Right and Wrong choices

We have to make choices every day. Most of the time the choices are not life altering but they certainly can either make our life more pleasant or more miserable. I am thinking about choices because I have made some that might not have been popular with family or friends. As a matter of fact some of my choices have been met with open disdain by some. One of the choices that I have made recently has been to switch from pudding to yogurt. Yogurt is around 140 calories if you pick Dannon Berry in the 5 oz container. If you select the pudding parfait at the Hungry Cougar across the street from where I work you probably consume about 800 or 900 calories. I chose to switch from pudding to yogurt because it is non fat and lower calories. In order to lose weight you have to burn more calories than you take in. I have been counting calories for several months now and I am getting pretty good at guessing how many calories are probably being ingested by yours truly. I am still struggling with getting the calorie count down to 1500 but have been hovering between about 1700 to 2200 depending on the given day and whatever emotional stress I may have been experiencing. If you are an emotional eater the more stress you experience the more you try to medicate yourself with yummy stuff from the fridge. I think that I might be self medicating late at night in front of the idiot box. With regards to choices I have had to reprioritize my expectations for whom a friend is and a friend is not. This has caused me more emotional trauma than i would care to admit. You think that you know who your friends are until all of a sudden they quit acting like a friend. After much soul searching I have realized that friendships are a two way street. God gives us unconditional love which is called AGAPE love. God loves us despite our sin and failures. I am not saying that God ignores the sin or is blind to it but if we will come to him with our failures and ask for forgiveness the word of God says that our sin is forgotten and is as far as the east is from the west. God can and will forgive us for our faults and shortcomings however it has become painfully obvious to me that some of my so called friends do not know how to do that. That is why human love is called phileo or brotherly love and it is not unconditional as much as we would like to think it is. Just the other day I had to come to the realization that my expectation for a friendship that I thought was there has long since been destroyed. I was hanging on to the hope that the friendship could be restored over a period of time but I think that I was fooling myself with that expectation. How many times have we done things in a relationship that has caused a tear in the very fabric? Depending on the size of the hole time might allow it to mend and heal. I guess in this instance I must have driven a full sized sherman tank through this relationship and now there are nothing but large treadmarks and oil spills all over the place. I need to understand that I did do and say some things that caused this damage and there is apparently nothing I can do to repair it. As the old saying goes "It is finished". For those of you that know me and love me (or not) you know that while I am not a social butterfly I do enjoy human contact. I am not a loner but rather I love interaction with my fellow man. My pastor told me not long ago that he noticed that trait in me and that it was neither good nor bad but when I am dealing with others I need to realize not everyone needs as much fellowship as I do. That was an eye opener for me when he said that and gave me a whole new perspective on things. So, as I have had to close the book on this friendship that I am thinking about it saddens me. It saddens me that I did so much damage that it could not be repaired. It saddens me that I have to think of this person differently when I see them. It saddens me to think that I really would rather not see them because of the emotional distress that the memories cause. I am saddened to think that I did not cherish this friendship deeply enough to do whatever I could to keep it healthy. I am saddened to think that neither me nor my friend were able to communicate effectively enough to mend whatever fences needed mending. I am saddened by the thought that I did so much damage to the relationship that the other person could no longer forgive me and give me a chance. How about them COWBOYS!!!!




James Moffitt
http://www.lightourworld.com
http://moffittjc.blogharbor.com/blog
james.moffitt@comcast.net