Love Part 3: Relationships

“There is no fear in love.  But perfect love drives out fear, because fear has to do with punishment.  The one who fears is not made perfect in love.” 1 John 4:18

By the time this post goes up, it will be passed Valentine’s day, so I hope you had a wonderful holiday (is Valentine’s Day considered a holiday?) but even though Valentine’s Day is over, we still have two more posts left in the love series and today we’ll be continuing on with part three.  If you haven’t caught up with parts one and two, you can catch up by clicking on the links below:

Part one

Part two

So today is all about relationships.  Whether or not you are or aren’t in one currently, this post applies to you so don’t skip it just because you’re sitting there thinking “well I’m single so I don’t need to read this”.  I hear you, but please stick around and hear me out.

See, relationships are tricky.  I had a hard time trying to figure out what to write about for this post, because no matter what I say or no matter what you read on the internet, it really comes down to you.  I can’t tell you how to obtain a perfect relationship because every relationship is different, and there really is no secret recipe to having one.  Sure, there are things that can help keep a relationship healthy and good, but you shouldn’t shape your relationship or a future relationship around what you read on the internet or hear from other people.

Why?  Because I used to do that.  All the time, whether I had one or not, I was obsessed with reading those posts on social media that say things like “how to know if you have a good boyfriend/girlfriend” and “10 signs you have an unhealthy relationship”.  I would use those things to shape my idea of what a relationship was supposed to be, and not based on my beliefs or what the Bible says.

If you really want to know exactly what a perfect relationship looks like, the answers are in the Bible.  A good example is in Ephesians 4:2-3 which says, “Be completely humble and gentle; be patient, bearing with one another in love.  Make every effort to keep the unity of the Spirit through the bond of peace”.  All of those things are qualities you want to have in your relationship.  Love does not exist without patience or gentleness.

As for what to look for in a significant other, the only person that can tell you that is yourself.  I strongly disagree with people who think they know exactly who they’re going to be with forever when they meet them.  I mean, sure it may be possible for some people, but really you don’t know someone you just met.  They may have a good first impression, but that impression doesn’t always last.  That’s why dating is a thing.  If everyone just married the person after seeing them one time, can you imagine how high the divorce rates would be then?

The thing is that it takes time to REALLY know someone, and to really know if you want to be with them for a long time.  I don’t think it’s possible to know that after a few days.  You have to love everything about them, even their flaws, which isn’t always easy.  We tend to not like flaws and try to change someone, instead of just embracing them for who they are.  I think that’s one of the biggest things I’ve learned over the years, because no one is ever perfect and part of loving someone is accepting their flaws. 

 The hardest part is probably the waiting.  This is something every person will have struggle with.  It’s that period of your life when you’re looking at the relationships around you and wondering when it will ever happen to you.  Everyone’s been there at one point or another.  The reason for that is because during that time, God is preparing the perfect person for you.  If you’re an artist, you know it takes a long time to create something amazing.  That’s a lot like how it works during the “waiting period”.  

I realized something a few months ago that changed my view on relationships.  When you’re young, relationships can be fun and all, but after a while, you’ll get tired of it and want something “real”.  One day I sat down and said to myself “why would I just keep putting myself through the same situation over and over when I could just save myself the trouble and wait until I have that real one”.  That’s what I’ve stuck to ever since.  I don’t want to be in a relationship just to put it as my Facebook status and snap a few pics.  It’s not worth it to me when I can spend that time growing as a person and enjoying life while I wait for that special person to come into my life.

Honestly it’s one of the best places to be in.  I can’t lie and say it’s not hard sometimes.  There are definitely times when I feel down and lonely, but that’s just part of the process.  I’m a dreamer and I loveeee to fantasize about what my future will be like.  It’s one of my favorite things to do.  For a long time I used to put certain people in those dreams, but now whenever I daydream it’s like just an outline of someone I have yet to meet, and that’s the best part about the dream is thinking and dreaming about the day when that figure won’t be an outline anymore.

The most important thing is to be content.  Be content with where God has you now, and know that He has the best plan already sketched out for your life.  You’ll spend a lot less time stressing and worrying about your life if you let Him guide your path and trust in His plan.  Just as it says in Proverbs 3:5-6, “Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding; in all ways submit to him, and he will make your paths straight”.

Love Part Two: Friendships

“Walk with the wise and become wise, for a companion of fools suffers harm.” Proverbs 13:20

Welcome back!  As you probably already know, today I’ll be continuing my series on love with part two.  If you missed last week’s post, check it out here.

Last week I went over some things about what this series is, defined love as put in the dictionary, and talked about loving family.  Today we’re going to continue along those same lines, but today we’re going to talk about your friendships.

In case you forgot, I’ll go ahead and insert the dictionary definition of love again.

Love- an intense feeling of deep affection

Of course one of the things we’ll be doing throughout all of these posts is to not only look at what the dictionary and society say about love, but see what God’s Word says.  And maybe by the end you’ll even have your own definition of love.

Mark 12:31 says “love your neighbor as yourself”.  Neighbor means your peers, the people around you.  When we love other Christians around us, that means we are loving our brothers and sisters in Christ, which pleases God.  It’s important to build friendships with good people.  If we surround ourselves with good company, that will make a more positive impact on your life and you’ll be much happier. 

Some people make friends easier than others.  For me, making friends has never been easy.  I’m a very shy and reserved person, not outgoing like others.  But one thing I’ve learned is that it doesn’t take a lot to make a friend.  Sure, it does involve stepping out of your comfort zone a little, but let me tell you a little story.  So about a year ago, I was at youth group and we divided up into small groups of about five or six people.  In my group one night we were going around and introducing ourselves and after I introduced myself this girl looked at me and said “you’re really really pretty”.  Ever since that compliment, we’ve been friends.

You don’t have to think of a super impressive thing to say to someone.  It can just be something simple like “hi, I love your hair”.  I think sometimes we overthink and it prevents us from talking to people because we can’t think of something really good to say.  Another thing I’ve learned when trying to make friends is to make yourself approachable.  When you surround yourself with people you already know, there’s a less likely chance that someone new is going to talk to you because they assume you already have your group of friends.

I like going places by myself.  I’ve found that by going alone, it reduces the stress of having to “impress” your friend or whoever you’re usually with, and it makes you more open to other people around you.  It takes some getting used to, but you’d be surprised what all you miss when you’re busy with other people.

So enough about making friends, let’s talk about keeping them.  This is the real key to having good friends, because you want friendships that will last, right?  As I said before, positive things come from being around positive and uplifting people.  Believe it or not, friendships can be just as toxic as some relationships if you “hang out with the wrong crowd”.  But if you have good, positive people as friends then this part should be a breeze.

The most important part of a friendship is to talk.  All the time.  About everything.  Okay maybe not everything, but keeping secrets that you’ve told someone else from your friends is what leads to those dreaded fights.  I think communication is the most important thing when it comes to friendships.  If you don’t communicate properly with your friends, you’ll eventually lose connection with them and they’ll drift away which is pretty sad.

The last thing is to tell them how much you appreciate them.  By letting them know how much you appreciate them being in your life, it shows them that you still care and are making an effort to keep the friendship lasting and going strong.  I’m really bad at this sometimes because I tend to get upset whenever someone isn’t talking to me as much and I wonder why but then I remember that to keep any friendship strong, you have to let the person know that you still value the friendship.  Even if that means texting them first (which is something I literally hate doing), or getting over your pride and being the one to step up and say “hey I just wanted to let you know how much I value you as a friend”.

God told us to love others as He loved us (John 15:12).  He told us to walk with the wise, and forgive others if you have grievances against them.  Obviously it’s hard to top God’s love for us, but if we clothe ourselves in compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience (Colossians 3:12-14), we attract people of the same character.  That’s the real truth to making and keeping friends.

Love Part One: Family

“But if anyone does not provide for his own, especially for those of his household, he has denied the faith and is worse than an unbeliever.” 1 Timothy 5:8

Hello and welcome! Today is a very exciting day because this is the first part of a series I will be doing for the month of February.  Not only that, but this is the first series I’ve EVER done so I’m very excited.  

I’ve seen other bloggers do this and I’ve wanted to do a series for a while, but I wasn’t sure what it would be about.  I needed a topic that I would be able to cover in multiple posts and something that I’m passionate about .  It came to me while I was lying in bed one night.  I was thinking about Valentine’s Day and brainstorming for ideas of what I could write about for my blog.  Then I thought “what if instead of one post, I make a series for Valentine’s Day?”

So here I am now.  Over the next few weeks we will:

This series will be weekly, so there will be a new blog post up every Sunday.  Also, feel free to start a discussion in the comments.  I would love to hear from you!

Now let’s finally dive into this thing called love.  We’re going to start by defining love.  First, let’s see what the dictionary has to say about it.

Love- an intense feeling of deep affection

Does this definition surprise you?  I think it gets pretty close to the point.  After all, love is a feeling, right?   The thing is feelings are different for everyone. People also express feelings differently.  Have you ever heard of someone talk about “love languages”?  Love languages are how each person expresses love.  For an example, someone might perform an act of kindness, like doing the dishes for your parents or cleaning the house for your wife.  If you like to do things like that, that would be your love language. Some might like to give their loved ones gifts.  That’s also an expression of love and a love language.

Some other common forms of showing affection (love language):

Leave a comment below and let me know what your love language is!  I’d love to know.

Now that we’ve talked about what love is and learned about the love languages, I think it’s time to talk about the real first topic in this series: family.  I put family first because that’s obviously higher on the list than some of the others.  Why?  Because your family are the people who share your blood, who share your same last name (in most cases), that you probably live with, that you’ve grown up with.  Your family is probably the people you spend the most time with.  And let’s be real, we all get annoyed with our family sometimes.  Okay, maybe a lot more often than sometimes.  But that just goes to show that even families aren’t perfect.

What saddens me is that there are so many families that are torn apart in some way.  Most of the time this is caused by the parents.  Divorce rates are extremely high these days, and the worst part about divorce is that it affects the children just as much as the marriage.  Children with divorced parents usually are more distrusting and tend to be more aggressive towards their peers (clearly this is not the case for everyone). There are other things that can tear families apart such as the military, and busy jobs or jobs with a lot of traveling.

A strong, healthy family is centered around God.  The Bible says in Joshua 24:15, “as for me and my household, we will serve the Lord.”  If a family serves and honors the Lord, they will have a firm foundation in their home.

Love takes patience, especially when it comes to family.  That’s why I think the two values go hand in hand.  I’ll be talking a lot about patience in this series, so get used to it now.  It’s just almost like you can’t have one without the other.  Just as it says “love is patient”.  It takes a patient person to love, and love requires a lot of patience sometimes. 

Your family should come before anything else in your life, next to your relationship with the Lord.  It’s something that you should treasure and put effort into.  Not every family is perfect, but if you put God in the center and foundation of your relationship with your family, He will bless you with good things in your life.

  

ONE YEAR OF BLOGGING

Today is a very exciting day.  Why is it a very exciting day?  Well because today marks exactly one year since I published my first post on my blog! I’ve come a long way in just a year, and I’m honestly so proud of myself for accomplishing so much in just 365 days.

Background:

You might not know this, but before my blog, I used this website for the music I used to write and record.  Looking back now it was honestly pretty embarrassing, but it’s what got me started.  After not recording any more music or posting on my website, I started tossing around the idea of turning it into a blog.  I already knew I loved to write, and people liked what I wrote so I thought what if I had a place to share it with everyone?  I wanted to reach people beyond just my family and friends, people who may be going through things and needed someone to relate to.  That’s what I wanted to do with my blog.

How the blog got its name:

Next you might be wondering how I came up with the name “Beauty in This Brokenness”.  This was a concept I had been thinking about for a long time before I even thought about starting a blog.  The idea I had was originally for an album I started to write a long time ago (which obviously never came to be), and it was about seeing light in times of darkness.  That was what I wanted my blog to be based on.  To share my stories and maybe inspire some people along the way.

What is this blog about?:

I don’t classify my blog under any certain “niche” (as people in the blogging groups on Facebook say).  What I mean by that is some people write blogs about lifestyle, some are about travel, some are about addiction recovery.  There are endless possibilities of what a blog can be about.  Usually when you go to a blog, you can find out what a blog is about by looking at either the title or the tagline.  But for me, I didn’t want to limit myself to one topic.  I didn’t want to feel like I couldn’t write about food because my blog was about photography.  That’s why my tagline is “just me talking about……well basically everything”.  If you do come here looking for something specific, that’s why I created the “tags” section on the bottom right hand side of the screen.  If you click on one of the words, it will show you all the posts related to that topic.

Challenges:

There are plenty of challenges that come with blogging.  Just like with anything you do in life, people are going to criticize you.  One of the best things about my first year of blogging is that I haven’t received a lot of negative criticism.  Most people are very supportive and I’ve gotten good feedback from other bloggers as well.  There have been times when others don’t always agree with what I have to say (I mean, the only reason why my abortion post is one of the most popular posts is because I used it in a debate on Facebook), but these days you can’t say anything without making someone angry.  That’s why I’ve learned not to take the negative responses I get too seriously because there is always going to be someone that doesn’t like you or doesn’t agree with you and I’m perfectly okay with that.  But I’m not going to change myself to please others.

Being your own boss is hard.  There’s no one to tell you what to do or when to post, so it can be easy to slack off.  That’s probably been the biggest challenge I've faced over the past year.  I tend to lack skills in the motivation department because I get distracted or lazy too easily.  When I first started my blog, my “schedule” was to post something on my blog twice a week.  For someone that still has school and other tasks, it proved to be very difficult to keep up with.  After I struggled with posting for a few months, I decided I don’t need a schedule.  When I feel inspired to write and post something, I do it; whenever that may be.  I’ve learned that it motivates me so much more than trying to stick to a schedule.  Lately I’ve been trying to post twice a month, but sometimes it doesn’t always work out.   If you follow me on social media (@beautyinthisbrokenness), I always let you know when I posted something new.  Or you can sign up for email updates on the right hand side of the screen.

What’s to come:

I have so many things I want to do with my blog.  I’m always trying to create good content and reach more and more people.  I now have over 100 views on two of my posts and over 2,600 views over the whole year.  That’s crazy to me.  When I started out, there were only about 15-20 people reading my posts and now there’s anywhere from 60-100.  Those are big numbers to me.  I remember when I got excited because 12 people listened to my song on Soundcloud three years ago.  My goal is to get those numbers even higher for next year.  But of course numbers mean little to me because the only reason it’s possible to reach those numbers is because of you.  I wouldn’t even be sitting here writing this if it weren’t for you.

Another goal I have is to self-host my own website.  For all of you that aren’t geeks like I am, what I mean is that I want the url to say “beautyinthisbrokenness.com”, instead of “blogspot.com” at the end.  Blogger has been so awesome because it’s free and simple to use.  Being a student with little funds, it will definitely be awhile, but one day I hope to create my own site.  I also want to collaborate with other bloggers and have guest posts.  I think it would be a lot of fun, but I still need to work my way up a little more before I can do that.  Those are just a few of the things I would love to see happen in the future (hopefully not that far off).

Lastly, I just want to take a minute to thank each and every person who has even clicked on the link to my blog.  I am so thankful for all the support I have received, and like I said before none of this would even be possible without you.  Thank you for an amazing first year of blogging and I can’t wait to see what this new year brings.

You wouldn’t believe the reaction you get when you’re a Christian and you tell another Christian that you don’t attend church on a regular basis.  Seriously, it’s like a kid telling another kid that they don’t go to school.  They give you this really strange look, like “are you sure you’re even a Christian”?  Yes I’m a Christian, no I’m not a perfect Christian, yes I pray everyday, yes I read the Bible as often as I can, but no, I don’t go to church.

I have a bad history with churches, okay?

Actually, I have a bad history with the people in those churches.  But that’s not what I’m here to talk about today, so we’ll save those stories for another time.

I heard a sermon a few months back when I was visiting a church one Sunday that really got to me.  It was about the barriers that keep people from coming to church and being Christians, and one of the things the pastor talked about was a survey that a Christian author had done, and here are some of the things those people said in the survey about Christians:

Christians are:

First I have to take a second to laugh at the “too political” part, because I think everyone already knows that Christians can be a little bit too political, if there is such a thing these days because isn't everyone too political?

The whole time I was listening to this sermon, I was thinking about how everything the pastor said were things that I have been trying to prove my whole life.

Let me pause and just make it clear that I do not hate other Christians.  1 John 4:11 says, “dear friends, since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another."  I do, however, believe that Christians should always set a good examples, in a way like how older siblings should be a good examples to their younger siblings.

I see so many good examples of Christians, yet so many ones that do not present the character of what God expects of a Christian.  According to the Bible, Christians should be:

So, with all that being said, let me get back to what this post is actually about.  Do you have to go to church to be a Christian?  Or rather, is it a requirement?

There are two answers to this question.  By society’s standards, yes.  But does the Bible say it is required?  Well it’s not in the 10 Commandments, which are the guidelines to every Christian’s life.  But the Bible does encourage going to church in several passages, such as Ephesians 4:16 which says, “for whom the whole body, joined and held together by every joint with which it is equipped, when each part is working properly, makes the body grow so that it builds itself up in love.”

The key point in that passage is the body, the church is supposed to build itself in love.  The problem with churches these days is that there are some that do not build themselves up in love, because in order for the church body to work properly, every person must be building up other members of the body.  Other members of the body means, of course, Christians.  If we do not build each other up in love, the church cannot function.

I’ve seen it happen.

Finding a church is often like finding a house, it can be a very discouraging and difficult process to find “the perfect church”.  I know for me it has been very frustrating and difficult when people ask me why I don’t go to church, or tell me why I should.  Again, by society’s standards it is apparently a requirement that if you are a Christian, you must attend church regularly.

But for now, I can respond to anyone that asks me about church with: “I just haven’t found the right one”, and you can too if you are currently facing this situation.  But never give up hope, because the perfect church is out there, you just haven’t found it yet.