Well as I'm winding down on the end of my 22nd year of life, I thought it'd be nice to look back over this year and reflect on how much God has taught me and done in my life. So here we go!
I feel like God has taught me so much this year, but if anything the biggest lesson I think I've learned is greater understanding on how to love. I know I probably say this every time, but I realized that I really have a tendency to just love people that love me. It is so much work to put effort into someone who continuously hurts you, but I read a verse last night that really makes sense:
Matthew 5:46 "for if you love those who love you, what reward do you have?"
If you always just love the people that are easy to love, then you haven't really learned to love. Love loves to love, and the reward of love is love. Love loves to love EVERYBODY!!!! No exceptions (this is where the word unconditional comes in). My tendency is to remove myself from a relationship when I keep getting hurt by the person, but as I've been studying the life of Jesus, I've found that he never did that! Not once. He never refused to give love to a person even though they hurt him, but what he did do was refuse to be hurt. He had a view of people that we can only have if we allow God to transform our minds. Hurt people, hurt people! It's an ongoing cycle of hurt because someone is hurting so they end up hurting someone else who then hurts someone else ect.... get the picture? So how do we stop this cycle? We have to refuse to take on hurt, we have to learn to see people through the compassionate eyes of Christ and see where the hurt that they tried to pin on us came from. If we choose to see the hurt in the one that hurt us, it enables us to say "I know your hurting and I refuse to allow your hurt to hurt me". Often if we look at the way someone has hurt us and then look at how that person is struggling, you can clearly see why they did what they did. Our hurt NEVER gives us an excuse to hurt others, but we are responsible for the way we respond to hurt.
This lesson has been and will be an ongoing process for me, but I know God will be faithful to give me the strength to refuse to be hurt so that I can love like He does. 22 has been amazing! What a challenging but wonderful year, look out 23! I'm coming at ya!
