Interesting...

I just recently started as a freshman at Cal State Northridge, and thus just recently started attending a new church. Now, for those of you who know me, you know that I have dealt with alot of rejection. From kids in jr. high at the church I grew up in, to the freshman class at the private school I went to for a year, to people I thought were my friends at the school I went to for most of highschool. It was really hard, and I came to believe that the best way to protect myself from it happening again was to allow the pain caused by those kids to make me angry. I felt that if I could hold on to the anger, then I wouldn't be able to let people get close, so I wouldn't get hurt again. I also spent alot of time planning what I would tell those kids should I ever see them again. Let me tell you, they weren't nice thoughts. Some of my close friends knew what I was thinking, and knew my attitude towards life basically, but they were also dealing with a lot of emotional pain, and simply encouraged me in that direction.
Most of you probably also know this, but since I was in the sixth grade, every summer I spent a week at a Christian camp through a program called AWANA. For the last several, the chapel speaker was a man from Louisiana who was a pastor. Incidentally, the first year he spoke, he spoke on forgiveness. Wow, what a God thing that was. I was able to let go of some of the anger, and was slightly less vindictive towards those who hurt me. However, I still didn't want to let go of certain pain. I felt that it made me strong, that it kept me from allowing others to walk all over me. The same man came back again the next year, and I told God, I wasn't going to let it go. I didn't care that God knew it was what was best for me, I didn't want to, and I wasn't going to, not yet, not until I was tired of being angry all the time. I did tell God though, that if He gave me one more year, I would let it go the next year, assuming that the same guy came back. He did, but this time he didn't preach on forgiveness, he spoke about being faithful to God, and one night said (this is not word for word, it's as close as I can remember it)"God went through torture, the most painful death you can experience, death on a cross, so that you could live. What have we gone through that is in ANY WAY comparable to what He had to endure? He did it because He loves us, all of us, and we take every opportunity to push Him away" (or something to that effect) Anyway, the idea I got was "you're holding on to all this anger because some stupid kids rejected you because you were different from them. You have used it to your advantage, and you have built a wall between yourself and the wonderful God who sent His son to die on a CROSS. What is the point? Don;t you realize that God will never reject you? He'll look after you, He'll give you strength, let it go" so I did.

Ok, all of that, just to say this, the college pastor of the church I've been attending said something in his sermon a couple of weeks ago that me think. He said "Write down, how God has been faithful in your life" now, looking at everything I just wrote, and knowing the pain I felt for so many years, my first thought was "Are you kidding me? God let all that pain happen. He allowed those kids to treat me like that. I know He had His reasons, but it sure wasn't fun, and I'm sure not going to that being faithful." Then, and I'm pretty sure this was God, I suddenly thought" Wait a second, He was faithful. Maybe, just maybe the reason I dealt with all of tha is because I needed to learn how to forgive." You know how they say "Don't pray for patience, cuz God will put you in situations, uncomfortable situations where you have to be patient" maybe it's the same thing. Maybe, even though I don't think I prayed to learn to how to forgive, God knew I had that flaw in my character. He allowed it to happen, so that I would learn to forgive. He knew it would be a long time in coming, and certainly gave me plenty of new times when I needed to work on it, like a different situation every year, but, it did happen eventually, and maybe that's why I needed for that stuff to happen. Not because, as my mom suggested, I might wind up living in a situation where I would have to live that daily, and I would just have to get used to it, but because God wanted me to learn a lesson, even though through my sinful human nature I made myself learn it the hard way.