forgiveness is a funny thing

so i have this friend beka. and i need to forgive her. for doing something i shouldn’t know she did. but i kinda stopped being friends with her. i want to actually want to do it though. like, i feel like i need to love her. but where. how. why. how. do you protect yourself from people who might hurt you again? wheres the real and the true friendship if theres no trust. is there any way to love beka not as her friend?

do the saints and martyrs have a heart/soul that is open for attack? that is broken and wounded? did they ever learn? or did they learn not to feel it? or did they learn that somehow it would be better to be broken and wounded for the possibility of the betterment of the wound-er.

this whole love your enemy thing doesn’t make as much sense as i would like. i mean, you can’t get much more enemy-like than a betrayal. then you start thinking of famous betrayals (not that this ranks quite as high as slaughtering the only begotten son of God, but part of me wants to say “but still!”)

then theres the whole “what would (did) jesus do?” what does jesus do. what does jesus do for me.

its like i know that the only way for me to forgive her is through Jesus. and the only way for it not to hurt is to be so close to jesus that his opinion of me IS what defines me. the only problem with that is that its so easy to say the words. and its even kinda easy to live it for a while. (the older i get, the more i like paul. when i was little, i hated his guts. like really. i loved jesus, and i was a relatively good kid, and i did random stuff to love on people without realizing most people didn’t do that with out some form of intentionality. but i hated pauls stuffiness when i read him. i still don’t really like the peters. or james. just so intense in an occasionally self-righteous tone. the reason i like paul more now is his whole “i want to do one thing but end up doing something opposite” spiel [romans 7:14-21, thank you jesus for biblegateway])

that was a long parenthetical comment.

amber asked me today what my goals were. for this week. month. year. whatever. i told her i wanted to thrive. i want to be planted at whitworth fully this year, and i want to thrive.

upon deeper thought tho. i think i need to get better at discernment. i think i need to stop analyzing and repackaging my life experience to regurgitate in conversation with some (conscious or not) selfish intention. will i be sending my kid to an inner-city ghetto school? hell yes. do i need to glorify myself in the meantime and be just as elitist as the worst stereotype of a bullard girl? no. not really necessary. i’m going to try to stop thinking about myself so much (as awful as that sounds, its really true). i’m going to attempt to just Be this year. Be myself, for sure. but also do stuff that may or may not be Me. and maybe at some later point in time, i’ll stop for some self-reflection, but i think i need to trust the Holy Spirit inside of me a little more. i want to just GO. you know? like live in the moment, every moment, and still be becoming more full of gracetruthlovejoypeace. and the only way i’m gonna do that unselfishly, is to be able to listen more. to hear more. or trust my emotional decisions a little more.

this may or may not be retiring…. just a warning.