Friends and Pain

Recently I have been chasing around in my mind the reasons that we have friends and people that surround us when they cause pain for us at some time. This may be seen as an adolescent issue, which to an extent, I agree with. As for my posed question, I believe that we have friends for multiple reasons. They can range anywhere from you have known them your whole life, you have the same hobbies, you want to be loved, or even just to not be alone. Whatever your reason to have friends, you have them and most people refuse to lose them. They become precious after a certain point. To put it bluntly, all people hurt others. This is not always and probably not usually intentionally either. Intentional or not, it happens. Life goes on without friends, right? Right. So why do we cling on to people that hurt us? Why do we long so much for those people who may claim "I will never do anything to betray your trust" or "I will never hurt you" or my favorite one "I will never leave you"? I believe that we have friends and have faith in them because we find people that "click" with us and our personalities. We find people who we can have fun with and at the same time be serious with when needed. You have to be able to trust your friends when you are hurt, but how can you trust someone that has hurt you. I believe that we are all just looking for someone that validates us or that we can have and that if we can find that, sometimes we are able to overlook mistakes. Why do we overlook our own pain though? Why do we "forgive & forget" when there are millions of other people in this world who could be our friend? It's because we have found someone that we cannot give up because no matter how much they hurt you, they have grown a place in our heart. This is an odd and scattered post, but it is where my mind is at. So I will continue to love my friends no matter how much they hurt me because they are important to me and no matter how much they hurt me, I always want to be able to help them. I want them with me in my life so that not only can they be there for me, but I can ALWAYS be there for them. The pain they cause will never overpower the love that I have for them. Basically, I love my friends. <3

Trust

Lately, I have been looking at the word trust, mostly for humans, within the bible. There was an experience that I had about a week ago where I was being told to trust God. I was surrounded by people and yet, I was being told to trust God. I trust God with all of my heart...Proverbs 3:5-6.* My question for myself was why couldn't I trust when I trusted God completely and I trusted the people enough. The only verse I could find about trusting man was Jeremiah 17:5.* I had a conversation a couple of nights about this as well. The lady I was talking with said that she does not believe that we are supposed to trust in all humans, but there are some people that we need to trust because we lean on one another in this world. I agree with her to an extent. Trust does not come easily to me, but I still believe that everyone deserves respect. Whether they lose it or not is up to them, but every person deserves a chance. The way it sounded, she was saying that people have to earn whatever respect or trust you give to them. I disagree. Now, that was somewhat off topic, but it ties in. So, I was stuck with these two verses which were saying "Do not trust in man, but trust in God completely." So are there people that you need to trust, yes. Are there people you should not trust, yes. Should you trust only in God? I believe not, however I believe that you have to trust in God to know who you can trust on the Earth.

*Proverbs 3:5-6 "Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding; (6) in all your ways acknowledge him, and he will make your paths straight."

Jeremiah 17:5 "This is what the Lord says: 'Cursed is the one who trusts in man, who depends on flesh for his strength and whose heart turns away from the Lord.' "

People

As I was out and about today, I realized something about people. People are almost always lying or fibbing. Now, I'm sure everyone reading this does too...at least every once in a while. So as I walked with a relative into the restaurant, the lady asked "How are you?" My relative's response was "I'm good." Now, this was interesting to me because we had just been in the car talking about how bad she was feeling. Some people are always walking around with smiles on their faces. Is this because they are always happy? Are they on happy pills? Or are they using it as a cover? Sure, for some people it might be that they just always tend to be happy, but is that true for all people? I highly doubt it. As I was having a conversation with a close friend earlier this evening, I realized something else. Things are not always as they seem. Especially when it comes to people and emotions. As we spoke, he opened up to me about his life at this moment and some things that he said shocked me. He is one of the people that I was talking about earlier, always has a smile on his face no matter his mood. The problem is, in this world we all need help. Whether we need help moving because we are physically incapable of lifting, or we need advice from friends because life is giving us problems, we all need help. My question is, why do we hide the help we need? Why do we walk around with smiles on our faces, deceiving the people that we see everyday when we may in fact be needing them? As humans, I believe it is in our nature to trust. From the day you are born, you trust your parents and as you get older, you start to trust friends. So why is it that as we get into adolescence and adulthood that we deny the trust that we once had for a false mask that we choose to put on daily. It is just a show and if you can't truly be yourself...then who does that make you?