Just a Project?

This is an excerpt adapted from my journal from Sunday.

"Your ways are higher than my ways and Your thoughts are higher than my thoughts. I know that You know what You're doing in my life right now. I know that You are refining me, that You are pruning me, that You are molding me as the potter shapes the clay. I thank You for doing this, for working in and through me to conform me to the image of Your Son. But God, do you care about the pain this is causing me? Right now I feel like I'm one of Your projects. Like you know exactly what You're doing and You know exactly how I'm going to turn out in the end but are unconcerned about the anguish it is causing in the meantime. I know that pain and sorrow produces a harvest of righteousness, but that only barely softens the blows as they come in."

Burning Bridges

Earlier this week I made a decision that I finalized this morning, about an hour ago. I had this really good friendship with a girl last year that moved into me really liking her. Earlier this semester I talked with her (for the second time) about my feelings for her, and she responded that she had no feelings for me. That really cut me hard and I was a deep blow. I didn't respond to it very well, and I essentially ignored her for the past while. I let our very good friendship (which had continued with pretty good communication over the summer) fall by the wayside. I didn't talk with her often, we didn't play crib or foosball like we used to, we didn't hang out. I didn't really want that to happen, but it did. Part of the reason for doing that was that I was concerned about how she was perceiving my actions - I didn't want her to think that I was not respecting what she had told me. Over the past 2 weeks I haven't been around people here in North America due to being in Africa. I didn't even really think about this situation much, which was on purpose - I didn't want my time in Africa to be used up thinking about issues I was facing at home. But almost as soon as I came home I came up with the idea of completely denying the possibility of anything ever happening between us. I will admit, I was still holding out hope that something might change, but in the meantime our friendship was dying. So I decided to commit to being her brother in Christ and to never pursue anything further than that at any point in the future.