a better way of saying it.

I wish there were a better venue to voice how I really feel. It's really unfortunate because there's so much you can't say via Facebook status, Twitter, or personal blog. If it's even slightly about someone else, the passive-aggressiveness abounds, because chances are you're friends with/following that person. Or they know your blog address. So they end up seeing it in a roundabout way and either know it's about them or are completely oblivious.

Of course, I could use my pen-and-paper personal journal, but then who else would see it? Just me? That's seems a bit pointless. But then again, do I want other people to see that I'm upset at someone? Probably not. So that means that if I use my blog, Facebook, or Twitter to vaguely vent upsetness about something someone did, it's purely for selfish reasons.

Well, I'm glad we have that figured out. Rest easy, internet world. I know your secrets!

I guess all that was to boil things down to this: I am bad at loving people with no expectation of anything in return after they've exercised it repeatedly. I know that seems like it makes the original notion of loving people seem invalid in the first place, but honestly, I do well at it at first! I'm patient and loving, and get along fine for awhile... but after being trodden over again and again, I just get terrible at it. Those are the times when your original intentions really come out, and either you keep going with a ton of prayer, or you fail miserably and explode with frustration. The latter seems to happen more and more these days. And that's where these late nights are born... my mind races with upsetness, and I just end up sobbing the night away until 5 in the morning and the sun is starting to rise. Months of patience gives way to selfishness and I just end up feeling hurt! O Lord, I need your unfailing love and understanding... I need the kind of grace and patience that stays.

a rant.

The world takes one look at idealists and scoffs at them.

They want to bring them down, tell them that life isn't what they think it is. They want to make sure they have a "real" view of the world. But really, is that helping idealists at all? Are the nonidealists doing it out of love, or doing it because their own lives are so unhappy that they're doing it because, "gosh darn it, if I'm not happy then no one should be."

I just don't understand it.

Joel and I are idealists. We have so many ideas of how life could be better and more free, according to Christ and his words. This is not to say that we don't know how the world is right now, but we seek for the world to be better, not just revel in what it already is. But so many people just can't handle that.

Since when did Christianity include pessimism?

Even I'm a culprit when I'm in a cranky mood, but good gracious, I see it everywhere. Christians who are just trying to be "realistic" about life and relationships. Perhaps we should stop trying to preserve ourselves and rejoice at every opportunity afforded to us. Rejoice even when there's no call for it or no reason, even when we are wronged or spat upon. Instead of becoming a product of our tough experiences, to forget them and act contrary to them, so that we in turn don't burden them on others.

"By acting like a man in love, he became a man in love."