappling with my frustration over the state of passivity that the Church has been in. I hope that my generation can be one that will change this - a generation that will move from this comfortable passive Christianity to a real and active and passionate Christianity rooted in loving God through loving people.

Right now, this friend is probably the biggest inspiration I have in my life. She is so strong, and kind and persistent. God is going to do amazing things with her life, and I am so glad that I know her and am thankful for the positive influence that her friendship is. She gives me hope for people; for the Church. She gives me hope for myself. God has transformed her life in unbelievable ways over the past 4 years, and I am still amazed at how different she has become.

Friends like that are a gift; the really good ones are pretty rare, so I'd encourage you to give them a call if you haven't spoken to them in a while, or even if you have, and let them know how thankful you are to have them in your life. I am so thankful for the friends that I have in my life, and I don't tell them that enough.

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it's all relative

I am so jealous of your life,

of the way it is captured on film;

the smiles and hugs and kisses.

The way the sun looks in the morning or the candlelight off your skin.

I am so jealous of your life and the way it makes you smile.

Even when I know that sometimes you’re hurting.

Even though you’ve had your share of heartbreaks,

you somehow keep trusting.

I am so jealous of your life and how I see myself in it.

How so easily I could have been you,

the happy, crazy, beautiful smiling one.

How somehow, along the way I let life get to me when I could have been happy.

I am so jealous of your life and all the love that is has given you.

How you have something to wake up to every morning and a kind word to be spoken.

How he looks at you when you smile

and how he holds you when you’re broken.

I am so jealous of your life, or at least of the way it seems.

But then again, I guess some people are jealous of mine;

though they don’t really see a thing.

So maybe I’m not so jealous of your life, but just the way it’s captured on film;

of the smiles and hugs and the kisses;

and yet the tears that aren’t revealed.

I look at this poem and I think about what makes one life different from another. What causes one to be happy and one to live under a dark heavy weight? Things in life just happen to us. Who knows why, really only God does. Often it is frustrating and heartbreaking. We can’t believe that God would ever let that happen to us. How could he do that to me? How could he let them leave me....

But somewhere down the road we have to realize that we aren’t responsible for what other people do, and really, we can’t hold God accountable for it either, as much as we can blame him for letting us make a stupid decision. In the end, we all know that it was our decisions that lead us to where we are. I think that happiness is circumstantial. It depends about what’s happened, what’s happening, and what’s going to happen. But as soon as something bad comes along to mess that up, we fall into this pit of despair. But joy, joy is a choice we can make, we just have to choose it, and choose it often.

I have spent a lot of my life wondering why God let certain things happen to me. I spent a lot of time being angry and depressed and living life in despair. I knew despair in his broad outline, and oftentimes I wish that despair and I hadn’t been so close. And so, as a result, I was really jealous of people that seemed happy; of people that seemed to be able to open up and make friends easily; of people that could connect with others on a real level. I have never been that person; I have always been guarded, hiding behind social formalities or sarcasm. Only in special cases have a gotten really personal with anyone; there are still things about me that not a soul on this earth knows.

This is kind of ironic right now, considering that I have a blog on which I tell the general public a lot of personal things. But it’s almost safer this way. I don’t really bear any repercussions here. My blog is not highly frequented, I don’t have avid readers, to be honest, and I write more for myself that for anyone else. But yeah, getting back from that tangent... I’m a pretty private person concerning the real nitty-gritty stuff. I think a big reason for this is because I am afraid of being judged, as if somehow my situation will be twisted and turned on me. I think I have seen myself as some sort of victim of life; a passive victim and never an active participant. But I guess I’ve faced that fear, because now I know that I’m not just a passive victim of my experiences.

It’s taken me a long time to realize that God doesn’t make the mistakes – I do, and other people do too. It’s a lesson I am still learning, I still go through situations where I’m like, “really, God, you couldn’t’ have stopped that?” But I guess it’s part of this whole humility thing I’m going through: learning to hold yourself accountable for your mistakes, but also realizing that you can’t hate yourself for the decisions you make. Really, hating yourself is even more unproductive and destructive than hating someone who has hurt you – it just gets everybody nowhere, doing nothing.

So what’s the alternative? Well, I’m guessing it would be joy. But how do we become joyful? Knowing God is a start. After that, I’m not really sure. But through building my relationship with God I have definitely become less sad and angry. My spouts of despair don’t last as long. I make myself get over things faster. It’s had a toll on some of my friendships. I’ve had to let go of people that I cared about because the relationship was too painful or one sided. But in the end it’s helped me learn a lot about myself. And honestly, when you surround yourself with the truth of a loving God, and with faithful friends, you feel a lot better about yourself too.

In reality, I do have people whose lives I look at and feel a bit jealous of them. But I know the power of my God, and I know that in relation to where I was three years ago, I have a bigger sense of joy and peace about life and about myself than I used to. So, for that I am really thankful. Besides, it’s all relative, right?

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You saved my soul,
Put a smile on my face, gave me a home.
It’s all so cliché, don’t you know?
The words we say when we’re not alone.

I’m losing control,
Letting all my inhibitions fly out the window.
What I’m doing, I don’t really know,
But I gave you my heart and I gave you my soul.

For the first time,
I trusted Your word and I gave you mine.
By Your grace, I’ll get by,
More loved that I used to; so much more alive

Oh, you saved my soul
With You in my heart I’ll never grow old.
Fell in love with my Saviour and Lord,
Gave Him my heart and I gave Him my soul.

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humility pt. 2 (shine on, you crazy diamond)

It’s crazy how in love I am right now. What’s crazier is that there is not a single human man involved.

Crazy! I know!

Now before you get all worried that I think I'm living in another dimensions and have somehow fallen in love with an extra terrestrial creature, let me explain myself.

This year I asked that God might fill my heart with His love. I didn’t over analyze, I didn’t make a vow, I didn’t even try that hard. I just asked that God would fill me, and then trusted that He would fulfil what He promised when He said that I may, “Ask anything in Jesus name and it will be given to you.” And He has.

A good friend of mine said that trusting is the greatest form of worship, and I think that I am beginning to believe her. Trust is that foundation of every good relationship. Without it, relationships will crumble under the stresses of jealousy, dishonesty, and deception. But trust, trust makes all things easy. The initial problem is that trust in itself is no easy task, especially when you’ve been burned before. But one thing we have to realize is that God is everything He says He is. He isn’t this cocky leader on a power trip demanding that you hand your life over to Him. He knows what He’s doing, we’re the ones who make the mistakes and screw things up, not Him.

And so, to continue with my theme of late by talking about humility, I will once again connect the issue of trust to the issue of pride. Personally, I have found that trust involves a lot of humility. It forces us to come to terms with the fact that, no, we don’t deserve anything that God is offering to us. But that yes, He gives it anyways. Why is this? Because He can, and because He is better than us. If we try to evaluate God by our human standards, we will find it hard to believe that anything He has said could possibly be true. It isn’t logical, it isn’t rational, and it sure isn’t fair. But God is gracious, and part of trusting God and His grace is realizing that God is not your “nothing you do is ever good enough” father, and He’s not your backstabbing ex-best friend or your cheating ex-partner. He is God, and He is 100%, completely, unequivocally, totally benevolent. So let go of that pride, the pride that is keeping your from embracing the facts. Get over your notions of unworthiness. Who are you to say that God could never love you? Who are you to say that you are not worth every ounce of forgiveness that He pours out on your life? Who are you to say that God’s love is not big enough to cover your multitude of sins?

Who are you?

Get over yourself. Seriously. Because He loves you, He loves you more than you can ask or imagine or hope to ever be loved again. So let go of that pride that is masking itself as self-loathing and accept that you really aren’t good enough, but that God loves you anyways. Because let me guarantee that once you do, you will experience the love of a lifetime. A love that makes you want to change, to turn from the life you were living and run in the other direction. A love that will heal you, slowly over time, and enable you to be full and complete – just the way you were meant to be.

You are nothing without God; just another grain on a beach full of sand. But with God you are a diamond; dug out of the ruff, cut to the perfect shape and size, buffed and set and made to sparkle with the sparkle of a millions stars. So let go of your pride and become who you are. Be the diamond that reflects Gods light and makes the world stand back in awe of the work of its Creator. Embrace humility, throw away your inhibitions and trust God, because He loves you, and that is enough.

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There is this girl that I’m not the biggest fan of. The reasons are not important. Let’s just say, we have very different outlooks on life and on how people should be treated. But I was thinking today, what would I think if I found out that she liked the same websites that I did? If she has the same favorite band or liked to read the same books or, for goodness sake, wrote poetry? This girl could like all of the same things that I do. She could love to write and have upwards of nine thousand songs on her iTunes and love perusing random photography websites. The things that I consider to have contributed largely to the person that I am today could have influenced her as well. What would I do if she happened to be just like... me?

Would I stop liking the things that I like? Would I consider them to be vile now that I had found out someone like her liked them? Would I change myself so that I was not like her in any way? Well, of course not, that’s just juvenile. If we all went around forsaking the things that our enemies liked, we would end up with no hobbies and live pretty boring lives.

Now, I can imagine some of you are wondering how a girl that blogs mostly about loving others and being peaceful could have such an enemy as this girl. Well, it’s a long story, and like I said, the reasons are not important. What’s important is that I am working on it. I don’t even know this girl really. I have never had more than a 5 minute conversation with her, have never laughed with her, or made the effort to be her friend. But somewhere between being able to put a name to her face, I have come to loathe her. But I’m working on it. She is my ‘neighbor’ and I am supposed to love her. And so, sometimes I try and imagine what I would do if I ever saw her again, and I try and make myself imagine that I would smile and continue on my way, wishing neither good nor ill. Right now, I’m working on indifference, I guess we’ll get to the loving part later.


But through this experience, I have come to this conclusion: we have a lot more in common with our enemies than we think. But this isn’t something that should make us cringe or want to disown our likes and dislikes. Instead, it should aid us in realizing that our enemies really shouldn’t be enemies. Yes, they probably did something that is worthy of hatred. Maybe they slept with your boyfriend or lied about you to your best friend or are cheating on your roommate. But what we need to realize is that though this vile thing they did is definitely hateable; they, as a person, should not be. I mean come on, how productive is hating someone? It makes you not want to enter social situations when you know that your enemy/frenemy/whatshisname is going to be there. It makes you walk around thinking about all the nasty looks that you are going to give them if by some happenstance you bump into them. Trust me, I have been there, done those things, and really, it’s all just so toxic. We spend a lot of valuable time hating people, scheming up ways to get back at them, gossiping about them, but to what end? When it’s all said and done you are still you, they are still them, and you still hate each other. Maybe, if you’re really skilled, you have gotten some of your friends to hate this person as well, but I’m guessing that most of the people who hear you talk about that person end up respecting you less, not him/her. Girls, this is especially important for us because guys do not like girls who gossip. Let me repeat that. Guys do not like girls who gossip. Gossip creates drama and growing up with three brothers has taught me that most guys do not appreciate drama; in fact, it’s a pretty big turnoff for most of them.

So if you are the type to make New Year’s Resolutions, resolve to hate people less. I’ll even give you a practical skill: use some basic psychological conditioning and over the next few weeks, every time you start to think about that person you hate, eat some chocolate and think about the person you love most instead. I guarantee it will add some joy to your life, and possibly to your taste buds. I hope that we all can agree that a commitment to loving each other is a good thing and that by eliminating hatred, we will free up time and room for the better things in life.

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