There's been an abnormal amount of "remember me?" messages coming through to me lately.  Through myspace, or facebook or whatever I'm running into more than a few people who were in my life at one point or another.  Mostly it's people from the church that asked me to leave, and they're like "hey how's it going what have you been up to?"

Which...most of me is excited to hear from them.  I've been through all the emotions that came with being ejected from a church and being basically abandoned by every single person who promised never to do something like that.  "Friends" if you will.  People who said "God told me that you and I are going to be friends for the rest of eternity" were the first ones to say "God told me that you are living in sin and I can't be around you anymore" so it basically burned pretty bad and I had a looooooooooooooooooooot of emotion to work through.

Hearing from these guys and girls (the majority of which weren't the people who said those things, but nevertheless vanished after I was asked to leave) brings up a few emotions, but it's not as bad as I thought it might be.  It's one thing to wonder what it's going to be like when I meet that one guy who I've written about a couple of times (the one who asked me to minister to his brother and I slept with him instead....sigh.) but having people who were a part of me leaving church suddenly show up and be excited to see me is a little wierd.  It's almost like "well that was horrible that we asked you to leave but you know it's been so long so let's just hang out!!!"

People like that make you want to punch them in the face for all the oblivious life they live.  But is it really worth trying to convince someone that the entire situation was wrong, and their participation in it hurt?  Or is it easier to just let them live in whatever world they have been living in and just see what comes of it?  I always imagine that if you don't learn something from a situation then you're doomed to repeat that situation until you do.  And more than a few people have cringed when I suddenly make a return appearance in their lives.  Not that I seek people out, you see, but life has a way of tying up loose ends for you...or at least giving you the opportunity to do so.

In my quest to renew my own faith and dive deeper into my spirituality, I knew that re-encounters like this would happen and I figured the possibility that those people learned something was probably very small.  But that really isn't the point, I'm learning.  We are only responsible for the things which we ourselves do.  Did they learn something? really isn't the question.  Did I learn something?  That is the big question.  And if I can look at these people who caused so much hurt and did so much damage to me and my faith...inevitably causing me to feel much closer and stronger to my faith in the end...if I can look at them and love them, then I've learned something.  Whatever they've learned isn't up to me...that's up to them and their commitment to their faith.

So my responsibility is to forgive and to endure whatever must be endured, learn what needs to be learned, and apply those things to my life when situations like that happen...or re-happen.

Whoever thought Christianity was going to be fun was RIDICULOUSLY wrong. 

-Aaron-