Repeat

Sometimes it seems like the same exact things happen over and over again in life.  This frustrates me.  Mostly because I tend to expect that the outcome will be different when a familiar situation arises, but that rarely happens.  Some of these things shouldn't frustrate me because they are my own fault, and that is another story all together, but I tend to struggle with the ones I couldn't have changed anything about.

God is good, there's no doubt about that in my mind, and to complain from my circumstances would be insane.  Where this leaves me though is just questioning, I have a great desire to understand everything.  I want to understand things that I know I never will.  Specifically I want to understand how it is that some people (Probably guilty of this myself at times) can treat other people so absolutely terribly and then expect no scarring.  I haven't really had any landmark tragedies in my life, and I am grateful for that, but over the past few months I have experienced a whole lot of betrayal, and I am still trying to figure out how to deal with that.  David writes in Psalm 51:12-14;

"If an enemy were insulting me, I could endure it; if a foe were raising himself against me, I could hide from him.  But it is you, a man like myself, my companion, my close friend, with whom I once enjoyed sweet fellowship as we walked with the throng at the house of God."

So I guess my struggle isn't with God for letting it happen, but with people for being okay with it, and being callous about the destruction their actions cause.  How is it that one who claimed to be a friend can justify taking something from me and try to blame me? Why is it that I am the one left dealing with the negative effects of someone else's sin while they seem to be living carefree and easy? Any offense against me would be easy to move on from if it were accompanied with remorse, but blatant and brazen betrayal just hurts.  This story told by the prophet Nathan probably describes the way I feel best; 

"And the LORD sent Nathan to David. He came to him and said to him, “There were two men in a certain city, the one rich and the other poor.  The rich man had very many flocks and herds, but the poor man had nothing but one little ewe lamb, which he had bought. And he brought it up, and it grew up with him and with his children. It used to eat of his morsel and drink from his cup and lie in his arms, and it was like a daughter to him.  Now there came a traveler to the rich man, and he was unwilling to take one of his own flock or herd to prepare for the guest who had come to him, but he took the poor man's lamb and prepared it for the man who had come to him." -2 Samuel 12:1-4

Here's the problem; I KNOW I'm not guiltless in this. If I apply this story to my life I have to admit that I have been both characters at different times.  It was never someone I'd call my friend when I was the one doing the taking, and I didn't take the same thing that was taken from me, but it was just as bad.  I have faced betrayal in different ways all my life, so why is this one more difficult to move past? I think it is because I had never thought about it from so many different angles, and it had always been easily escapable before.  

My thoughts are torn between guilt and hurt, guilt for all of the people in the past from whom I have taken things, and pain from the constant reminders of recent events.  My memory is generally impeccable, which can be a blessing in some situations, but definitely seems to show up as a curse fairly often as well.  This means that when I was betrayed, the first thoughts that flooded to mind were of times in my past when I had treated a friend like an enemy or when I had gone behind someones back to undermine them.  Thats why it hurts so much. Because it revealed to me the way I may have hurt people in doing things that didn't seem like a big deal to me.

I stated earlier that God is good, and there has still never been a doubt in my mind about this.  I can tell I'm growing because this time instead of hating God because he let something difficult happen to me, I can praise him for showing me the evil I myself have been guilty of and giving me a taste of what it feels like.  I can thank Him for giving me an experience that forces me to double think all of my actions to ensure that what I'm doing isn't hurting my brothers and sisters.  I can thank Him for showing me that I have no business living my life to please myself without a thought for how others feel. 

This post got way off topic from what I intended to write when I started, but the original idea was just going to be complaining that XX's are crazy, and I think what I ended up writing was a lot more meaningful anyways, more proof that God is good.

I'm glad He's in control and not me; my foresight doesn't even come CLOSE to His knowledge.