When God's Not Looking

This morning, I had a chat with a really great friend of mine. He's been going through a lot with himself, his friends, and his girlfriend lately. He's in the process of transferring schools, and he's getting a little stressed out. But most importantly...he's trying to figure out what God's plan for him is. After talking for a few minutes about the obvious problems, I asked him if there was anything else on his mind. He said, "I just need to forgive myself." Me, a little slow to catch on sometimes, had to take a second to process this. We'd just discussed all of the problems going on in his life, and I thought we'd established that it was NOT anything that he could really control. So what did he need to forgive himself for? After a silent second or two of processing this information, my brain clicked. He had to forgive himself for the way he'd been reacting to all of these things. Not what happened, but what he did because of it, and what had happened with him while it was going on. He had to forgive himself for what had happened behind closed doors when no one was there. For what he did when no one was watching. I just gave him my best understanding smile, and the longest, heartiest hug I could muster up. Here is what he told me "She's forgiven me, God's forgiven me. I can do this."


To me, that's the attitude we should all have. That no matter what kind of curveball gets thrown our way, it IS going to be ok. It may not be the way we want it to turn out-in fact, it probably won't be. But it will be the way it's supposed to if we just put our trust where it belongs, and try to be the best we can be every single day. I know it's not easy, but be who you want to be even when no one's looking. Because there really is someone who loves you very much looking down on you from above all the time. And your actions when you're alone determine whether that relationship-the most important one in your life-is built up to be stronger, or weakened to nothing.