Things I learned over Christmas Break:
- Homemade tamales are the BOMB! I should be an honorary Mexican for my tamale-making skills.
- Being sick on Christmas Day is no fun.
- Chinese food still tastes good for at least a week. Trust me.
- I am addicted to food. You would be, too, if you were not allowed to eat real food for almost a week. If you put me on a restricted diet, I will break it within the day. Period. I mean, just look at how the majority of these bullet points are about food. Point made.
- I am extremely blessed by the people God has surrounded me with.
For the week that I was sick over break, I was pretty much confined to the couch and my bed. My only human contact was with my boyfriend Daniel and his parents and the occasional people who visited their home. Now, being an introvert by nature, I could survive with little or no human relations for a good while. But the people that I was surrounded by over break simply refreshed my soul and taught me.
My boyfriend’s father is a pastor of a local church, the church I attend, and I often get to hear how God is actively working in the church when I spend time with him. He deals with a lot of people who have sin in their lives (because let’s face it, Christians still sin from time to time) and it affects his life and causes him pain.
Often I think to myself, “How do you still love people when they sin and still treat them like they have not hurt you?” I have always known that Jesus taught to forgive others and to love them, but sometimes when it gets down to the nitty gritty it’s hard to live it out practically. There are so many times that people sin in a way that affects my life, and I want to love them in a Christ-like way but my hurt is too great. From all the stories I heard from Daniel’s dad, I have learned (or maybe even simply reiterated) that everyone has a past and that everyone has sinned and so we must love them and live life with them regardless. This has been pounded in me from my experiences with people and learned in classes at CBU.
In order to make disciples and live life in harmony with other believers, we must look past our hurts and purposefully invest in people, even if they do us wrong. The justice-seeking part of me always says, ”But they just sinned last week and hurt me in the process! How can I know that they are truly repenting?” But Daniel’s mom taught me something that was so wise. She said that when Jesus talked to the woman at the well, He did not say “When was the last time you sinned?” He said, “From this point on, go and sin no more.” Whether people hurt us last week or the last minute, we must forgive them and love them past their sin.
It seems like I am constantly learning and relearning these lessons, and God keeps putting wise people like these in my life to teach me. I am thankful.