Shame :'(

"If we could read the secret history of our enemies,
we should find in each man's life
sorrow and suffering enough to disarm all hostility."
~Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

My Labor Day weekend has been quite amazing. I've been able to spend time with many of the people I hold dearest, done some crazy things, and made a few memories. However, what had stood out to me most of all is not the fun or the partying, but the realization of something I thought I knew...

Many people believe, though the world is filled with self-centered human beings, that they are not one of them. I myself look in the mirror and see a girl who cares immensly about others. In fact, I pride myself in my respect for my fellow man and my protectiveness of my friends.
Even so, these past couple of days, especially this one, have somewhat cracked that mirror of self righteousness.

Someone I had talked badly about to my friends, someone I thought was one of the afor mentioned 'self centered' human beings, someone I had even wished evil apon, opened up to me, and I was crushed inside. I sit here now thinking how twisted I was without even realizing it. I had begun to view this beautiful person as someone who only loved themselves, instead of a person who was loved by Someone much greater than myself. I don't even know how to beg for forgiveness, even though I know it is freely given, at least from the Someone who loves above all.

It only took a second for this child to open up to me and tell me what was wrong, to show me that I was trusted. Only a second to pound into my soul that lesson I had decieved myself into thinking I knew by heart. All pain is real pain, and it should be wished upon no one. This being didn't deserve my cruelty, and I am utterly ashamed.

Isaiah 64:6 says, "But we are all as an unclean thing, and all our righteousnesses are as filthy rags; and we all do fade as a leaf; and our iniquities, like the wind, have taken us away". In that moment I felt myself being blown away in the wind, completely insignificant. What I had prided myself in all my life seemed so small compared to my failure to remember that every beating heart on this earth is loved beyond all imagination.

My lesson in all this: you DON'T know what anyone else is going through. I have yet to meet a single human being who didn't wear some sort of mask, great or small. All my dark thoughts were forgotten when I felt this person's pain. Sorrow and suffering spares no one, it is another one of those things that connects us all... that, and the fact that we are loved.