Yesterday I posted lyrics to a song by Kids in the Way. The song is a song I always liked but yesterday when I heard it on Sirius 67, it really stood out.... just didnt know why.

I've learned something over the last month.... and I think maybe this adds to the focus of something God is teaching me: why bad things happen to good people. I've definately progressed to a point in my life over the last few years that I am happy that I have experienced all of the pain that I have and that, given the opportunity, I would not go back and change anything -- because this is who I am now because of what happened them. I went through a good couple of months where I experienced very little emotional pain.... and I look back and I realize that most of my blog posts have not been extremely insightful. Why do bad things happen to good people? Well, maybe it's because its the bad things that make them good people? Maybe it's because the good people are the only ones who have the ability to take a bad situation and use it to minister to someone else.... and maybe it's because good people want to help people and in the long run, they are happy that the bad things happen because of the good they bring later. If you think about it, isn't this what Jesus did for all of us? If you want to talk about a bad thing, He died on the cross for our sins. He even asked the Father to "let this cup pass Him by" because he didnt want to experience the pain. In the end, Jesus had the Joy of knowing that He saved the world. If Jesus was given the chance, He wouldn't go back and change it. And if we are created in His image, well, doesnt that mean that we have the same capability?

Last night was a pretty confusing night... and it was after a very hectic day at work. Once I got home, I basically went straight to bed and really wasn't feeling all that well emotionally.... this morning I woke up and still had this nagging of trying to figure out what had happened. I watched some videos on the net and ended up just laying down on my bed for a bit watching Lisa walk around and explore the bed.... I had closed my eyes for a short time and I started thinking about a lot of different things.... well, more so aspects of the things that were confusing me. The things that confuse me were not specific actions on my part or on someone else's part but they were the motivations behind those actions. As I sat thinking about this, I remembered the song I posted yesterday.... the it hit me: Everything we do seems to almost always create a piece of fiction. We really are making fiction of our lives.

Think about it.... everything we do is a certain amount of smoke and mirrors. If you go for a job interview, you may not lie but you sure stretch the truth or you present the truth in a way that it sounds really good. If you're selling something, you try to find the best way to make that product look as good as it is. We use this psychology all the time and in some cases, it is a good thing. The problem is that I think over the years, we have all developed this sense of the need to make things what they are not.... It happens when you're selling a product and you build it up too much and the customer buys it and it's not at all what they expected. I'm not a sales person but I do sell stuff at work.... and I make it a point not to try the most expensive thing to a person unless it truly is something that would benefit them... why? Quite simply, I want that person to be happy with their purchase and when they are happy with it, it will bring them back to me to purchase something else when they need it because my recommendation worked well for them. Worst case scenario here is I make something out to be what its not, a customer buys it and eventually brings it back and doesnt visit my store again..... but, what happens when this same process gets applied to an emotional situation? What if we don't like who we are and we try to hide it from someone because we think that in no way they could like us for who we are? What about the girls on myspace in their underwear? Society jokes about myspace having this epidemic.... but is anyone bothering to think what is going on? It's not about control -- its about these girls feeling like they have nothing so they need to make themselves something they are not. If you take a picture in your underwear, you'll get attention from guys -- but the attention is being brought to a product that isn't anything more than marketing. You build a profile on any social networking site and you make keywords like sex and drinking... or whatever you think that is going to attract someone to you..... but what about the keywords that aren't often used? Sadly, they don't get enough hits.... the difference is, the marketing matches the product and when the "customer" finds that product, then they will be happy with their "purchase".

It really is sad that the best way to describe the process of relationships in this day and age is to compare it to a marketing scheme... but that is exactly what it is. We try to become something we are not. The really hard part is when you run across someone that is completely open and honest -- all of a sudden, you can not trust them because, well, they aren't like everyone else.... it doesnt seem like they have any bells and whistles so I guess we also think that if they are doing any kind of marketing, the real product is pretty pitiful.... then this entire process takes the open and honest person and makes them feel like they are absolutely nothing.

I think all of this is a huge reason why psychology is becoming such a huge domain in the medical fields.... we have created so much fiction and created a world that requires us to write fiction of our lives that we now need to create a way to break through the fiction and figure out what the truth is. That's the whole process of psychology.... you say words and a professional figures out how to break those words down and filter out the fiction and find out what your true inside is feeling. So many people have become so good at hiding what is really going on that they don't even realize it themselves. And I think we all know at least someone who creates so many lies that he or she believes them themselves. All we are doing is creating a snowball effect that makes the next generation need more and more fiction in order to survive.

On Sunday Tim used an example in his sermon of his wife taking up violin just because it got her out of class for a day a week. She didnt enjoy doing violin but she still kept going because she got out of class. She started building this image of who she wasnt based on something she wanted to accomplish (getting out of class). When the concert came, she was clueless. Thankfully, she was in a group of people so no one could single her out... but what if she would have been? What if we are emotionally hurt in a way and we want to avoid it.... often times we create something that becomes a part of us but yet really isn't us. Over the years, this new part of us becomes a visible part of us and we become known for something that doesn't even match who we are -- and next thing you know, we are at war with ourselves because, quite honestly, we don't know who WE are anymore. We continue to create this world that is dependent on fiction and it's filtering into our relationships.... we're creating people that we're not and we're acting like we're happy when we're not.... maybe this is why sex is becoming such a huge part of society... It's such an easy way to cover up a problem -- but the problem never goes away...... and I think people start having sex and all of a sudden they realize that they've had sex with a lot of people and the create a fictional spin on top of the fictional spin which makes them happy with the fact that they are happy with the thing they created to make them look happy..... We're in a world now where no one wants to commit to anything and that includes marriage, girlfriends/boyfriends, friendships, and even family. We're affraid to commit to a relationship because a commitment to a relationship (and I'm not even saying just a girlfriend/boyfriend relationship) means that the other person will start finding out who you really are over time and we're afraid of that.... We can't let people see who we are or how we are feeling because maybe they won't like us anymore... or maybe we don't even know what they are going to find that we, ourselves, don't even know. So now we create an enviornment of "open relationships" so that we won't let one person be able to focus in on who we really are because we're, instead, letting lots of people know very little about us. We become the jack of all trades but master of none -- except we're dealing with other people's lives instead of just fixing parts of a computer or building parts of a house.

Out of all this fiction and pain that we are creating, we've lost the ability to learn from our mistakes because our fiction is becoming reality to one part of us while we hide that part of us that is who we really are. When you take any kind of psychological test or online surveys that determine you are one way and you're shocked because you think you're another way -- well, maybe you need to look at what that test says and do some searching because maybe you've created a front to who you really are and eventually you forgot who you really were.

And the worst thing is.... the people who are trying so hard to be open and honest end up with no one to be open and honest to.