Letting Go

Well, I'm back to my very "experienced" *ahem* advice giving:D This time though, it's a personal lesson that I've learned that I think everyone needs to learn. This lesson is about letting go.

For this blog post, I'm going to address letting go of people, but I know this can be applied to a lot of other things. Letting go of anger, bitterness, sometimes letting go of dreams that aren't meant to be....the list goes on and on. For my personal experience, I've had to let go of some people.

Once upon a time, I had this friend who we'll call John. I met John at a time in my life where I really wanted to have a guy friend. I didn't want a boyfriend or anything like that, but I was just really wanting to have a friend that was a guy. Since there aren't very many guys in my church, and the ones that are in our church aren't my age, I had no guy friends. To some it may not seem like a big deal, but there's just something special about having a guy friend that doesn't have crazy girl emotions and drama.

So anyways, I met John. We were the same age, with the exception of about a month and a half, and we quickly became very good friends. I understood him, he understood me, and he put up with all of my randomness and meaningless babblings. After about 8 months, I realized that are friendship was not what it had been. We no longer treated each other the way we had when we first met-I was quick to get upset and he was quick to have a sharp word or be rude to me.

After a while it began to wear on me. I didn't want to talk to him, I was usually upset with him, and I just didn't want it anymore. I kinda gave myself a pep talk about it. I told myself that I didn't deserve to have someone treat me badly, and I shouldn't constantly have to be on guard to defend my playful picking and joking. I didn't want that emotional strain all the time. I realized that some people come into our lives for a season. Not everyone that we become friends with come into our lives to stay. Sometimes they come into our life for a season. I realized with John that he was there to temporarily provide friendship for me. He wasn't meant to stick around forever. If I were to try to hold on for him, and believe me I did for a while, it would be worse for me. Now, I occasionally talk to him, and when I do it's very pleasant:) I guess the saying, "Familiarity breeds contempt" is very true:)

There's just something about trying to hold on to those "seasonal" people. If it's not meant to be, it will only drag you down and hurt you. I once heard it said that "saying good bye is another way of saying 'I love you'." It's so true! If a relationship whether it be friendship, or a more serious relationship, sometimes when you really love someone, you will be willing to say, "I love you enough to realize that I'm not what's best for you, so I'll let you go."

I hope I wasn't too redundant in this blog post, but I wanted to share my knowledge with other people:D Letting go is sometimes the best thing...better for you, better for the people around you, better for the other member of the relationship:)