When Life Gives You Lemons....

At one point there would be only one completion to that statement. Now, it's not just common to make lemonade. One can choose to squeeze the lemons into a watergun and squirt someone in the eye or use it to garnish some sort of liquor. However, the statement in it's original form was actually good advice.
This is kind of a closure of my last blog, which was obviously written when I was upset about something. This blog is written now that I am at peace. No, I haven't fixed anything, but I've been given advice in a couple of different forms that has helped me to begin to come to terms.
The first piece of advice was that we can only be responsible for our own actions. There are many things in life that are broken, including relationships, but we can only fix the things that are ours to fix. We can only deal with the projects that God has placed before us and let everything else be. If I let everything in our fractured world get me down, I'll soon be in much worse shape than I am right now!
The next bit of 'advice' came in the form of a lecture at school. Life is hard. We can't avoid evil in the world (not that I'd call any of my miniscule problems particularly evil), but that evil is a gift in the sense that it alerts us to the fact that we are all incredibly sinful and in need of forgiveness and a new start, even though the rehabilitation process is painful. Something about that is incredibly beautiful! Also, we don't know why we struggle and that is okay. If I always knew why I was hurting, perhaps I would choose not to hurt and what if any pain I experience is part of someone else's start to rehabilitation? Would I choose their future growth or a happy, but unsatisfying, existence? Praise God for knowing what we can handle and protecting us from things that we will probably never even realize!
The world is not a nice place but I am so incredibly blessed! I will choose daily to make the most of every situation, to face my small burdens with a peace that God is good and capable and is providing situations that will allow me to grow up if I so choose.

To Love is to Hurt?

Is that actually a saying? haha It sounds like it could be something floating around on the web, or "picniked" across a melancholy photo. But seriously, I've been asking myself lately 'How can I love people, and still protect myself?' I was honestly trying to figure out the answer. How can I have this perfect balance of loving the way Christ would want me to love, yet not be hurt by the things we humans do? And then I realized it's not actually possible. We can't truly love people and give of ourselves and still be building walls to keep them just far enough away that there is no damage when mistakes are made.
So, I guess next week's blog is the one where I try to figure out how to hurt without being consumed by it. :P