So I am currently cuddled up under seven blankets, a scarf is wrapped around my neck, and I have a cup of tea and some toast beside me. I haven't been sleeping very well since coming back to school this semester, and last night was perhaps the worst night of it. The result was me not feeling so hot (headache, nausea... all that good stuff). So that is why I am currently in bed. After this entry I shall continue reading The Moonstone by Wilkie Collins for Victorian Literature, and hopefully catch a nap before I have to head out this evening.
In other news, I was flirted with last night.
Pretty exciting, right?
My one brother coaches a high school boys basketball team and they were in town for a tournament this weekend. So my sister and I went to watch them play last night and today. Said flirting began when a gentleman in the bleachers decided to make his way over to me continually throughout last night's game. He would pet me, talk to me, and smile at me. He was also about two.
Yeah, that's about the only kind of flirting I get. Awesome, isn't it?
On the upside, my brother's team lost yesterday's game by only two points, and won both of their games today! YAY!!!!
So people always talk about the stages of grief, right? I feel like the last two months have been spent going through almost every stage. I feel as if the seven blankets I am currently huddled under represent all the different stages God has been taking me through. You have heard me talk of denial, anger, hurt, forgiveness, and learning to extend grace.
I was thinking about it yesterday, and thinking about how wonderful it is that it seems God has really brought me through this. How I don't seem to be struggling with the whole situation all that much anymore. Then God showed me something else.
My head has been allowed to clear of much of the emotion surrounding the whole church and friend situation in my hometown. As a result of this, I have started to become a wee bit more introspective about the whole thing. I began to notice over Christmas some very real, and very thick, tension between myself and one friend. I had no idea where it came from, so I have started thinking back over the last year a half.
Now that God has been helping me through my pain and hurts, He is urging me to look back and see the part that I played in much of what went on. This is never easy because no one ever wants to admit they were in the wrong. But as I think of lost relationships, I am realizing that they were not lost strictly because of other's actions.
God is having me take responsibility for what I have done.
I was hurt and I felt rejected. Rather than work through this and talk to my friends about what I was experiencing, I walled myself off from people. I was so tired and scared of being hurt, that I decided to retreat within myself. I was tired of married people wanting nothing to do with me because I was single so I looked for people who accept me as a single and neglected those I felt had rejected me.
Hindsight is 20/20 and I realize now that if I had've addressed the problem instead of burrowing it deep within my heart, my pain would have been far less, and so would the pain other's have experienced.
I think of some of what Keller talked about in his book on marriage. He talks in depth about the need for a spiritual friendship in marriage, a need for both spouses to be able to repent and forgive. I believe this applies to all relationships.
God has been teaching me to forgive.
Now He is teaching me to repent.
This is not easy, but I know it is necessary.
One of my favourite C.S. Lewis quotations is:
"Love anything, and your heart will certainly be wrung and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact, you must give your heart to no one, not even an animal. Wrap it carefully around with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements; lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket--safe, dark, motionless, airless--it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. The alternative to tragedy, or at least to the risk of tragedy, is damnation."
This is what I did. I locked my heart up because I was scared of it being broken more than it already had. I thank God that He showed me this before it became impenetrable.
Such is the life of a Christian Single
In other news, I was flirted with last night.
Pretty exciting, right?
My one brother coaches a high school boys basketball team and they were in town for a tournament this weekend. So my sister and I went to watch them play last night and today. Said flirting began when a gentleman in the bleachers decided to make his way over to me continually throughout last night's game. He would pet me, talk to me, and smile at me. He was also about two.
Yeah, that's about the only kind of flirting I get. Awesome, isn't it?
On the upside, my brother's team lost yesterday's game by only two points, and won both of their games today! YAY!!!!
So people always talk about the stages of grief, right? I feel like the last two months have been spent going through almost every stage. I feel as if the seven blankets I am currently huddled under represent all the different stages God has been taking me through. You have heard me talk of denial, anger, hurt, forgiveness, and learning to extend grace.
I was thinking about it yesterday, and thinking about how wonderful it is that it seems God has really brought me through this. How I don't seem to be struggling with the whole situation all that much anymore. Then God showed me something else.
My head has been allowed to clear of much of the emotion surrounding the whole church and friend situation in my hometown. As a result of this, I have started to become a wee bit more introspective about the whole thing. I began to notice over Christmas some very real, and very thick, tension between myself and one friend. I had no idea where it came from, so I have started thinking back over the last year a half.
Now that God has been helping me through my pain and hurts, He is urging me to look back and see the part that I played in much of what went on. This is never easy because no one ever wants to admit they were in the wrong. But as I think of lost relationships, I am realizing that they were not lost strictly because of other's actions.
God is having me take responsibility for what I have done.
I was hurt and I felt rejected. Rather than work through this and talk to my friends about what I was experiencing, I walled myself off from people. I was so tired and scared of being hurt, that I decided to retreat within myself. I was tired of married people wanting nothing to do with me because I was single so I looked for people who accept me as a single and neglected those I felt had rejected me.
Hindsight is 20/20 and I realize now that if I had've addressed the problem instead of burrowing it deep within my heart, my pain would have been far less, and so would the pain other's have experienced.
I think of some of what Keller talked about in his book on marriage. He talks in depth about the need for a spiritual friendship in marriage, a need for both spouses to be able to repent and forgive. I believe this applies to all relationships.
God has been teaching me to forgive.
Now He is teaching me to repent.
This is not easy, but I know it is necessary.
One of my favourite C.S. Lewis quotations is:
"Love anything, and your heart will certainly be wrung and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact, you must give your heart to no one, not even an animal. Wrap it carefully around with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements; lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket--safe, dark, motionless, airless--it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. The alternative to tragedy, or at least to the risk of tragedy, is damnation."
This is what I did. I locked my heart up because I was scared of it being broken more than it already had. I thank God that He showed me this before it became impenetrable.
Such is the life of a Christian Single
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