He Knows How Much it Hurts

This may not be a new post to some of you, though I'm not sure when the last one started to malfunction, so maybe it's new to all of you. The song that I embedded in the last one would automatically redirect to a new page, so I've switched the link, in hopes that this will cure the issue. I apologize for any issues you may have had in viewing my blog.



"He knows how much it hurts". Every time that we cry out to Jesus, "Why?" remember, that he knows exactly what we're going through. For two reasons...


1) God was human too, we call Him Jesus. Jesus lived on this very Earth, breathed this very air, and had many of these very pains. Jesus has been there, done that. He made it through, now it's our turn, and He is guiding us through it all, not leaving our sides for a single moment. "In this world you will have troubles, but take heart! I have overcome the world." ~John 16:33 and

2)God loves you so, so much, and anything that hurts you, hurts Him just as much. We cry "Lord, why are you letting this happen to me?" and He cries alongside us, knowing that we have to make it through these trials to make us stronger. God doesn't like to see us in pain, He sent his one and only son to take our places on the cross. But that doesn't mean that He's going to take away our pains and aches, because they all have a purpose in our lives. My mom often gives the analogy of an infant getting a shot at the doctor's office. That needle hurts the little baby, and he doesn't understand why his mommy or daddy let this stranger do that to him, but his parents know better. The baby's parents know that without the shot, the infant is at risk for diseases so much worse than the prick of a needle. Does that mean that the parents want to hear those cries of betrayal from their child, that it's easy for them to hear their baby cry? No, of course not, that's ridiculous, right? Right. That's what God is doing for us now. We don't understand it at this moment, but God knows that what is happening is for the better, and He knows that what is happening is better than the alternative, no matter how much it hurts the both of us.

"For I know the plans I have for you," declares the Lord, "plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future." ~Jeremiah 29:11. Trust in the Lord, give your whole heart to Him, and praise him through the storms in your life. God is never going to let us go, so all that's left is for us to trust in him.

A Search for Truth

From a very early age we have the idea that each of us is a special individual pounded into our heads. The idea that we shouldn't let anyone treat us less then our supposed worth. But I've recently found that that is a truth that you need to discover for yourself, well, at least I did. I'm always hearing from the people around me "You're so special!" "You're such a wonderful person!" "Wait for the guy who knows he's lucky to have you!" "Forget about them, they obviously don't know what you're worth."

It's enough to make anyone believe it. But there was a day last week when I found myself wondering, what makes me worth so much? I'm really no different than the next person. Yeah, I have my quirks, and I have my qualities, but it isn't anything that couldn't be found somewhere else. So many people were saying the same thing for so long, though. For such a large amount of people to know and believe that each person is special, that each person is worth so much, there must be something that they're seeing that I'm not.

So I decided that I had to find my worth for myself, and stop letting other people tell me the same things over and over again. And guess where I found myself. The Bible. I read those verses that we've heard a hundred times, the verses about how special we each are, and how God loves all of us no matter what, and there shed some new light.

There are little side notes all through out my Bible, and one speaks about 2 Corinthians 10:12 (I'm not going to post what this verse actually says right now, and you'll see why in just a few moments, though I encourage you to look it up yourself. Biblegateway.com is a great online Bible to use if you'd prefer easier access). This side note gets inside the mind of a teenager. "Carol has nicer clothes. Jason is smarter. Carl can dunk a basketball. Karen has thick, wavy hair. Danny makes friends easily." I'm sorry to break it to you, but there's always going to be someone who's better at you at anything in particular, if you look at things that way.

Maybe you aren't as fashion forward as someone else, or you don't get as good of grades, but then you're forgetting about the calming effect that you have on people, or the way that you can make anyone laugh.

So there was my answer. It was actually really easy to find. Those people all around me were right. God created me as a masterpiece. God created you as a masterpiece. God created everyone as a masterpiece. The thing is that very often, we look at just parts of a whole, not the entire product. We see singly mediocre qualities, but God sees the whole, beautiful masterpiece. We focus on being the best in a world of billions, when we should really be focusing on being the best "us" we can be.

And there was my truth. No, when you look at one, or two, or even three or four qualities it's easy to find a replacement Abby, but it's when you put my whole being together that you have that special, worthy person that everyone is always telling me about. And I bet that you can find the same truth.

To help YOU find YOUR OWN truth, I've listed a few Bible verses (this is merely a starting point, my friends, you are not only allowed, but encouraged to stray from my suggestions, or go further in your search for truth)...

• 2 Corinthians 10:12


• 1 Corinthians 7:23


• 1 John 3:1


• Jeremiah 29:11


• Genesis 1:26-27


• Psalm 139:13-14


• John 3:16 (This is an easy one, heh heh, it's at the top of the screen)
  

A Team Sport

I've just felt an immense urge to write about this, and I can't hold it back, so I'm just going to let my fingers fly across the keys, and let God lead them.

The above song, as well as this quote (from the To Write Love on Her Arm facebook page), popped up on my phone right in a row "I needed someone to tell me 'you're gonna get through this' . . . to mean it, to really want to help me." and I think that this is God speaking to each of us. We need to be there for the people around us. No matter how close we are to any given person.

I think that sometimes it can be easiest to forget to be there for the people who we are extremely close to. We just grow to expect things to be a certain way, and we don't think much of it. We expect everything in a usually optimistic person's life to be fine and dandy, and we tune out the negative complaints of a usually pessimistic friend because we think everything they are complaining about is really no big deal. But what if we listened? What if we honestly asked our friends how they were doing? Would we get the answer that we expected?

I don't know. I'm sure that sometimes we do get an answer that we would expect, but I'm also pretty sure that too often we would get an answer that we didn't see coming. Do we really know the people closest to us? Just knowing someones favorite color and shoe size, what makes them laugh and what makes them cry, doesn't mean a thing if they are dying inside and we miss it.

And sometimes we are sure that our friends would come to us if they really needed us, but I don't believe that that is always the case. Maybe they don't want to put more weight on our shoulders, maybe they don't want to show any signs of weakness, maybe they, as I had done for so long, thought that they needed to be perfect, and letting down their defenses was equivalent to messing up. We can't always trust that the people who we are closest to would come to us when they needed us.

There is another side to that, as well, though. When you are falling apart, and you feel as though nothing is ever going to go right in your life, talk to the people around you. Don't go through all of the pain in life alone. God put us here together for a reason, He didn't want us to live this life on Earth alone. And that brings us to another point, don't ever lose hope, because even when it seems like all is lost, God is still there, cheering you on, wiping your tears away, telling you that you can do it. We just need to listen.

Listen to your friends, and let your friends listen to you. This thing called life is a team sport.

29 Ways to Stay Creative

I "stumbled upon" this picture on stumbleupon.com, and thought that this list made a lot of sense. This may be entitled 29 Ways to Stay Creative, but I think that this list could also be considered 29 Ways to Achieve Happiness. Obviously, this isn't a foolproof guide to happiness or creativity, but it's definitely some advice to think about. I don't really have much else to say about this list, it seems to do most of the speaking for itself, so I'm going to leave it at that.