The Truth about Friendship

I’ve been thinking a lot these past few weeks, for reasons I care no to relate, about what friendship is, and what it is not.  

So I’m going to give the world my thoughts.

Time does not determine how close two people can be,  best friends or even close friends don’t have to be two people that have known each practically their whole lives. Friendships aren’t determined by equal amounts of money spent on each other, or equal hours spent doing what the other wanted, friendship isn’t keeping score of your rights and their wrongs just waiting to bring it up the next time you argue. It’s not the idea of “oh I came to that thing you wanted me to do like five times and you’ve only come to the things I’ve wanted to do  like once.” 

Friendship isn’t the idea that we have an unequal friendship because I can’t always make it to the things you want to do. 

Friendship doesn’t always mean you’re  talking every day, texting about everything, seeing each constantly, buying each other best friend necklaces, doing everything together, and telling each other everything. 

While most friendships consist of some of these better things like seeing each other constantly, texting each other everything, and buying each other stuff to show affection, that isn't what makes someone a friend. 

In the end your real friends are the people you know you can count on, the ones who’ve seen you at worst and chosen to stay anyway. 

They’re the people who’ll stay up late and text you that it will be okay, you’ll make it through tomorrow. 

They're the ones who maybe you don’t talk to every day or even every week but you still know you can fall back on them when times are rough or you just miss them. 

Friendship is telling the other that you have a issue with the relationship that needs to be resolved, not letting it go unheard and unsaid, harboring bitter feeling against the other until eventually it shatters your friendship.  

Friends know when to give you advice and when to be quiet and give you a hug. 

They’re the people you can just click with, even if you just met them, you feel like you’ve known them longer then you have because you guys already care about each other so much. Friendship is telling them God’s got their back even though they don’t see it. 

It’s trusting them with some of your deepest darkest secrets because you know they’ll be there to help you fight your demons, even if they live in another state or even another country. They do everything they can to let you know you’re loved. 

In any relationship neither person will be giving exactly fifty percent all the time, sometimes it will be less sometimes it will be more, why? Because we’re flawed people and no one can always be perfect in any friendship. 

Friends will realize that the other is human and you will make mistakes and so will they, but that you forgive each other. 

Friendship is being there. Not necessarily physically, because people have limitations, people are busy sometimes and can’t always make it, but emotionally they’re there for you. 

A friend is someone that no matter how long its been since you talked or how far away or close they are to you, they’re going to be there, because they truly care.

It’s not the things we do together that make us friends, we do things together because we are friends. 

Friendship is love, it’s sacrifice, it’s caring about the other, it’s being there for them in whatever capacity you can, phone call or in person, just so they know you’re there. 

It’s trust, encouragement, and understanding.

Not all friendships will be this way, but the closest of friendships should be. 

A friendship framed by the love of Christ...

Let's  all just try and be a little more understanding and loving 

More attractive than appearance

Okay so there are some pretty nice looking people out there in the world. You may be thinking of a celebrity or maybe your crush, or both!
The world seems to be pushing for everyone, girls and guys, to have this "perfect" look. We rate each other "oh you're a ten girl!" or "yeah, I would say a six tops."
I'm sorry, but that's just wrong.
It seems everyone is supposed to be in this overall fit of "hot" and "attractive" and if you don't fit into the world's impossible standard of perfect beauty and ideals for appearance it makes it really easy for self-hate to creep in, and really easy to believe the people who are telling you you're ugly.

Our world is so obsessed with the outward appearance they forget what is really important.
Many people say that they would date someone based on looks alone, which is absurd.
I mean yes we're all attracted to peoples outward appearance first off, but if you're interested, really interested in someone you should be looking at more than that. Not to mention if the only thing you love about your partner is they're looks, there are going to be major problems.
So here are three ideas to me of what should be more important to us than outward appearance. Some of them seem really obvious, but if you think about it there's a lot more to it.

1. Personality- okay, I know this seems like something really obvious, but it's worth stating even if it is obvious. There's so much to people, and what makes them who they are. Same for you.
People can be super extroverted and outgoing around their friends and but quiet and seemingly shy around people they don't know.
Maybe they're an introvert and you rarely hear talk, but they have brilliant ideas and so much love to give.
Maybe they love hugs, maybe they don't. Everyone is different.
How they react to problems, how they treat other people, how they treat their family, the things they think are right and wrong, what they like and what they don't like. Do they have a logic based mind or a more creative one?
optimistic or pessimistic? What are they afraid of?
There's a lot that goes on in a person's mind, and many things that piece together are personalities.
If you pay attention and get to know someone you can tell a lot about them without even asking.

2. Passion for goals and dreams.
Someone who knows what they like and what they want to do, watching them live up to their potential, go for the things they want to achieve and the person they want to be.
Or even if they don't know exactly what they want to do they still have dreams, passions. Maybe it's music, or writing, or helping people in need.
Maybe they want to start a business some day, go into the military, be a youth pastor.
Even if they don't have all the pieces put together(cause I mean really, who does?)
but they're still fallowing their dreams and the talents that God has given them, that is still pretty darn attractive. I don't know, maybe it's just me but watching someone go after their dreams, talk about their plans and passions always makes me smile.

3. Faith
The most important thing someone you like/are dating should have.
I'll just say this now, if he/she is not a believer than back away, now! Don't get emotionally attached to someone who you would be unequally yoked with.
This person should pursue God more than they ever pursue you(same to be said about you)
Them having a personal relationship with God, hearing them sing, and be a true disciple of God should be like the most attractive thing about them.
They won't have it all together(none of us do) but the fact that they're trying is a good start.

1 Peter 3:3-4
Do not let your adorning be external—the braiding of hair and the putting on of gold jewelry, or the clothing you wear— but let your adorning be the hidden person of the heart with the imperishable beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit, which in God's sight is very precious.

This isn't just talking to girls. The overall idea is: don't let your true "attractiveness" come from the outside. 

So see the value in things other than appearance. Look for the good things.
The person you like may not be "hot" in the eyes of the world, but you've seen their personality, their faith, and their dreams, and you think they're cute. So you know what? What the world thinks is irrelevant. :)

Our masks

We all go about lives, day in and day out. Facing problems, overcoming them and moving on. There are the important people in our lives, family and friends, that we see on a weekly or daily basis. We hang out, we laugh, we make jokes, we have a good time. But behind all the good times and laughs, we face trials and battles. Sometimes it can feel like we're the only one who has to deal with this kind of stuff, we're the only ones that understand what we're going through. 

Well here’s the truth about you and all the people around you: 
Everyone you know is battling somthing that you don’t see on their smiling face when they go out every day, when you see them. 
That smiling girl has an abusive dad, that seemingly worriless guy thinks about sucide almost erery day, that girl is bullied, that boy thinks he’ll never be good enough, the last friend you would expect to have depression, does.....and you never noticed. 
She has anxiety, he feels like no one will ever love him. 
Porn, drugs, popularity, stress, bullying, homosexuality, depression, premarital sex, abuse, death, illness, pain, heartbreak....
We all fight a battle, everyone you meet has a story. One from the past, one from the present, and one for the future. 
Why? Because we live in a fallen, broken world full of sin, hate, and pain. 
We all have the masks we wear, smiles we put forward when all we want to do is cry. 
We don’t tell everyone how our world falls apart, how we feel crushed, how we hate ourselves, how we’re abused, how we feel so beat down. And that’s okay, not everyone will understand the demons we fight or the things we have gone through. 
Look in the mirror, you have one of those stories. Those things, deep secrets, problems, struggles, battles that we keep from almost everyone if not everyone. 
We’re all crushed and broken. 
I know this all sounds really morbid, but you know what? It gets better. 
There is a God that died for you and for me so that if we put our trust in Him all these  terrible things that drag us down will one day go away, and one day we will be with God in heaven. 

So always remeber this: Everyone you know had been hurt, is hurting, or will be hurt. Probably all three, probably multiple times. 
So show some of the love that our God did when He died for us. Just because you're dealing with something doesn't mean you can't help someone else.
Smile at people, make sure they know you care, talk(actually have conversation face to face, don't just text), give them a hug. 
Sit with someone you notice sitting alone. Pray for someone you know is going through a hard time. 
It’s a scary world we should all try and make it a little less that way by being kind, and realizing everyone is going through something hard. 

John 15:12 
 "this is my command, that you love one another as I have loved you." 

A message to homosexuals from a Christian teenager

My church, for the past three weeks has been doing a study on homosexuality and what the bible has to say to about it (due to the supreme court ruling that legalized gay marriage in all fifty states). It was an amazing study, I learned some facts and verses to back up what I had been saying all along about the subject: “I don’t agree with gay marriage” 

And I would like to stop right there and explain. I do not agree with gay marriage due to my faith and I have biblical knowledge and logical reasons why I believe that gay marriage is condemned in the bible as a sin. But that’s not what I want to focus on right now. 

I want to say something to the homosexuals I have met and will ever meet in the future:

Yes, I am a Christian and I disagree with gay marriage. 

But that does NOT mean that I will not be your friend, that does NOT mean I will talk about your “terrible sinful ways” behind your back, it does NOT mean that I will make fun of or mock you, it does NOT mean I will avoid you, it does NOT mean I can’t love you as my friend,  it does NOT mean that I can't be there for you, and it does NOT mean that every time I see you I will smack you over the head with a bible and tell you you're wrong and you need to change.

What it DOES mean is I will love you like God loves me, I will show you every bit of kindness that Jesus shows me, and I will treat you like I treat the rest of my friends, and I will pray for you. 

I may be against gay marriage but my personal beliefs are not an attack on your happiness. 

Today society seems to think that if you disagree with someone and their beliefs that you can’t love them. That’s wrong. I can disagree with you and still love you just as much as I always have. 

One of my best friends that I’ve known practically my whole life recently told me she was gay. I don’t love her any less than I did before.  

My hope is to put down one of the many Christian stereotypes: that we hate homosexuals because they're sinners and they’re wrong, blah, blah, all that. 

But for a well grounded Christian that follows after the Lord and strives to be more like Him, that’s not the case. And the truth is we're all sinners, but as believers It’s our job to be His example. I know Jesus loves you, why should there be any reason for me to hate and persecute someone who I know the almighty God loves? 

This is just how I feel, and the way I feel like I should approach this topic.

If you have any questions or anything to say at all comment, or email me at teenforgod15@gmail.com and let me know what you’re thinking :) 

words for the heart

As Christian teenagers it's very easy in this day and age to feel left out of the dating crowd, and even if you don't want to be dating right now, sometimes it's hard not wish that you were. So here's a little letter(that I did not write) for when you start feeling left out, impatient, or confused.

“Everyone longs to give themselves completely to someone- to have a deep soul relationship with another, to be loved thoroughly and exclusively. 
But to a Christian, God says....No; not until you are satisfied and fulfilled and content, living loved by Me alone, with giving yourself totally, unreservedly, to Me- to have intensely personal and unique relationship with Me alone. 

I love you my child, and until you discover that only in Me is your satisfaction to be found, you will not be capable of the perfect human relationship I have planned for you. You will never be united with another until you are united with Me, exclusive of any other desires or longings. 

I want you to stop planning, stop wishing, and allow me to bring it to you. You just keeping watching Me, expecting the greatest things. Keep experiencing that satisfaction of knowing that I AM. Keep learning and listening to the things I tell you. You must wait. Don’t be anxious. Don’t worry. Don’t look around at the things you think you want. 

Just keep looking off and away up to Me, or you will miss what I want to show you. And then when you’re ready, I’ll surprise you with a love far more wonderful than any you would ever dream of. You see, until you are ready and until the one I have for you is ready, until you are both satisfied exclusively with me and the life I have prepared for you, you won’t be able to experience the love that exemplifies your relationship with Me, and is thus, perfect love. 

I am working even at this moment to have both of you ready at the same time. And dear child, I want you to have the wonderful love. I want you to see in the flesh a picture of your relationship with Me, and to enjoy materially and concretely the everlasting union of beauty and perfection and love that I offer you with myself. 

Know that I love you. I AM ALMIGHTY GOD, BELIEVE AND BE SATISFIED.” 

I wish I knew who wrote this. But alas I do not. My small group leader found it on the internet and gave to me. 
Really this small letter has had more of an impact than I would have thought. I took it home and read it. I felt like God was sitting right across from me saying these very words. It helped me understand what I had been through and why.

The main things to take away from this is that God has a wonderful plan for you.Wait in His timing, and while you wait focus on God, and your relationship with Him. :)

A broken heart and a lesson learned

My story:

I met him when I was ten. Yep, ten. I was kid and even then I thought the crush would pass. It didn’t. For two years I obsessed and followed him everywhere. I was really young and really bad at hiding the fact that I liked him. When I was twelve I told him I liked him, and he said he liked me too. We still acted the same way we always had, like friends....that were always flirting. 

When I was thirteen my family decided to move. I was terrified of moving and tried not to think about all the people I wouldn’t get to see on a weekly basis anymore like my best friend, and this guy that I REALLY liked. It was only an hour and half away, but it seemed so far. A week before I moved he and I were hanging out in a group of friends talking about my move. He had been really quiet the whole time, then he gave me a note that said “I love you.”

As the thirteen year old girl that I was that was the most wonderful and terrible thing. wonderful for very obvious reason and terrible because I was a week away from moving. 

Even after the move we stayed in touch, though we never got to see each other more than once every few months, we talked everyday on Facebook, and nothing changed between us. When I was fourteen he told me that when we were both older we could date and then get married. It sounds absurd, but I had thought of that before and I felt like this was the person God wanted me to marry. We were both Christians and trying to do things the right way, but really we were just getting ourselves into a mess that would hurt at least one of us. 

That summer he stopped responding to my Facebook messages. And when he did respond he didn't seem to want to talk. I blew it off. He was starting his senior year and didn’t want to be distracted with Facebook, so he got off and we started e-mailing. Still his responses to me were slim to none. 

Finally I got fed up with it and we fought over e-mail for two days, and he told me he didn’t have time to talk to me. Later he said he was sorry and everything was fine again. But it wasn’t really. Things didn’t change. One thing led to another that I couldn’t deny the fact that was being destroyed emotionally. This guy that I cared so much about and thought about so much stopped responding and didn't seem to care anymore. 

I made the hard choice and told him I was done. 

Heart breaking. The only words to describe how it felt.  

What I learned: 

This is an over view of about five years of my life and my relationship with this guy. I couldn't tell you our whole story in a blog post. A book would probably better fit the whole story. 

We never called each other boyfriend and girlfriend, because we weren't dating. But that was what he was to me in my mind, and he held that place in my heart. We didn't act like a couple other than our protectiveness of each other and we talked like girlfriend and boyfriend. I said I love you, he said I love you etc. So even though we had never been on a date, kissed, or even held hands, he held a boyfriend status in my mind. 

From this I learned that even if you have a heart for God and do things the way you think he would like them to be done, none of that matters if you don’t even know who you are as a person in God. You need time to find who you really are, without someone else(girlfriend/ boyfriend).

I had been so wrapped up with this guy and my future life with him that I hadn't even given thought to what I wanted to do with my life, I hadn't thought about college, nothing!  When I had broken the tie between us I looked at myself and realized I didn't know what I wanted to do with my life, or more importantly, what God wanted me to do.

I learned that you can do wrong things when you add the words "I think God wants ___." 
in my case I thought God wanted me to be with this guy, and justified our young relationship with that. 

I wish I had: 

Built a friendship, kept my deep down feeling to myself, my parents and a friend. Not made my attraction so obvious. Learned how to keep myself from thinking about him day and night and filled those thoughts with God.  I wish I had not been so worried about if he liked me too. If I had waited until I was much older to tell him that I liked him, if we had waited to enter the relationship status(even if it is a mental boyfriend/girlfriend status) until we were older, I might have spent the past five years of my life differently, and not obsessed over a guy. 

My advice:

My advice to my fellow teenagers is guard your heart. If you're too young to date and you like someone, just get to know them as a friend, hang out in groups, don't announce your feeling to every guy/girl you talk to, pick one friend that you can talk to and that will help keep you on track. Trust me, I know this is hard, but it will all work out for the better. Young relationships will most likely end in the heart break of at least one of you, if not both.  
Feelings are hard,unpredictable, and down right complicated. But they’re there and we have to deal with them in the best God honoring way possible, that won't make a mess of our lives. 
Don’t give your heart away so young. 

Be friends, and wait for God’s timing, He’ll bring you the right person at the right time.
And honestly if you're under sixteen or seventeen. It's not the right time ;) 

"Above all else, guard your heart,
    for everything you do flows from it."

Proverbs 4:23

The MEGA STRESS ATTACK

STRESSED….

When I am stressed, it really hinders my ability to function. I freeze up. My brain seems to shut down and I can't think straight. Every time I try to think about something remotely important (in any way, shape, or form) I get even more stressed. 

Sometimes the stress only lasts for a little while, and after a talk with my mom, encouragement from a few friends, prayer, and MANY deep breaths, it’s over, and I realize I didn’t need to be that stressed. 

Then other times I have a MEGA STRESS BREAKDOWN. 

No matter how much comfort my family and friends supply it only makes me feel better for a few minutes. Productivity becomes impossible. Every small thing that happens to me seems to be TEN TIMES worse than it actually is. And I even know that things aren’t as bad as I have told myself. But for some reason I can't shake the SUPER STRESSED feeling. 

My life falls apart in my head (and though this seems dramatic it’s how I feel). Anything remotely unfortunate that has happened recently seems much worse. Like accidentally doing something dumb in front of someone at youth group or getting a C on my biology test, it all blows up in my mind. 

This is when I have to BREATHE! Turn on the music, get out my bible, and really just ask God to help me get through the day. I may get a few things done, but nothing like I had wanted, and I have to trust him that all the school I didn’t get done will work out okay. That the fact that it's Thursday and I’ve done almost no school the whole week, will be okay, that maybe there was something else God had in mind for me to do. 

It’s now when I really can appreciate my homeschooling to the proper degree. When my mind blows, a fuse I can take the day off to calm myself down and give my worries to God. 

Really I’m not sure why my stress gets so bad, I really don't have a reason for it. I don't have to much to do, and what I have isn't that hard. 

In these times there is really only one thing that will give me peace in my stress. And that is Christ. 

So when you're dealing with a MEGA STRESS ATTACK (or even just normal stress) remember God is there, knowing every bit of what you feel, and that he will give you peace.

Be still and know that I am God.
     Psalms 46:10

Who of you by worrying can add a single hour to his life? 
     Matthew 6:27

Come to me all you who are weary and burdened and I will give you rest.
       Matthew 11:28

Peace I leave with you you:not as the world giveth, give I unto you, Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid. 
         John 14:27