Today I have another Guest Post for you.
It is still in the Dose of Encouragement Series but instead of a post from me it is one from our daughter Linda who is Teaching English as a Foreign Language in South Korea.
She wrote this on her own blog last year and I loved how she had been so open and honest about how she felt so I have asked if I could have it here to share with you all this week.
Linda is still on holiday with us from South Korea and hence this is going to be another really busy week for me.
After reading this you may be interested to have a look at Linda's blog which is written from her viewpoint as a writer who is a Christian and contains posts on her thoughts and also some of her short stories.
So over to Linda
Do you write through your feelings too?
It is still in the Dose of Encouragement Series but instead of a post from me it is one from our daughter Linda who is Teaching English as a Foreign Language in South Korea.She wrote this on her own blog last year and I loved how she had been so open and honest about how she felt so I have asked if I could have it here to share with you all this week.
Linda is still on holiday with us from South Korea and hence this is going to be another really busy week for me.
After reading this you may be interested to have a look at Linda's blog which is written from her viewpoint as a writer who is a Christian and contains posts on her thoughts and also some of her short stories.
So over to Linda
I had a sort of argument with a friend and it left me rather
uneasy.
You see, this argument shouldn’t have happened, and it was
because I was looking at the situation in the wrong way.
Yes, we both did
or said things that hurt each other, but when I look at the bigger picture, and
how God is involved in it, I don’t see the hurt anymore.
Of course, at the time I wasn’t letting myself think in that nice way; I
was looking at my selfish perspective.
Sometimes we get hurt and we all
have a natural reaction to it, which is usually to protect ourselves by seeing
how others have done wrong by us. Now-a-days my first response is to talk
to God about situations I don’t understand or find hard to deal with, and this
does help me, even if it takes a little time.
This time, however, I made a conscious decision to take a little space
for myself, to get over what I was hurt by, and be selfish, by letting myself
be hurt for a little while, before I would accept the better view that God had
for it (which I already knew and agreed with). It’s a bit silly, but I
thought that sometimes we need to feel the pain in order to get over it, and if
I just accepted what God was showing me as good, then I was avoiding the hurt
and not really getting over it.
Well, then my argument happened and since then I have felt sick about
how I acted and how the situation has been left.
What did I do to fix
this?
I couldn’t talk to the person about it, and I didn’t know how to
explain anyway, so I did what I should have been doing and went to God.
He showed me some things I already knew, but because of my initial
selfish reaction of not wanting to listen to it, I found this hard to accept.
So I wrote about it.
I used to do this a lot; write a letter to
someone to tell them how I feel, even if I know I will never give it to
them. These days I sometimes write my prayers, because I can focus better
and this process helps me work things out. This time, however, I wrote to
the person, and do you know what? God worked in that. I was looking
to God in the whole situation and suddenly it all changed from my tiny
viewpoint to the bigger picture and the love I have for that friend.
Even though I am hurt by some things, I know that it can’t be any other
way, and I know that I am happy and excited about whatever God has planned for
me. It’s a pity that I have to go through some pain, but this will all
help me later. I don’t feel like I can fix what I said easily, and I
don’t know if I should give my friend the letter, but changing my attitude is a
start and I hope it will show my friend that I don’t care about what we fought
over; I care about our friendship.
After the argument mentioned, I could not be sure that I would ever have
a chance to rectify, apologise or just fix the relationship, but I had to find
a way to move on and be content with my life and my attitudes.
God gives us the only way to move on through
the guilt and shame we feel in any previous actions.
His grace and mercy give us the chance to see
that our humanity doesn’t have to limit us to being simply faulty humans.
We are humans, full of fault, but Jesus gave
us a way to get past that and move on to better things.
Today Linda writes:
A year later, God has helped me learn that
lesson and progress with it in more ways.......
If you would like to read further on her view of today then head on over to Elsie B Writes
Do you write through your feelings too?
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A writer from Northern Ireland, who has lived in a few other places and has a friend in God.
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