Read me! Read me now!

Well, I was making a rather long post about the fact that celebrities are terrible voice actors, but the post got lost without having been saved. I'll still do it, but it will just be a while.

Instead, I'd like to share this opportunity to share with you all something very valuable I just learned.

I am not perfect.

Yes, you read that right. For those of you who don't know me, hello, how are you? What's your name? A pleasure to meet you. Also, I must tell you, that I think very highly of my knowledge in various areas, especially in music. I'd like to think I know a fair amount about both music itself and music history. The problem is, there's a lot I don't know.

And I hate that.

The second thing:
I get very annoyed with people and don't share it. Such as when people pick arguments with me. I hate that. I want to tell them to shut up and go away. I want to tell them they are idiots, don't know what they're talking about, and I want to slap them around a little. It's partly my desire to get along with everyone that I hate arguments, but it's also my ego. I like being right. So, how do I not share it? I try to be tactful with the people who argue with me. I try to be nice and share my thoughts. I don't tell them that I'm tired of arguing, I just go on and do it. I try to be fair, but that's really sucking.
Here's the problem:
When someone is dead wrong, I want them to know it. When I am dead wrong, I want to make sure that the other person knows that I didn't hear them correctly/misunderstood the question/that I was in fact agreeing with them but phrasing it differently/didn't know they were talking about that particular thing or else I would have conceded the point. The point is, I like looking good.

Another thing is that I have no idea many times how to deal with people. I am quite tired of being nice to people who aren't nice to me, and I'm tired of feeling like I have to be nice. I'm tired of seeing milquetoast men on TV and in my daily life. I'm tired of having to constantly battle the temptation to cave in to peoples' desires simply because they are willing to argue longer. For once I just want to tell someone to shut the heck up.

That being said, I also want to be able to completely forgive. I don't like walking around with the bitterness of niceness and the mask of tactfulness. I want to be able to forgive someone when they wrong me, to deal with it well rather than give some bland, "oh, it's ok, I didn't even notice." No, I want to acknowledge when someone has hurt me. Even more, I want to acknowledge when I have hurt someone else. Few things suck more than 1.Apologizing for something I didn't do, and 2.Not knowing when to ask forgiveness and the person I've hurt just stews because they won't say anything. Of course, the first one is on us. We need to let go of what doesn't matter, and as with number two, expect people to tell us when something is bothering them. If we want to be able to tell someone that something they did hurt us, we must expect the same of other people. I must realize I am not responsible when someone won't tell me something I did hurt them, and they just internalize it and act nice towards me (I hate it especially when I do it). However, I want to do my best to make sure that I am as straight with others as I can be, but I can only control my end of it.

So, if I have offended anyone out there, please forgive me. I'm sorry, I have no excuses, and I just plain apologize.

As for those that have hurt me:

Cram it.

Kidding, of course. What I mean to say is, I forgive you. I love you very much, even though I'm bad at showing it. I don't feel like continuing to rationalize my behavior and beat myself up, so there it is. Now get off my back.

Anywho.

I really want to be not so concerned with spiritual checklists and be focused on Jesus. Instead of making sure that I've given tracts to five people today, I'd rather focus on Christ and let Him shine through me wherever I am. I'm really tired of putting Him in a box and making Him in my image. It's supposed to be the other way around, I hear. After all, He's very good at shattering my expectations.

After all, He set us free. Totally and completely free. 100%.

Now, before this post goes off in another direction, as I'm getting tired and it's late, I'd like to nip something in the bud. "Surely," you say, "You don't mean totally free. You mean free to do the right thing." Well, yes, we are now free to do the right things that before we were incapable of doing. But we are free to do bad stuff, too. It's the age old problem we face: true freedom means we'll be free to screw the heck up. It's the only way we'll ever get real love. Robots are free to obey their programming, but nothing else. We, however, are not robots. We are free to obey God's commands, and free to break them. The difference is, that when we see God, and we look up to him the same way we looked up to our fathers when we were little, with that combination of reverance, awe, and respect, we want to do anything to please Him. It becomes our joy. We're in his family when we trust Him. We see that, when we become part of His family, we never get kicked out. We may get sent to our room, and even disciplined, but never shunned. In fact, it seems, the more we screw up, the more we get loved. Hmm. Man, that's pretty different from how I've thought about God. I really wish I'd known that sooner. Of course, being that I'm human and always will be, I'd still have made the mistakes I've made. It just would have helped me live a little while I was making them.