It doesn't happen all at once. The solution, that is. The problem, if you'll call it that with me, the problem is what lingers. It's festers and sneaks up on you like a maelstrom right when you're floating along, still, in the current. That's the tough part. That's when it's the hardest to deal with. The hardest for you to cope. But a friend of mine gave me some good advice recently. Problems are relative. They are important to me because I let them be important to me, and only I can make them big or small. Important or unimportant. Life altering or not. His advice was simple, and direct, and good. To not focus on this stuff, to instead focus on the Kingdom. So that's my goal. To focus on the Kingdom. To take my problems, my issues, my insecurities, my worries, and really realize that they're all relative. To really understand that I can change my outlook. And to really truly turn my focus, my eyes, to God instead of all of this.
Now, that's not to say that these problems, these issues, these whatevers, will magically disappear. That I won't still think about them, that they won't still bother me, but it's a process, you see. A process in which I'll have to work. I'll have to try. I'll probably still get angry, and cry, and laugh, and write these little notes to myself that I end up sharing with other people. But the process is, in its own way, what drives me to keep going. It drives me because I know that I'll be moving. Be learning. Be growing. I won't be sitting in a pool of stagnant water, waiting to disintegrate in my own wasted time and efforts, waiting for another maelstrom to form right beneath my feet. I'll be working. I'll be achieving, even when I fall backwards a little.
I wouldn't be where I am without my friends. I wouldn't be able to start on these paths, I wouldn't be able to move forward, I wouldn't be able to communicate all of these things. My friends encourage. My friends love. My friends force me to laugh when I don't want to, but I need to. What I mean to say is, I'm thankful for my friends. I'm thankful for the tough lessons, for the jokes. For the talks and the music. For the ones I miss and the ones I see. For all of it. So, see? My problems can't be huge problems, not with people like that in my life. It's all relative. Sometimes you just have to take a few steps away from yourself to see it. And if you can't do that, have a friend do it for you.
