it would be an injustice not to see...

...that kind of love live on.


So to sort of follow up on the last blog, I'm extremely worn down by the attitude within my family this holiday break.

I know that one of the places where you really let your guard down as a Christian is around your family, particularly if your family doesn't share the same kind of faith with you. You might be able to hold it all together and watch what you say, how you react and how you treat everyone else when you're not with your family and somehow as soon as you get home you let yourself go and start to tear them down, whether you do it directly by words or indirectly by attitude. It kills me to see people treat their family like junk, so I try and make an effort not to do the same. However, I'm finding it extremely hard to have a good, positive attitude around my family lately. I keep getting discouraged by the fact that one of my stepsisters isn't sure she believes in God at all, the other has such an incredibly wicked attitude, and my brother can't seem to sacrifice the smallest thing to help me out for less than a day. [Okay, that's it. I'm done complaining, I promise].

It has been so hard for me to keep up a good attitude and positive energy, and I'll be honest and say that I've done a bad job of it this week. Satan definitely knows where to hit you. Not only does he instigate, but he helps you come up with excuses of why it's okay for you to not live like Christ for a day because your circumstance is just that bad. Which is total crap because no circumstance is bad enough that we can't keep following Christ. To follow Him means to try and live like Him which means to love unconditionally and lay down your own comfort for the comfort and safety and happiness of others. Honestly, in my family, I may be one of the only people who ever tries to show them Jesus. I may be the only person who ever prays in front of them and in doing so can show them how amazing it is to be able to talk and communicate with God. I may be the person who turns it around for them so that they wouldn't just say that they believed in God but that they would live for Him...or at least try.

It sucks and it's hard. As soon as I left Charlotte on Monday, I was pretty much in a bad mood. Today was freaking Christmas, and I was in a bad mood. The last thing I'm doing is showing my family that God has put this incredible, incessant joy inside of my heart. But especially in the past few weeks, I have prayed that God would provide, and He has. I'm confident that He will lift me out of this stupid funk I'm in and push me on to become a strong, bright, real light to the people who think that they know me best.


P.S. Aside from not ever getting that actual Christmas feeling (which I partially blame on the chaos surrounding Sarsparilla City and Cricket) and being in a bad mood most of the day, Christmas wasn't all that bad. For the first time in years, I was genuinely surprised by a present I got. Here are the highlights:

-a freaking Nikon d40 (which would be the unexpected gift)
-a nintendo DS with pokemon and mario (yes, I am a 10 year-old boy, thanks for asking)
-a North Face jacket
-$55 in itunes
-a bazillion other giftcards
-family guy, volume 5
-and I will possibly be taking the Wii to school with me as long as my brother decides to love me a little because he got an xbox 360.
Merry CHRISTmas