Band-aids

At work the other day, one of our little boys was playing when we noticed that he had a bloody elbow. I hadn't seemed to notice, but it needed to be cleaned up anyway. I carried him inside, and he acted completely fine, still cheerful and all. However, when I started to gently clean his arm, he began to cry and say "No, no!" I tried distracting him by pulling out the colorful band-aids and asking which of the bright colors he wanted..but he just kept saying "No!" It was so sad having him cry like that, but I couldn't do anything about it; the injury had to be dealt with so it could heal well. What struck me more than his crying though was his attempts at getting away..sort of. He didnt run from me,  but rather would sort of move to my side, away from my cleaning, bandaging hands. It was like he wanted the comfort of being held while he was sad/injured, but he didn't want me to deal with the problem because it hurt too much.

This kinda made me think. I think sometimes we are like that with God (I'm not comparing myself to God. At all. I promise!) But like, I think when we're hurting and have some sort of problem, we sometimes want him to comfort us, to make us feel ok about it, but not to actually start fixing/healing us, because that actually can get painful. He wants to truly heal us; we just want to feel ok. But He loves us too much to be alright with just letting us ignore the bleeding wounds and feel better. He wants us to be better.

Maybe a week or so later, a friend of mine spoke at our college group about scars, how we have invisible ones that we want to hide, but how Jesus brings us true healing. We just have to let Him..to "want to be well." This isn't EXACTLY like my story, but it reminded me of it. Just kinda makes me think.

Isn't it nice belonging??

So I think I've basically entered a weird sort of early mid-life crisis..I'm quietly freaking out about being almost done with school, and I've developed a weird habit of going to and/or joining things that make people say, "You? Seriously?" One of these things is running for a second term on student government..with a group of people who, while they mostly ACT nice to me, I basically don't trust overall. They're unkind to my friends..and I feel like they might manipulate or not care about me at all. But they asked me to join them, and I didn't know the other guys at the time, so I figured it wouldn't matter.

Long story short, things were pretty alright until this week..campaign week. It is so intense..one over-drama situation broke out yesterday, and it was not a good day for me. I made the mistake of saying something about having a bad day on facebook..i know, i know...

Today a girl associated with.."my people"..asked if it was ok, wanted me to talk, justified, tried to reason..and i would have been fine to walk away from the conversation. But one thing that struck me was that at one point she said something like, "You've been in sg, isn't it nice to belong?"

There may be anomalies..I don't know. But ultimately I think that we as human beings have a fundamental longing to belong..to find people to embrace us, to care for and be cared for BY us, to defend us and uplift us and..all that stuff. For some people this takes the form of finding a strong, loving community..for others we find people who "love" us..even if we lose us in pursuing their acceptance. That group can be fun, but I don't like who I am with them. I wonder if they like who they are with them..or if it's just what they know..