Wow...I haven't posted since last week. I'm sorry about that. Not gonna lie, it has been a super rough week. So anything I would have posted would have been probably negative and grumpy. Therefore I applied the basic elementary school principle, "if you can't say anything nice don't say anything at all." Hey at least I learned something in elementary school! =) But this morning, and during work, I spent alot of time thinking about friendship and what that looks like. We are created as social human beings. We like/crave/sometimes need relationships. In fact, that relationship aspect of our lives teaches us many many lessons that help us to grow in our relationship with our Lord and Savior. But there were several points in this past week where I wanted to ditch relationships. Live by myself. Become a hermit somewhere. Which is kinda crazy if you think about it because I also feel like my calling in life is to be a missionary, which coincidentally involves maintaining relationships. Thanks God =) So, long story short, I didn't join hermit life this past week no matter how much I wanted to. But I did spend a large amount of time contemplating what being a friend means. Being a friend is a lot like love. It doesn't always feel good. Sometimes you need to make conscience choices to love others, or to be a friend to others (which does involve loving them) even when it doesn't feel very good at all. This is NOT the common concept of friendship. When I looked up the word "friend" in the dictionary, it gave me the following definition:
a person attached to another by feelings of affection or personal regard.
Does this definition reflect that friendship is a choice or a feeling? Feeling. And this is something that I struggle with alot because my natural tendancy is to operate out of feelings, not what is right. I like to feel good, I'm not gonna lie. When I don't feel good, then my life and often the lives of some people around me can be quite miserable. This has been something God has been attacking in me all summer. And from my point of view, I have made some progress. Just not as much as I would have liked. And this is a part of the reason last week was so miserable. I didn't
feel good about a situation, so in turn I decided to live my life miserably and also make the lives of my family miserable as well. And yes, that is my fault. And there were some things that I did last week to fix a situation to make me
feel better, but that decision wasn't necessarily right. So its human nature to want to
feel good; to want to do things based off of feeling; to make things feel better. However, friendship, much like marriage, is not all about one person. It takes two to have a relationship. So this sorta leads into my second point. I like to throw fits. Now I know that probably sounds really childish, and stupid, and immature. But if I'm going to be honest, when something doesn't go the way I want it to go, or look the way I want it to look, or
feel the way I want it to
feel, I get mad. I don't like it one bit. And while I was busy this past week being frustrated because some friendships weren't looking the way I wanted them to look, I totally and completely didn't realize that what I was doing was throwing the 18-year-old version of a temper tantrum. I was mad because my friendships weren't going the way that I wanted them to. But on the train this morning, God showed me something. It went sorta like this...
God: Hey Tay. Youre sorta irritated with those people because they aren't treating you like you want them to treat you right?
Me: Yep. Thats about it.
God: What aren't they doing for you?
Me: Well, just let me tell you. They aren't doing X, they don't care about Y, and Z isn't even on their radar!
God: Oh really. Is that so?
Me: Um yep!
God: Well. Lets think about this. Friendship is two sided right?
Me: Yeah. But God, they aren't even doing their side.
God: Okay. But are you doing yours? Are you doing X, do you care about Y, and is Z on your radar?
Me: Um.....nnoooooo.......but God, you just dont understand!
God: Tay, I do understand. You take care of you being a good friend and don't try to control how they are being a friend.
Me: But...
God: No but's Tay. You are responsible for you.
Ouch. God kinda wacked me upside the head there. It is so much easier for me to focus on what other people aren't doing right than to focus on what I'm not doing right. I can't control other people. At all. Haha if I could, relationships would be waayyyy easier. But then again everyone would be able to control everyone and we might have a battle of controlness on our hands =p But back to the point, I am responsible for me and no one else. I get frustrated when a friend doesn't support me in my decisions. Do I support my friends in their decisions? Not always. I get frustrated when a friend doesn't want to work things out. Do I want to work things out with my friends? Sometimes. I get frustrated when my friends ignore me. Do I ignore them? Occasionally. So apparently, I have more to do with this than I thought. But that was my point for this post. We are responsible for us. When we stand before our Lord and Savior on the day of judgement, we will be responsible for giving an account of ourselves. Ourselves alone. Not Bob over there, or Sally, or George. Us. Me. Alone. Period. And so that is what I'm responsible for. Making sure that my life glorifies God. And it sure doesn't when I am a horrible friend. So I encourage you that when you get frustrated because a friend isn't doing such-n-such, think about whether you do such-n-such for your friends. And if you do, great! That still doesn't give you a reason to judge them because we are all human and we all make mistakes. But if you don't do such-n-such for your friends, focus on that. Focus on what you are in control of rather than what you're not.
PS: So I posted this post BEFORE lunch break today. When I got to lunch break and turned my phone on, I got a text message with the daily Bible verse which was "Be kind and compassionate to one another, forgiving eachother, just as in Christ God forgave you" Ephesians 4:32. Thanks God for Bible-slapping me =)
