it's not supposed to make sense...

sometimes life is just hard.
it kicks you around and it makes you mad and you just can't ever seem to fully wrap your head around what is happening and why it had to happen to you. sometimes it seems to happen a lot more often than we'd care to admit.

in the course of my (short) life so far, i have realized that everyday will pose a dilemma...everyday something will happen that makes me stop and wonder "couldn't there be an easier way?"...usually it's something small that won't cause me to lose sleep, but some days you get hit pretty hard.

i've always heard that God won't put you through more than you can handle. i have clung desperately to those words many many times in my life. finally, somewhere down the road i will be able to digest what happened and learn to live with it as something that made me a better person, made me stronger, made me wiser...something like that. but the question is, what am i doing between the time it happens and the time i finally get some answers?....freaking out. stressing out. and letting it consume my life.

as i've grown up, i've come to rely more and more on friends. i am learning to be honest in my feelings, to trust a person completely and to use conversation to grow and not to gossip. in having friends, i have learned how to be a better friend, a better leader, a better counselor and listener, a better comforter and supporter. and most importantly i have learned the beauty of forgiveness. i have learned that friends are only human too and we all screw up sometimes. but it isn't about who wronged the other person more, it is about how quick you are going to be able to reconcile your differences and how quickly you are going to realize that whether or not you like a person, by holding onto those feelings, you are weaving yourself into a bondage that will have a hold on you that will remain and will strengthen until you finally deal with that person.

it is so easy to push yourself away from a person when something goes wrong and to pick out every little thing that annoys you just to prove to yourself that you are justified in your feelings toward them...but you are only roping yourself into a corner that will trap you from any other true friendship.

i say this, because I have done it and i see it in other people everyday. tolerance. the mere "coping" with a person because you have no other choice, and it makes me so sad. as a younglife leader i go into Mason High School on a fairly regular basis. i go there to build relationships with kids who might not have any other true honest forgive them friends, who might never have seen what a godly relationship looks like. i walk through those doors and lay all stereotypes by the wayside, i have to lay all preconceived notions and pet peeves at the door because jesus didn't call me to love who i wanted to, he called me to love unconditionally and without relenting.

sometimes people screw up, people say things that they may regret later, or maybe they don't. people might treat you in a way you would never dream of treating another person. in those moments it is so easy to just write them off, pay them back, or tolerant them because "you're a good person" and you can't be the one with a problem, it's them. i am the kind of person, that if someone doesn't like me, it kills me. i want to know why and i want to change. so to think that i expect that forgiveness from everyone else, and then sometimes someone makes me mad and i can say "that's it"...how lame. really, how lame.

some days. life is hard. some days, people are crappy. some days...you are too. and to say that "i don't care, they can just deal with it. it's just how i am and it doesn't bother me if people don't like me." that's weak. that's selfish.

jesus gave these words:
"Finishing is better than starting. Patience is better than pride." (eccle 7:8)

don't let those bad days hold you prisoner forever. don't be the person that is too cool to forgive. don't forget that you are just as human as the person sitting next you. don't forget that no matter what happens here, we are living for a much better end than that. <3