connection

Character Grief.

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That moment where you’re innocently watching your favorite show or reading your favorite book series and then it happens. you stare at the page/screen in abject horror. You slam the book shut, you shut your laptop. You yell “How could this happen!” You scream.

Because what just happened was they did something you never saw coming and you felt in your bones was a bad idea even if you did.

Now you’re left with that strange phenomenon known as Character Grief.

Actually I just made up that term just now, but it’s a thing.

It’s not a fun condition, but not everyone suffers from it. Here’s a way to rate yourself.

1-5: If you are mildly annoyed, and tell your friends or family it was stupid, but other than that you don’t do much.

5-10: You cry and can’t bear to continue, or you cry and then re-watch or reread said materiel over and over again because it’s cathartic, and tell your friends because misery loves company.

10-15: You give up the material in favor of less infuriating entertainment and proceed to tell everyone else it’s no longer worth their time.

15-20: You get so upset that you figure out ways to solve what happened and fan fic your way to mental peace. Extra points if you convince your family or friends to join you.

And extra points if you do every single one of these things. Like I do. Except cry, I rarely do that.

Character grief is different form plot frustration. It’s more personal. It sticks you in your craw and wounds you to your whimsical/imaginative core.

I think Character Grief happens in one of three ways.

  1. The least painful, most annoying way is when your favorite character simply is left out or disappears from the story. This can happen with books made into movies, like how Tom Bombadil got left out of Lord of The Rings. And all my favorite characters got left out of the second Anne of Green Gables movie.
  2.  The most painful, actual death. I mean unforeseen, or totally unwanted character death. It feels unnecessary and it leaves you sad for days. Probably you can’t even go back to the story without crying or reliving those emotions.
  3.  The last way is the most poisonous, but that does make it easier to be mad about and less sad. It’s when a character is radically changed for the worst. They could turn evil (like Ever After High), or they could lose their most lovable personality traits. This happens a lot with the books to movies thing , but it also happens when new writers or producers take over, or the creators stop caring for whatever reason. Like Shrek: the Final Chapter. The change is usually brought on by the character doing something they would never actually do if you went by previous traits they exemplified. The action violates their moral code, and they haven’t been brainwashed or anything that would make it seem reasonable.

The last two bother me way more than the first one. And I take it hard. I can’t just quit the thing like some folks who don’t get involved.

So I though I’d write this post to speculate about why Character Grief happens. There’s probably research on it out there, but it’s tricky to explain because every person is different.

The first thing that shocks you about character grief is that it feels like real grief. Though a part of you remains separate from it because you know they cough* aren’t cough* real. (Angry gasps form people who’ve felt this before.) yet you still feel sad, mad, and in denial just like when real grief strikes.

Actually, with real grief I tend to go numb. A part of me just can’t believe it really happened. Even when I accept it, I don’t feel strong, out of control emotions. I don’t sink into depression. somehow I distance myself form loss. I don’t know if that’s a good thing. I’m learning to explore those emotions more.

But character grief has a way of cutting through my defenses. Much the way spiritual things do. It’s almost like when I can see and hear the loss, and it affects my physical world, I handle it. But when I can’t, and it doesn’t seem to, then I get cut to the quick.

With real loss, I feel the unfairness and helplessness people talk about.

With loss in imaginary things, I feel like my heart got ripped out.

I think partly because in fiction, you see people more clearly than in real life. There’s less sin and misunderstanding to cloud your vision. You just see them s people.

Maybe if in real life we could be that honest with each other, caring would be easier.

because to be honest, we make it hard for people to love us, don’t we?

I know I can be difficult. The people who love me most are the ones I can’t hide from as well.

With strangers we are on our best behavior, but do we really connect with people until we know they’re flawed and we accept them anyway?

I love characters who are better than me because I can see them just as people, I don’t have to worry about them doing wrong that I’ll have to fight against. IF they do slip up, I know they’ll recover.

The people in my life who I know will pick themselves up after they fall are the ones I trust the most.

In fiction, losing that person, whether to bad writing, or to a tragic end even if it is well written, can feel like losing a friend.

People have always thought those who have imaginary characters as friends were kind of odd. But I think we have them because they have more of the author’s soul than we might see if we just met the person. When we can get our cumbersome flaws and failings out of the way through our creativity, we see each other better.

Not that it always goes well, but fiction fans live off the times that it does.

Some other time I’ll talk about how character grief can also teach us about hope, but I’m out of time for now, until next post–Natasha.

Hello again

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I’m back!

My vacation was exhausting. I don’t think we go on vacations to rest, we do it to get away from our routine. that’s why it’s so tiring, New things make us tired.

Human beings are adaptable, but it’s not easy. After a week or so your body just wants to go home and sleep in your own bed.

My vacation was not one of those eye opening soul discovery ones. I was surrounded by various members of my family almost he entire time, jammed into a small car not meant to carry so much stuff, and on the road for 2 hours on a short day and 5-8 hours on a regular day.

But it did surprise me how, when I finally had a few hours to myself, and I settled down, I felt much clearer about what I needed to do.

In my life there’s so much noise, but what getting away from it made me realize that noise isn’t something that you ecape by switching location.

I went from a Suburban  area in a west coast state to the empty wilderness of Wyoming, Montana, and Utah. Hiking over mountains, driving through Yellowstone, and staying in towns of less than 2,000 people, which is unheard of where I live. As someone aware of how hard it can be to support a small business when you advertise to thousands of people, I wonder how motels in these tiny towns stay afloat, I guess the cost of living is less. Plus people might work a few different jobs.

Anyway, I always thought of myself as someone who liked quieter areas, but I realized I don’t. I like nature, but I feel out of place in rural country. It reminds me of one of the essays I read for English class “The Trouble with Wilderness.” The real wilderness left in this country is between the cities, it’s not even really our national parks. It’s the places no one goes to except wild horses. It’s the undergrowth that keeps animals out of sight form the road.

The truth is, wilderness is only something you find off the beaten (or paved) path. My sister and I got close to it driving a quad over a desert area. But even so, that’s not quite it. And I got to visit some dinosaur tracks, which I’m a big fan of, there were some paw prints there too, probably from a more recent animal. Still, that’s not really wilderness.

Wilderness is something you find when it’s just you alone with God and with nature.

Civilization is really just what you call it when two people meet and settle down. Why else does marriage represent civilization not just in the Bible, but in many religions and stories?

I don’t think it’s impossible for a couple to experience wilderness together, but when it comes to being in it even when you’re not out in nature, you need to be alone.

Capturing that feeling of wildness is something we can only do when we’re either by ourselves, or with someone else who has felt it and understands it.

The feeling you get when you’re out in the wind, or when you gaze at a sunset, or look at the mountains. When you feel really alone, but not lonely. That’s being wild. Because in those moments you dare to dream anything and you believe in anything.

It’s no surprise really that folks who live surrounded by nature used to come up with stories about fairies and elves and sprites, something about it makes you believe in what you can’t see.

After all Romans does say that the invisible attributes of God are plain to us because of nature.

The real reason science isn’t enough to produce faith isn’t that science disproves God, but that sciences deals with what our eyes see, while faith deals with the unseen world, because that’s where the spiritual, the most important part of life, takes place.

I realized that finding peace and quiet in my life isn’t something I can do by eliminating city noises till all I hear are crickets and grasshoppers. (Some of them in Wyoming make this weird popping sound that you wouldn’t think a bug that size could so without snapping itself in half.) It’s something I have to be willing to seek out.

Peace is about letting stuff go and focusing on God, or even just on another person in your life. Without the TV and the radio in the background.

And being willing to be by yourself for awhile. I actually had gotten out of practice, but when I chose to keep being alone, I felt it cleared my head.

So my exhortation to all of you is to take some time today and find that.

Until next time–Natasha.

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Shell Waterfall in Wyoming.

The difference between men and women-1

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I’ve spent years trying to figure this one out and I finally have my answer: I don’t know what it is.

Well, I do and I don’t.

I can’t understand why people ever started saying men and women are equal or the same, and I really don’t know why they say “a girl can do anything a boy cand o.”

My dad always responds to that by saying “except pee standing up.”

Guys laugh at that and girls roll their eyes.

I could think of a few other things men can do that women can’t…and vice versa.

You’d be surprised how many men don’t even know what a menstrual cycle is, other than it makes girls super emotional.

And not all girls, and not all the time, I only get emotional sometimes. Other time sI hardly notice.

You know I find that if I pick any one trait and think “men are more this than women” I immediately have a few examples come to my mind of men who defy that generalization.

My dad is by far the most emotional person in my family, my mom might go through a whole week or month without yelling more than once or twice, my dad can rarely go through two days.

My mom is one of those people who smile more than laugh, my dad laughs all the time even in negative conversations.

Men are supposedly better drivers and better at math, my mom beats my dad at both those things.

My parents are both exceptional anyway, but that’s just the two of them. I know other boys and girls who defy stereotypes. I know guys who like to knit or sew or cook. I know girls like me who prefer self defense to ballet. That’s not so uncommon anymore.

The point is, if I pick any one thing, I can’t generalize. Both men and women participate in every activity you could think of. From the best things to the worst. Some things it would be nice to rule men out or women. It would be nice if it was true that women don’t sleep around and go from man to man like they were sampling them, and that men are never emotionally needy and clingy. But it’s not.

If I listen to any given conversation around my campus I’ll have proof of this. Boys can be just as emotional and annoying about it as girls, and girls can frankly be just as inconsiderate as boys are more reputed to be in relationships.

And boys can be sensitive and caring,  I don’ know why every genre except chick flicks and the rare kids’ movie seems to not get this. In some cultures a man might be more likely to cry than a woman in some situations. It used to be unladylike for a woman to demonstrate too many motions in public, now it;s weird for a man to do that.

Social fads never mean much anyway, people are too diverse.

I can’t trace he difference between men an women to any hobby or personality trait in particular. Humor can be one consistent difference, but not always. I laugh when people get slugged in movies if i feel it was merited. Even though violence isn’t supposed to be funny to girls.

Sometimes I wonder if I am mannish because I like things girls aren’t supposed to like that much. But I don’t consider myself odd given that I grew up with no brothers and a father who’s main way to enjoy playing with his kids was to buy them war and weapon themed toys. When you’re a girl and your dad is into very masculine stuff, you adapt and become flexible.

Now, true to the expectation, my mom couldn’t care less about that stuff, so I ended up with diverse interests. I am one of many girls or boys that did.

It’s not like boys never learn to do more homemaking stuff from their mom, or even their dad.

This isn’t about what we do, really, it’s not about how we feel. Men and women feel pretty much the same about things. The only difference I notice, and this difference is slight at best, is men seem to feel embarrassed for feeling as much as they do and they deny it, giving the wrong impression that they don’t care.

While girls only feel embarrassed about certain feelings.

Guys will downplay excitement, enthusiasm, sadness, and compassion into “guy” terms. Actions, and short sentences. (Usually, but you’ll have your Shakespearean poetic fellow now and again.)

Girls tend not to downplay positive feelings to each other, they might around guys. But they will downplay negative feelings a lot of time.

I think being bubbly and glad is perceived as a girly thing, so after a certain age most men drop it and hide their good feelings, while women only bring out those feelings, or else resort to being business like.

Again, this is still subject to personal choice. There are exceptions. That’s the only general rule I’ve seen to really apply however.

I will give men a tip here, with girls if you don’t express positive feelings she’s going to assume you feel negatively, or worse indifferent. Indifference is worse, at least to me. If you’re negative I can fight with you at least. Anything is better than stagnation. Guys usually think women are reading into it when they assume the worst, but that’s imply how we communicate.

Conversely, I’ve learned that if I have a spat with my dad I’ll fix things a lot sooner by doing something then by just saying I’m sorry.

I think this boils down to women wanting to know you feel remorse, and men wanting to know you’ll actually take responsibility for your actions.

However, I still say we all have both, it’s just which one it takes to seal the deal that differs.

That said, the real difference between men and women isn’t something you can diagnose. And people are trying to diagnose it so they can cure it.

I don’t care if men are different from me, if they’ll just stop griping about it. I’d hope they feel the same way. God made us different.

You see, our differences are something in us grater than the sum of our parts. It’s not whether you wear make up or wear cologne that makes you a man or a woman. It’s something in your soul.

One reason i don’t believe that people can be transgender. As I just said, emotionally you cant’ really pinpoint the difference between the sexes, it’s soulful, or spiritual if you will. We kind of just sense that it’s there. If you interact with a man or a woman for nay length of time, you’ll feel the difference.

Ironically gay people may actually be more likely to realize men and women are very different, they’ve just decided they don’t like one or the other.

 

 

 

Being Possessive.

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I know I don’t post on Sundays, but my day of rest has really been Saturday, so I thought I’d make an exception.

Something has caught my attention about when I’ve gotten crushes. I’ve had a handful, some girls seem to stop having them after high-school, others have them in their thirties. I  am not here to speculate as to why. Girls like boys. End of story.

But what having a crush can do to you is another matter. It feels great. But I would not be the first by a long shot to say it can also be frustrating. I am sure boys must feel the same way. I just don’t here them talk about it. Because of course, why would they tell me?

I’ve gathered from other girls and from my own experience that a crush can be the sweetest torture there is. It drives you crazy but you don’t want it to stop.

There’s something about being infatuated with someone else that somehow enables you to be focused on someone other than you and forget your own problems, while still being selfish.

A crush is rarely anything like real love. It tends to come with a blindness to the other person’s faults and a belief that they would be just as blind to yours if they ever noticed you. You want them to, but the idea scares you to death also.

Sometimes with more thoughtful people, a crush is like love. They may truly respect the object of their affections and wish them well, and even feel that the person has a right to make up their own mind.

But that’s rare. Most of my crushes were because I was lonely and didn’t have a lot of friends. I tended to get them when I was going through difficult emotional transitions. In a way, I think crushes are a coping mechanism. Perhaps a God-given one. It is preferable to other mechanisms. But crushes are more addictive than heroine. You may try not to think of them, but it’s really hard.

Some people advise you not to nurse it. That can work. Sometimes I think just letting it run its course will get you over it faster. But if you know you get obsessed, that’s not the best idea.

Girls handle it differently. Some have no shame in admitting their feelings, even to the boy. Others deny it consistently.

I find crushes inconvenient. They distract me from the things I need to get done, and the ministries I serve in. I have a penchant for crushing on guys who work with kids (some of you ladies know what I’m talking about.) You can imagine that gets distracting.

I think crushes help keep us from feeling bored and like our lives are empty. But that’s a false kind of feeling.

Or is it? Perhaps even puppy love is a kind of love that makes life worth living. It’s normal to get a crush, it shows we are capable of caring about someone else. If nothing else, crushes are rarely just physical for girls. Even if they are often inexplicable. We don’t know why we like a particular fellow.

But what this brings out in me that I don’t like is a kind of possessive behavior. I’m bringing this up because from what I’ve heard this goes into dating and even marriage relationships. (Especially marriage.)

This feeling that you deserve more of the other person’s time and energy than anyone else does. In marriage, to a degree, that can be true. Some things should be special between you. But in dating and especially in crushes, it’s just not right. Jealousy over someone who might not even like you is foolish. Not that that ever helps. Jealousy is not often connected with reason.

God did tell Eve “you will have desire for your husband and he will rule over you.” I don’t think he meant sexual desire.

It would be easy enough not to be ruled by men if we didn’t want them around so much, wouldn’t it ladies. But don’t get a big head guys, you need us desperately.

Frankly maybe God was being merciful when he cursed us with that. We do need each other, but humans are so selfish by nature that if it wasn’t for that desire, maybe we wouldn’t stick together.

Still, ideally as a Christian, we learn to love people the way God does, not for our selfish desires. And where does that put a Christian girl with a crush, or any other girl who wants more than the norm?

The hard answer is that it’snot right to indulge selfish thoughts on purpose. We daydream, sometimes without intending to, and I get that. But we all know when we’re going too far. Imagining that person devoted exclusively to us.

Maybe I have issues, because I cant really imagine that anymore. I don’t think I want it. At 19, I think I realize that if someone is obsessed with you alone, he or she has no higher purpose or calling in their lives. And why would  I want someone like that? I don’t intend to be that person.

It’s important for the Christian to ask themselves how much of what they want satisfied in their crush is something God is meant to satisfy. Unconditional love? One man in a hundred might have it. But he’ll never have as much as God. He can’t. Any more than you can.

Ladies, we need to remember that men are no better than we are. How many selfish things do we do each day, each week, each year? Some men are better than their women. God bless them. But they are still selfish. All people are selfish. Some of us just have learned to not give into it often. I hope to be that person someday.

When you daydream about your man, ask yourself, would you like this guy, knowing if you were together he would do selfish and inconsiderate things? He might do them all  the time, at worst every day, or if you’ve got an exceptional one, he might do them once in a while. But he’ll do them. And it’ll make you cry.

And not to leave men out, your girl, she’ll be blind to your feelings and do things without considering if it bothers you. Maybe she’s too distracted by her problems to realize it. Likely it’s an accident. (If it’s not, dump her.)

My mom is one of the most unselfish people I know, she does things that irritate me still.

This is no reason to give up on men or women. We would be hypocritical to do so. But we would be delusional to thinking it won’t happen.

And even though you might think “it’s just a crush.” You want to watch how you think when you crush, because that’s the base of how you view romance. And romance is not always fine words and thought out presents.

Hallmark gets that wrong.

Romance is when your girlfriend doesn’t complain about your bad habits to her friends even when it drives her nuts. It’s when your boyfriend changes his plans because you’re having a bad day. It’s when your wife makes you dinner after working all day herself, when your husband does the dishes after a hard day.

At least I think so. Candy and hearts is fine and can be very thoughtful at the right moment. But it’s not real. Not without foundation. That’s what I’m trying to say.

–Natasha.

Familiarity.

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 If I understood you

and you understood me

we could speak with complete familiarity

but since I just met you

and you hardly know me

we only speak with incongruity.

How pleasant and natural it would be

if at once we could see

each other plainly.

But I don’t know you and you don’t know me

so we have no real clarity.

 

I wrote that. It came to me yesterday in ASL class because I had been thinking about how we speak to each other.

Maybe this isn’t your experience, but I’ve noticed that people who know each other really well, they can be more honest.

I say things to mys sisters I would never say to a friend. Why? Because my sisters will know what I mean.

I won’t bother to be polite to siblings all the time, since I know they won’t get super offended. But I will be polite to a stranger or a classmate because they don’t know me well enough to know when I’m not serious.

I actually sometimes get taken seriously when I’m kidding and I think it was obvious that I was kidding. I know that’s not unique to me, doesn’t it bug you when it happens?

I might tell my sister to shut up and know she won’t be that bothered by it, but I wouldn’t say that to someone else unless I had the intention of making them feel I was angry.

C. S. Lewis observed in The Four Loves that when people have affection for each other, they can say offensive things and not offend. And that the deeper the affection, the better they will know what times to say such things.

Which is not to say we can just insult each other, there’s a time for it and a time when it will be hurtful. If someone in your family is pouring out their soul or crying their eyes out, that is not the time. Or if they’re angry and venting to you.

Usually it’s when we’re in a good mood that we can poke fun at each other and feel  closer and not father apart.

Why are we so polite to strangers? People often theorize that we are scared of what they will think.

But I submit to you that not everyone is scared. at least not of being disliked. Often when someone does dislike us, we feel that they have misunderstood who we are.

“He/she thinks I’m just a—- but I’m not.” Does that kind of talk sound familiar? It does to me.

The reason we don’t speak our mind to strangers is often simply that we know they will not understand us. They don’t know us. And they have their assumptions about people with our opinions that only knowing us better would change. They won’t want to know us better if we scare them off.

The are times when that doesn’t matter and we need to speak our mind regardless. But those are fewer times than when we need to understand each other.

The better you know me, the better you understand me, the better we can communicate. Lack of communication equals lack of understanding. Even if you hate someone, you can still understand them, provided you know  them. You’ve seen movies where the hero and villain understand each other perfectly, that’s why they are at odds.

I don’t me tat we understand English, or whatever our language is. I mean that we have a knowledge of a person’s character, quirks, and feelings about things. That is what tells us what they mean.

This kind of understanding can happen very quickly between some people, especially if they are alike in opinion and character. Others it can take twenty year,s or it may never happen. Some folks lack the ability or the desire to understand each other.

I think that we wish it were different. That we could speak our mind to strangers as easily as to our closest family or friends. In a perfect world we feel everyone would be able to communicate like that. It would be great.

But we need to beware the Tower of Babel. God in His wisdom perhaps has made it hard work to understand each other. A lot of people see it as the worst part of humanity that we have so much conflict. you might want to question that person’s motive.

Conflict is what keeps us pushing forward and it keeps us from corrupting each other completely. Where there is good, there will be conflict as long as men choose to do evil. You better hope so anyway. The most dead-in-soul people never argue with each other, they just sin. We don’t want that.

IF you understand the people around you perfectly, you are either dead inside, or a saint. Because only people who have extreme wisdom, or else just don’t care, are without conflict.

I hope to be saintly, bu I fully expect to have conflict on the way. Because I will meet with the unsaintly. And I won’t always be good either.

So while it would be nice to have total familiarity with each other, perhaps it is for the best that it is hard work. I look forward to the day when evil will not be a thing, and we will all be on the same page.

Until next time–Natasha.

Loud and Proud?

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This is not going to be easy to write.

My ever prolific English Class tackled religion this past week. And how two people were driven away from the church by the thing known as a move of the Spirit. The crying, the shouting, the running around, the jumping up and down. The experience that is baffling to anyone watching it.

And someone in my class even said they gave up on church because of seeing that and not wanting to be that way.

If you are not sure what I’m talking about, then it will be hard to explain it. You really have to see it for yourself. People “get happy” as it is sometimes called.

In the Bible if anyone had a reaction like that it was the Spirit of the Lord coming upon them. Interestingly enough, in the New Testament no record is given of people jumping or running or crying or rolling around on the floor, though the Old Testament has some wild stories about that.

And it’s a staple of Revivals to have that happen.

But it can freak people out.

And I should know, it used to freak me out too, and if I’m honest it still puzzles me on occasion.

I am not a demonstrative person. I might get loud, maybe jump a little on my toes, but I’ve never been so overtaken by God that I behave wildly.

I don’t think it’s bad for that to happen, certainly the people it happens to enjoy it. For them it’s a release, a way to clear their emotions from all the stress of life, a way to feel closer to God.

The Church tends to view these spiritual experiences as more holy, and signifying someone is closer to God, versus the people who sit quietly or at most raise their hands and sing.

While people outside the church tend to view this as us getting overexcited, or perhaps being out of our mind, or just weird. At any rate, it’s nothing they want a part of.

But why?

I do sympathize with the no Christian a bit. That kind of behavior would freak me out normally. It can look an awful lot like crazy behavior. But it only comes on in church. During worship usually. I don’t hear about it happening in someone’s private life. Which is perhaps why people decide the church is the problem. Believe in God sure, but those people are weird…

Well, we are weird, I admit. Any people group is going to be wired to the people not in it, and even to other in it who just don’t jibe with their style. I feel a bit out of place at the Nigerian Church that my dad loves because I don’t get it. My dad doesn’t like the style of where I go. But doctrinally, the two churches are almost he same. So the question is, why is the way we worship such a devise issue for us and for Non-Christians who investigate?

I need to be fair. First of all, I do not by any means think that people have to get excited in the loud and energetic way in order to worship God. My favorite way to worship is in private, not so loud. I do enjoy is corporately too. If that really is an obstacle to someone, then going to a church that isn’t like that is no sin.

On the other hand, one thing that Christians who worship in this way tend to understand is that Worship is not really about our control.

At bottom, being wierded out by God moving in what seems like ridiculous or crazy ways is saying that you know better than God what is appropriate. It is also saying that the world gets to measure how sane it is to act in a given way. Why should the world decide this?

People filled with the spirit aren’t going and committing mass murders, or hurting other people, or filled with rage, not truly crazy behavior.

The reason it’s hated is that is is foreign. Even to other Christians. Every Christian is called to be holy (set apart) from the world. People who are acting crazy and don’t care are clearly not concerned about the world’s opinion of them.

God is not going to make sense to us all the time. So it would follow naturally that the way we worship is not always going to seem sensible even to us. As the people it happens to, they don’t get it either.

But I submit that you don’t always need to get it to know it.

And that applies to the many people who don’t experience this. We are not lesser as Christians. The folks who “get happy” are not always the most spiritual in their everyday lives. In fact, often that is the case. Maybe they need it more because of that.

God connects with people however He can, and for some that is quiet, for others it is loud.

I submit that God Himself doesn’t really care so long as the connection is real and true. Why would one little person jumping up and down discomfit God? Why would one person not doing that give Him pause?

What does give Him pause is genuine heartfelt worship, which means not feeling inferior to your fellow believers nor taking pride in being more holy than they. It means giving up control one way or the other. admitting you can’t control whether your worship loud or quiet. Just so long as you worship.

Everyone has their gift, be it small or large, and they can bring that. That’s all that God requires.

And if it’s all that we require of each other, we wills top comparing ourselves. That’s just not important.

Those are my thoughts, until next time–Natasha.