Self examination.

There are so many situations in my life now that I don't know how to deal with.
Friends being influenced harmfully by others, friends feeling not good enough, friends looking for fulfillment in the wrong places. And these friends? I love them so so much.
Yet I'm stuck watching all these things happen, because I dont want to push them away. I feel like I can't say anything without making myself seem like I know it all.

Fact- I know very little. I don't know things like: how to help my own friends.
Everything seems tense when I'm with my friends, because I'm holding my tongue most of the time.

Because I know I'm far from perfect, which brings me to my title topic.

So a few days ago, a friend of mine really hurt my feelings with just a snide, offhand remark. She probably doesn't even realize it bothered me at all. When I was in bed that night, I cried and thought of all the hateful things I could say to her. I thought, "well, she doesn't consider how she makes me feel, maybe I should just do the same."
As I kept on with that line of thinking, I remembered the "don't go to bed with anger in your heart." verse. So I prayed about it, and I felt somewhat better. But man, I still had anger in my heart. So much.

I feel like I can't convey my feelings to my closest friends sometimes, because we're all in such different places. I think they won't be able to understand the way I feel about things, because they don't feel the same way. And I'm afraid they feel the same way about me. We end up being stuck in a no-communication zone.

Maybe this is a phase I'm going through that I just have to fight through. But what if it is the way things are gonna be?
What if because I haven't had certain things happen to me, or not happen, I'm going to be unable to talk to my friends for forever without feeling looked down on or patronized? What if they can't ever talk to me?
I don't know how I'll handle that at all.

It gets to be a bit much to carry around with you.

This goes back to my first paragraph..my friends think that because I haven't been in the same places they're in, that I don't deserve to offer
any kind of advice. So I'm stuck in silence, watching them turn into people they never wanted to be, because I don't "understand." Which is how I feel around them.
Maybe I don't understand, but you don't either. You're my friend and it just isn't right.
I think we should all drop this pretense of knowing everything. If we could just shutup about our differences and start getting to what really matters- our friendship, being there for each other, being the Phillipians 1:3 friends we used to- then we'd stop not understanding, and start helping.

I want to listen, and I want people to hear me.
But right now, I'm not in either of those positions. Because everyone, myself included, around me is always on defense about their life. Ready at the drop of a hat to yell why they're right and you aren't. Why are we yelling in the first place? Can we have democracy instead of eight dictators at one lunch table? So we can all hear and be heard? God knows we all have things to say, and things that need to be said to us. I think it's possible to accept advice without seeing it as a personal attack and retaliating as such.

I just thought I'd share that part of what is going on in my brain today.

Always and always,
Anna