Up and down on a windy day....

My emotions have been up and down all day, like a leaf on the wild and crazy wind that's been blowing all day. I mean, there is actually a wind advisory until like midnight. As I am typing this there are branches hitting the side of my apt so hard that I would think the siding was coming off!! Apparently we are getting some really bad storms later tonight. Possible tornadoes and the like. I don't really think that we will but who knows... I had dinner with my friend Abby tonight and while we were setting there, a lady came in to talk to a couple who obviously knew her. She was crying from the moment she hit the door until she left. Abby and I both were like, we need to give her a hug and we didn't even know what her story was. She was just upset and hurting. Abby wanted to go by her a cookie but you never know how people will take things like that. We tried to carry on a conversation with out listening in but still its hard when you see some one crying to not look and wonder. It just kinda showed how you never know what some one is going through. One place of business can have soo many different stories going on in it with all the people there. A group of ladies meeting and having a great time, students studying with their books and laptops all over the tables, a couple of friends catching up on the latest, a counseling/accountability meeting, and the list could go on and on. Every person here on this planet has a different story, different drama that is going on in their lives. I often say that my life is such a soap opera. I have so many things, crazy things, going on in my life. With my job, my friends, my work and roommates. I sometimes feel like when people ask how things are I need to reply with do you want the quick recap or a play by play? Either way it's probably going to more than they want to know. But one thing that has been repeatedly shown to me lately, in many ways, is that God cares. And He wants the play by play, He already knows it, but He wants us to tell Him again. I have often thought that, like Shrek says, "Better out than in", telling what is going on in our lives, how we feel about things, can help us get through life. We tend to hold everything inside, unless its really great news and then we feel its okay to share with others, but the things that we need to share, need help with, we don't share. Why is that? We won't allow ourselves to think about it because it brings us down. We won't share with others because its private, possibly embarrassing and we don't want to bring them down or have them think bad of us. So what do we do? We push it down and act like it never happened. How healthy is that?! I am not trying to say that we should share every single up and down with every single person we know but I am saying that too often in today's society and more so in today's church, we won't allow our self to let go and share with others. Why? Because we fear the condemnation and judgment that the world is so quick to dish out. Even in the church, perhaps more so in the church. There is some sort of stigma in the mind of the church today, that says you have to be perfect or at least not admit to any problems. I have watched a video that Chonda Pierce recently put out and in it she talks about how in the church today we tend to brush over people's hurts. We just say, pray about it and then let go of it. Or let's sing another verse, give you a little more time to fix whatever it is, and then move on. There are issues going on in the world and church today that can not be fixed in another verse. There is some thing of a serious lack of compassion and mercy in the church today. Why else would a church member feel like it wasn't okay to share her/his problem with another Christian? We are constantly trying to fit the role that the world has of us. That we are perfect or that you have to be perfect to be a Christian? There is an old song, I can't even remember who sang it but it was called "Don't Hide the Scars" You never know what will come of sharing a trying time in your life with some one. What you went through and how you handled it could help someone going through the same thing. I am a firm believer in everything that comes your way is a learning experience. Once you learn a lesson, why would you not share what you learned with another? The Lord can use any situation. He may place a person in your life that is at the beginning of a situation that you just came out of. You could save that person a lot of pain by sharing what came of your situation. You never know.
Okay this is really long and I didn't mean for it to be. I have just really been thinking about this a lot lately. I am soo glad that God is big enough to handle all that goes on the world. He is a Hands on God, an On Time God and He cares! He wants to be apart of our lives. He wants the play by play. We just need to share it with him.