It's interesting to me how we are all so focused on ourselves that we fail to see how are actions affect others. I have been working down here in Abilene, Texas for almost 3 months now and I am still blown away at our capacity to think only of ourselves. In the last few weeks I have had to deal with putting out a fire caused by someone smoking in their bathroom, students climbing out on roofs trying to get into the opposite sex's room, and just recently, I spent over 5 hours waiting in the emergency room for someone who had overdosed on morphine pills.
Why do we all continue to punish ourselves in these ways? Why do we as a people insist on finding new and exciting ways to make ourselves miserable. I myself am finding that I am feeling the weight of this Thanksgiving holiday. I have so many things in my life and things that I have overcome that I should be rejoicing over the opportunity to share a day of thanksgiving with others. What am I doing instead? I am brooding over not being able to go home to Iowa to spend this holiday with my family. I know in my heart that I should be thankful for my life, and I am, it's just that for me-this pain is real. I know in my heart that stacked up against the losses that the people in the Gulf region have endured, my pain is nothing, but for me my pain is real. In spite of having multiple options for where to go for Thanksgiving dinner, I still feel sorry for myself=The pain is real.
This is where I live in terms of the lessons that I try to teach to my residents. Ours is not to continue to dump on ourselves with guilt for feeling bad-Ours is to learn from these things so that they allow us the ability to walk in other people's shoes. If we truly learn about ourselves and become comfortable in our own skins, we will gain the perspective to reach out to others in their pain withour needing to defend our own.
This year, I am thankful for the gift of Jesus. I am thankful for my family. I am eternally thankful for the friendships that God has brought into my life=without some of you available on the other end of the line, where would I be?!? I am also thankful for the hurts in my life that God carried me through in order to help me be the man I need to be to be effective with my residents.
Have a Great Thanksgiving!!!
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"But you, dear friends, build yourselves up in your most holy faith and pray in the Holy Spirit. Keep yourselves in God's love as you wait for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ to bring you to eternal life." Jude 1:20-21
3 comments:
I am thankful for you Jason.
I am thankful that you finally updated your Blog!!
I would love to invite you to my home for the holidays again like I did at IWU, that was a lot of fun for me.
But since you live in Texas and I don't and since you have a job to do, I can't. But just the same, I would like to wish you a Happy Thanksgiving and offer you some advice on how to survive a holiday away from home...DO NOT watch anything on TV that has anything in the title that reminds you of being away from home, this effectivly rules out ANYTHING on the "Lifetime","Hallmark", "ABC Family", or "AMC" channels.
Also stay away from those Coffee commercials where the guy comes home in the middle of the night and wakes the family up with fresh coffee, and the hallmark card commercials.
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