i don't know how to start my train of thoughts! it's like jumping onto a circular train track that's going too fast for me to accurately judge the most appropriate time to jump. the past few months i've been reading "exclusion and embrace" by miroslav volf and "the cross of christ" by john stott on and off. i've also attended four sessions of therapy, and i've had to work through ten years' worth of conflict and hurt. i've most recently undergone a handful of conflict resolution with people who are very precious to me, and i've had to re-evaluate the armful of emotional investment i've previously committed to while feeling increasing fatigue and increasing bitterness and regret for the pain that accompanies love. in this context of emotional weight lifting, a few thing stand out to me at the end of this year:
1) i'm tired 2) i've experienced many miracles 3) i've only just begun.
i'm tired because i carry relationships in my heart and on my shoulders. they lift me up but also bring me much pain, and even as i wonder if it is worth it i find myself reaching out once more or offering myself once more or seeking to care once more. i realize over and over again that i am so very frustratingly human and that friendships require grace upon grace that i cannot possibly conjure up on my own.
i've experienced many miracles because within these relationships, i realize that reconciliation is a fundamentally un-human, divine act - and in that nature it is therefore a miracle. there is no logical reason to justify me desiring to willingly and actively forego judgment upon someone who has done me harm. reconciliation entails not only foregoing judgment but sacrificially extending a hand to the offender as a gesture of invitation to pursue a future relation-ship. there is engagement, activity, and work involved. everything in me resists the notion of suspending judgment upon injustice; there is a deep aching within me that tells me forgiveness and reconciliation are fundamentally wrong. in some senses i suppose they are: god's grace is the gravest injustice in the history of mankind and yet it is by this grace that my life was/is intended to be shaped by.
i'm only twenty one and everything ahead of me is kind of incredibly terrifying. please be gentle with me, i'm filled with apprehensions and i'm twenty one.
sidenotes;
why do we all want to be saviors of the world because lol