uber long post.

I have been learning a lot this semester, and this year especially. At first junior year was really hard for various reasons, but I've been getting the hang of things lately, of which I am kind of proud of myself for.

Friends are pretty darn important in my life. And I have some great ones. But I've been putting waaay too much trust in them in place of trusting in the Lord.

What does that look like? As much as my friends love me, they can't do everything I want them to, or say all the right things. Not that they say mean hurtful things to me, which they totally don't, and they won't try to hurt me, but eventually they will. This is tough because they are so great and I love them so much. When I first came to college, I suddenly had a group of friends unlike any I had ever found. But I would put so much trust & hope in them, that I would just ignore it when they would let me down. Maybe that's where my passivity comes from. Is passivity a word? [I never thought of that until I wrote it. Which is why I love blogging].

But I think that totally makes sense - if I was looking for love and attention in the wrong places, of course when I got it I would do anything to keep it, such as just giving in all the time, etc.

And it really sucks when friends let you down. Maybe I just have unreasonable expectations sometimes (which I have for myself...and yeah actually I probably have them as much for me as I do others). But there is a balance, too. While sometimes I might have unreasonable expectations for my friends, sometimes they just don't hold up their end of the deal.

Enter Grace. Grace is tricky, because if you can have a stock pile of it, doesn't matter what happens in your friendships because you can treat people & situations with grace instead of being resentful, jealous, etc. If you think about it, you can probably tell when grace falls out of a relationship. Looking at my life, I can definitely see that happening in certain areas.

It's crazy how friendships change & evolve over time. People change. I personally am becoming way more independent than in high school, even since freshman year, which is very good for me.

It's funny how much I've been changing lately. If a friend would say something to me that turned out to be hurtful, in the past I would probably just shrug it off, ignore it, secretly being bitter/resentful inside but not showing it on the outside, as I just wanted to keep the friendship as is.

This year that stuff I would hide/ignore, like resentment and bitter feelings, has risen closer to the surface. Scary, because my temper has really been in control lately. But obviously it's not good or even necessary for me to be all bitter towards people. I think that's a natural step for me to take towards learning how to appropriately deal with disappointment and hurt.

WOW! That was an uber long post. And that shall be it's name.