NUKE. WHERE THE HEE HAW HAVE YOU BEEN???!!!
Been walking my circle(s).
Story time, everyone...feel free to have a seat.
One of my circles (of which there are many, I'm ashamed to admit), is my addiction to spending money that I don't have. I filed bankruptcy within a few years of graduating from college due to the massive credit card debt I had racked up when I was in school. Ten years later, I have been slowly headed back to the same place. This time, I could see it coming and cut up all the cards a while ago. I just started a new job making a lot more money, but requiring 55-60+ hour work weeks. It's interesting to think that I am now working twelve-hour-days to pay off something that I bought on credit four-years-ago. I will be credit-debt free by the end of the year, and hopefully totally debt free by the middle of next year.
I'm not naive enough to think I've beaten this, but if I keep my eyes focused on God, I know he'll let me know that I'm headed back to the same place I started.
Everyone's trudging around in their own circles. What makes the difference is one's reactions to the situation.
There's a lady from my young past who I had been over-the-moon about. She did not have the same feelings that I did, unfortunately, so I was out of luck. For the longest time afterward, I kept pining for her, though she had moved on. I realized that if I were to keep making the same decisions when memories of her surfaced, I would never be able to move on. Years later, I still think of her, and wish her well, but when the memories of her surface, I now smile and laugh instead of ache and yearn.
My modus operandi is to come into the Singles room after a long hiatus, shovel a bunch of scoops of 'wisdom' into a steaming heap in the middle of the room, then split again when I get bored of watching people trudge their circles (whilst I, myself, am wearing my paths ever deeper). Everytime I come back in here, I see the same types of threads...
I see threads from people who are stuck in a mindfield. Not a minefield...a mindfield. These are people who want something so badly that it consumes them, yet they are too afraid to step forward to get closer to their goal for fear of setting something off and being hurt...yet living where they are standing causes them more pain and anguish than they would experience if they just kept moving forward.
We are at war, ladies and gentlemen. We are all scared to some degree or another that the enemy will hurt us. And so we stand. motionless, afraid, while the enemy laughs and taunts. The enemy has scared us into inaction...or perhaps into the same wrong knee-jerk reactions that have failed us in the past. Keep your focus on God, and keep moving forward.