I’m currently sitting at a hotel in Dallas (a mighty cool one) on a Friday night in my pjs. It’s been a LONG time since I’ve been bored. It won’t last long…some friends will be here in the next couple of hours but for now I’m enjoying some time to just be. It’s been a crazy week, one of those weeks that I know will be beneficial for the rest of my life. I’ve learned a lot. I’ve learned about trust, forgiveness, love but on the other side of that I’ve also learned about mistrust, unforgiveness, and bitterness. What I’ve found to be the most interesting is the choice we have. We choose to feel the way we do. Sure there are times when obvious circumstances are going to cause us to feel a certain way (i.e. loss = sadness, etc.), but there are also those times when we naturally want to feel a certain way. Something doesn’t go our way, someone breaks our trust, someone hurts us…it’s easy to choose the anger, resentment, unforgiveness. I’ve been on both sides this week…the side where I was betrayed and the side where I betrayed. Now I can say from my stance as the betrayer it was in no way intentional. In fact, it almost killed me knowing that I hurt and disappointed someone I care so much about. I had to ask for forgiveness and trust that it would be granted. Now on the other side, I can’t say that the betrayal wasn’t intentional. I really don’t know. But what I do know is that as I was praying thru it I was overwhelmed with love and forgiveness. Now don’t get me wrong, my trust level has changed, just like it’s probably changed with the friend I hurt, unfortunately. What I’ve learned from all this is that more times than not in my life, I need to learn to hold my tongue. More times than I’d like to admit I’ve said things that were unkind and hurtful. There was no purpose behind those words other than a temporary feeling that maybe they deserved it. They don’t. We’re all messed up, broken people. It just transpires in different ways. I still struggle with insecurity, always trying to measure up to someone else. I struggle with taking risks because I fear failure. What I overheard over and over this week at the RightNow conference here in Dallas is how essential failing is. We don’t learn and we don’t grow if we don’t fail. And truth be told, the people who truly love me, love me just as I am and if I fall on my face, they’ll be the first to pick me back up. Too bad Humpty Dumpty didn’t have my friends….