Do As I Say...

I was watching Gilmore Girls (fantastic show, entirely too addictive) and it was the one where Rory and Logan are having issues and she goes to see Jess in New York and they kiss and she says no, I have a boyfriend, I love him, yada yada yada. And at this point I always find myself yelling (in my head) WHAT ARE YOU DOING, GO BACK TO JESS!!!!! And then I realized, God always tells us that you can't go back. You can't change history, you can't go backwards and fix mistakes that you have left behind you. So why in movies, and television, and books, and hollywood gossip even, do we always ask people to go back? We never assume that there is anything better for them. Take Gilmore Girls. Jess pretty much broke Rory's heart and took forever to be a nice guy again. And yet we want her to go BACK to him. Why don't we assume that there is someone better out there for her? I feel like we do that with ourselves too. When we get stuck in a rut, we go back to what was comfortable. Even if it was the most horrible relationship for more than half of it, always fighting and being forced to do things you didn't want to. We forget the bad stuff when we are lonely and hurting. We don't feel like we have the strength to go forward so we roll back into bad relationships with not necessarily bad people. We stay in jobs we hate because it's too terrifying to try and find a new one in this economy. We hang out with friends that hurt us because we fear that if we leave them, we will never find any new ones.

We tell one another to do as I say, not as I do, because what I do is usually not the right thing. But look at little kids. How do little kids learn? They mimic. They don't have enough understanding of language to do what they are told. They do what they see being done. We still do that as we grow up. We do what we see others doing. And when we see people in t.v shows always going back to someone, what are we supposed to do? We think that oh that's just television, that doesn't affect me. But stop and look at your lfie. What are you doing? Are you single and afraid but gonig forward? Are you going backwards to a relationship that sucks or a job that you hate? Are you trying out new adventures, like eating sushi or learning to ice skate? What are you doing? Are you doing what you know to be right, which is moving forward and not worrying about not being strong enough, because you know that God has your back? Or are you doing what you see?

God has you. A friend of mine gave me this analogy. God has us in his hands. We are all a bunch of little pebbles scattered across the earth, but God the whole earth in His hands, so He's got all of us. At first, this didn't make sense to me. I was trying to move backwards and I insisted that pebbles belong on the ground and people step on them. He said that every pebble fits somewhere. I said that the pebbles get stepped on and the shape changes, some don't fit anywhere anymore. At the time, this made sense. I felt like i was getting stepped on right and left and front and back. My shape didn't even exist anymore. And youknow, this buddy of mine never answered the bit about how our shapes change, but I think I can answer that. You see, even if we do get stepped on and our shapes do change, you are still in God's hands. And as soon as He sees you are damaged, He will hold you and fix you until you are smooth and shiny and perfect once again.

We can't go back in time and go back to things that God doesn't want for us and still be shiny. Things of the past are in the past because God says, this is not part of your life anymore. You don't need to worry. We are human, so of course we all worry but God tells us not to. This comes back to doing as He says, not as He does. When people tell you not to worry it is hard because you can see their faces scrunched up in panic and the little beads of sweat on their brows and the very fake smiles on their faces. They worry, we see them worry. So we do what they do, not what they say. That's how we learn. But if you listen to God when He says don't worry, it is so simple. We look for signs of panic and distress on His face, we look for that doubt and anguish that says hmm, we may not get through this one. But it never appears. God isn't worried. He is smiling on you, His pebble in His hands.