Welcome to the wonderful world of non-confrontation...where I get to confront the things that are on my mind...heart...yada yada...so let's see how this goes...I hate hurting people's feelings...and I HATE being confrontational...but lately, I'm sorta getting frustrated with myself (and others, quite frankly)...it might be the fact that I'm turning 30 in a few days...who knows...you ever felt like you needed to tell somebody something that might help them out but hurt them at the same time? I don't know, could just be me. Being raised in a pastor's home, there are TONS of valuable lessons that my mom and dad taught me. One of those things was the power of an encouraging word (or two). It was EXTREMELY difficult to be negative in our house. If I felt sick, my parents would always say something along the lines of..."you'll be alright" or "there's nothing wrong with you." It wasn't like they were ignoring any of my symptoms, they just didn't dwell on them, if that makes sense. And on the rare occasion I did get sick via yelling ralph on the porcelain throne, I'd always get a positive response...something like..."now that you've thrown up, you should start feeling better." No matter how you looked at things, my parents always found the silver lining and they, in turn, taught me to do the same. I gotta tell ya...God does have a sense of humor though...because my husband is way more "realistic" than I am...realistic is in quotation marks because he calls himself realistic, while I call him just plain ol negative sometimes. ;-) He thinks I'm the mayor of rainbow land and I give out candy to the happy citizens (me and Tyler) and pick money off trees that are surrounded by Anthropologies, JCrews, Nordstroms and Urban Outfitters...but that's not the case...thanks to my incredible parents, who instilled this unshakable faith in me from the earliest time I can remember until now, I can't really help but think that everything's gonna be ok in the end...and if things aren't ok then it's not the end. There has NEVER been a time in my life where I felt the walls caving in on me...is that normal? Sometimes I don't feel normal. I'm rambling...sorry...back to where I was...being a positive person has it's draw backs...add in the fact that I felt like I was living in a fish bowl for the majority of my life as a PK...I'm a total people pleaser...the first step to overcoming something is admitting you've got a problem...there it is...I love to make people feel good about themselves...to a fault...I tell them all the encouraging things about them but then when I know I need to be straight up honest with them about something that I know God wants me to share with them, I freak out...weird, I know...because I can say similar things to my students on a DAILY BASIS and not feel anything...I almost feel like my students take me more seriously than some of my friends do so maybe that's why I feel like I can dig a little deeper with them because they receive it for real and not just as something funny Kensie's trying to say. There are people that I walk life with that I'd love to share what's on my heart with them but there's a wall...and I can't figure out why...fear of rejection? Failure? Being left? Losing a friend? I have no idea. I'm not helping them...I feel like an enabler...am I? I hate enablers. But I'm at a loss of what to do at times like these. I'll leave you with the analogy I've got...let's say you've got this good friend...and they wear this old, ratty-lookin hoodie EVERY day...they've had this hoodie for YEARS...it's sorta their security blanket...and you don't really know what your friend looks like without that hoodie on...and because it's old and worn, it sorta inhibits your friend of doing normal things...running, stretching, letting other people get close...your friend has actually become co-dependent on this hoodie...even the thought of not having this hoodie makes your friend nervous...you get the picture...so, do you tell your friend the typical rainbow land response? "Hey, you're workin that hoodie!" or come with the REAL one from the heart...."Hey, when are you gonna stop living your life under that hoodie?" "It ain't cute anymore anyways!" Too much? That last part might've been a little much, but that's where I'm at...