The title may have been misleading to some, but it is the most accurate way to describe how I feel on this topic. My last post was about learning to love the unpopular and the popular, the arrogant and the meek, the nerds and the bullies, the hateful and the loving, all completely without resentment.

The problem now is that the lines have been blurred again for me in a way I couldn’t forsee. I am friends with a popular girl who looks down on everyone else and will blatantly show her arrogance and hatred both to me and directly to the kids she sees as losers.

The other night she was sitting with me on my front porch and we were playing with chalk, discussing our plans for the future, my brothers were making fun of mine, blah blah blah, everyone was having a decently good time. About a block away she sees one of my other friends coming up the street. This girl has troubles, from depression to bouts with witchcraft to just generally being an outsider in school. The mean girl, who I will refer to as M, starts making snotty remarks about the approaching girl, who I’ll refer to as E.

If this isn’t bad enough, M continues making these stupid arrogant cruel comments until E is right near us, all the while me telling M to cut it out. E finally reaches us. I invite E to come play basketball with me. She says no, not today. M makes a snotty comment that she can’t understand E because she keeps mumbling. E looks hurt, and looks to me to see my reaction. I don’t know what to do, so I ignore M completely, as though she hadn’t said anything and tell E that it would be great if she wanted to come by and play anytime. E nods and walks away.

M says, “what? I tried to be nice. you have to give me that.” I say, “I don’t have to give you anything. that was a bitchy thing to do.” M laughs and shrugs.

I sincerely consider punching M and going inside. Problem is, this is where I hit my dilemna. To punch or not to punch.  I represent Jesus in everything I do. Do you drop the cruel friend for the good of the rest? Is it my place to make that call? I am probably the only person in her life that is trying to show her God’s love. Should I just cut off my ability to be a good influence because she is destructive to others? Is it fair for me to decide she is hopeless?

Fact is, she is dating my brother. I work with her. These two factors make the decision even more difficult.

I’ve asked these questions to three separate people, all of them girls. The response is always the same: you need to talk to her, confront her about what she is doing to other people. Tell her it needs to stop. If she doesn’t change, then quit hanging out with her.

Personally, I hate that option. I hate confrontation; I hate showing less than unconditional love, and that feels like conditional love to me; I hate that this could potentially send my relationship with my brother down a dark road; I hate it.

I think I need to go ask three guys. I want one of them to tell me I should just beat her up and not worry about what comes next. I want another of them to tell me that I should be willing to deal with the abuse she puts on my friends in the hopes that someday she will realize for herself what she is doing and change her heart. I want someone to tell me something else ridiculous.

I want to be so open and honest and loving with her that she can stab me in the back hard enough to completely destroy my life. Then I want God to pick up the pieces.

I’ve grown up in public school. The popular are loved and the unpopular are hated. The social structure is terrible.

I took a year off my junior year to get my priorities straight, focus on schoolwork, and find other places in the community where people choose to fellowship rather than being forced. Over time, the traditional public school way of valuing people left me, but in its place was the other extreme.

I was a fighter for the cause of the unpopular body of kids, and in turn rejected the popular, the bullies, the mean girls, the rich kids, whatever.

Now, I see that there has to be a bit of an abstract balance. I have to love everyone. I have to see the value in all people. I have to love the drama queen who makes the odd girl out feel like dirt. I have to spend time with both of them, loving on them as I can.

Because whether I can see it or not, both sides want more than what they see. Both sides are destroyed in this process.

That’s all.

My friend Julia just came home from a two week missions trip to Guatemala. They gave their testimonies, put on dramas for the children, and just shared the love of Jesus with everyone.

We went to the movies last night, and I was riding with Julia on the way home. She told me all about her trip. The most amazing part of her story, though, is that two children were healed by Jesus through prayer. A boy’s hearing was restored after a half hour of prayer, and a girl’s sight was restored overnight. Amazing.

I am full of awe at God’s grace.

I have awesome friends.

I am going to see one of them perform in a battle of the bands tomorrow night, work permitting.

I discovered a new talented person today, Imogen Heap. She is a beautiful musician, and she might just have the hairstyle that I have searched so long in vain for. Check out her video “Headlocked.” It is fantastic.

I went to thursday night message at our youth ministry tonight. I have started going early to have beautiful conversations with a few of the young youth leaders of the unit(yh!). We were discussing LDCs and the effects of the international poverty relief efforts on developing economies. We wanted to debate whether such relief is doing any good in the long run or if we need to look for new options to defeat poverty. My friend, who seems to have discussed this before I had arrived, suggests, or rather tells me that I am going to go into development in lesser developed countries as a lifelong career.

It wasn’t much of a surprise to me that anyone would suggest that. After all, I had been thinking that very same ever since I listened to the testimony of a young missionary at summer camp when I was about ten. But anyways, I had never even mentioned anything like that with this group of friends. This is mostly because I assumed that, since my dreams change everytime I see a person I admire, so I figured this too might not last.

Usually I would have just made a joke. But for some reason I sat on the couch and blurted to them the fact that I wanted to learn Spanish, become a surgeon, and move to Chile forever and ever. (which is the truth)

Later,  we were playing Scrabble in the ministry before the lesson started, and another kid comes up to my friend and starts telling him about this sudden plan that he has to use t-shirt designs that he and another kid thought up in his spare time to fundraise for whatever mission trips are being planned. Huh.

The message for the night was about stepping up. The speaker, Ken, talks about some guy(Larry Walters?) who is known for attaching balloons to a lawn chair and floating 5,000 ft in the air, into a dangerous air traffic zone for planes. When asked why, apparently the guy said he was just tired of sitting around doing nothing.  Ken also stressed the importance of community. He explained how important it was to have people to stand with you, fellow believers in this world, who would lift you up.

Just when the message stops, a person I have occasionally hung out with over the course of the last three years takes the mike. She always told me she was sort of bhuddist. She announces that she overdosed on crack cocaine, should be dead right now, and that she feels she is missing something. As soon as she started speaking, I just started crying.

She accepted Christ right then and there, we prayed for her, and she is arranging to go to a rehab to beat the addiction one last time. Please pray for her! She is very exhausted and I am so glad that she can rest in the arms of Christ.

Later on after she left, I went to hang out with the friends from the discussion before. That was when I was hit with yet another extreme moment. My friend(who had told me to do development before) poured out his heart for the world, his goals, his thoughts, his plans, all of the things that the message of standing up and living had brought about in him.

One of my favorite thoughts that he had for the night was this(paraphrased): ‘I want to get out there and live. We hear about people whose goal in life is to be rich. Well, that just doesn’t interest me. I mean, sure, I like to have comfort, to have things. But the things that matter to me are people, the people I come in contact with. I want to spend my life doing what I enjoy. My one option is to get a job, buy a house, get married, live a normal life. But that bores me. So instead of thinking that oh, I’m going to go live this grand life for the glory of it, to be seen as someone unique or whatever, I’m just going to do it because I am bored. ‘

All I can say and do is just jump up and down and scream EXACTLY!!!  Amen!

And then he said something else. He told me that yesterday he had fasted and prayed for two people. Me, and the kid with the t-shirt idea. He asked God for both of us to feel called to step up that day. He asked God to call us to be world changers. In particular, he asked that the t-shirt kid come in and say something to him without even being prompted, as soon as he walked in the door, about being excited to do something for God.

And guess what? It happened. And it will continue to happen. God sustains my faith. Thank You Lord!(this is fairly irrelevant to the post, but here is a photo I messed with. It’s my little brother, Forr. He is the most gorgeous boy in this world, just in case you wanted to know who gets that title.)

Just thought you all might like to see this.

I woke up with an entirely new outlook on my life, my promising future in all the ways it could be, my ambitions, etc. I hopped up, took a shower and cleaned my room.

I did school work. I went to work.

My mom came home mad at my little brother for not cleaning the house and mad at me for getting behind in my schoolwork.

I went back to work(split shift).

My dad drove past when I was driving home and lectured me about working too much as a student, as we sat there at the side of the road in the middle of town.

I hung out with my dad and little brother in the park.

I went to church and pulled my friend away from the rest so we could take the dog for a walk and settle a few things. It turned into a screaming heart to heart on the concept love vs. dependence. I tried my hardest to get her to see that sometimes we must let people face the hard consequences of their actions in order to get away from their misery. She fought her hardest to convince me that people should be given another chance time and time again even if they don’t want to be helped(That may or may not have been a low blow).

I said some things that probably pissed her off, maybe hurt, and hopefully forced her to look at herself.

On my way home after dropping her off, I passed more friends. I went home, only to meet up with them at about midnight. We discussed ridiculous things like super powers, constellations, and Ron Burgundy. Man I’m glad I have people I can be simultaneously deep and foolish with.

In unrelated news, even though I am the wrong gender for such a position, I temporarily declare myself a mysogynist.

https://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=_donations&business=info%40realhopeforhaiti%2eorg&item_name=REAL%20HOPE%20FOR%20HAITI%20DONATION&page_style=Primary&no_shipping=0&return=http%3a%2f%2fwww%2erealhopeforhaiti%2eorg&tax=0¤cy_code=USD&lc=US&bn=PP%2dDonationsBF&charset=UTF%2d8

This is a call for people who want to change someone else’s world. Haiti has a need for people who are willing to step up and help. I’m just one of several bloggers trying to get the word out about this mission.

So I FINALLY went to see the new Indiana Jones movie(I know its only been about three days since it was released, but….) and it was great! It really is sad to see all  of my favorite actors grow old. I grew up watching Indiana Jones with my brothers.

In related news, Shia LeBeouf(sp?). There is something about him that just makes me think that he doesn’t have the acting thing 100% down yet, but I would be interested to see him take on the role of the next Dr. Henry Jones Jr. for a few movies. Is it just me or does he look like Marlon Brando?

Indiana Jones: Just historical enough to be half believable, toeing the line of ridiculous, all tied together with Harrison Ford’s expressions and really awesome special effects. I’ve got to say that, as a history and theology and language nut, Indiana Jones is way more interesting to me than the usual plots of James Bond, or even Marvel comic movies. {Not that my butt won’t be in the theatre for the Black Knight.}

I would like to hear what is thought about the line between letting our light shine before men and not letting our right hand know what the left is doing.

Here is my basic idea: Don’t do good works for the praise of other people, and don’t go out of your way to tell everyone about how great you are. Also, we are supposed to be examples right?

So, I sponsor kids. Is it a responsibility of mine to keep it a secret? Or is it my responsibility to use my own sponsorship to be a voice to the whole world?

Maybe it is a level of maturity issue.