Becoming Apparent Part One: It Pays To Pray

I constructed this post while eating some cheddar cheese rice cakes and drinking grape juice. I seem to recall where I am today, and where I was a year ago this time. I said to myself, have you really moved forward or are you going around in circles? I began to scrutinize this question further to see where I am mentally, physically and spiritually. I have been doing some concluding since I returned for this last semester here, but my mind started to become bombarded with thoughts about the situations that I have experienced and the many people who I’ve met during my collegiate career. I embarked away from my home in Los Angeles, hoping to come to a breathtaking college and learn as much as I could, well you could say it has been anything but wonderful and I’ve learned more about people than I have about radio production or any other course. They say experience is your best teacher. That quote is rather intense and it is very true: experience is the best teacher. Before the summer, I decided that there were many issues plaguing my life that needed to be resolved and I came to the conclusion lately that I have a lot of dead weight in my life. I found myself focusing on friendships and relationships rather than focusing on the real picture: my destiny and my purpose. When I arrived to this college, I met a group of people, who I have come to know as close associates, since I do not use the friend denotation, first and foremost, because friendships does not exist in my opinion. The thing that strikes me is how much I have grown over just 3 & ½ years and much of my growth has been stimulated by the experiences that have been thrown my way. I set out this year after receiving much revelation, to remove the dead weight from my life. I had wondered about the so-called friendships I had with the people who I was somehow drawn to when I came to college. After searching through the depths of my mind, the question still remained: who can I truly count on? What person really has my best interest at heart? Sounds kind of selfish, I know, but you’d be surprised at how much revelation those questions can have. You begin to pray about the people you socialize with and wonder if they are doing your life any good. I started to question people’s motives and actions, and especially after being left behind by the so-called friends I had on several occasions. I even questioned my grandmother, who always gives me such wise statements as to people. She told me that I need not consult with such people; that they were hindering my purpose and stopping me from moving on. It kind of sounded rather far-fetched. How could all of the people I’d met when I first came here, suddenly change and turn? The answer was evident: I have been walking around with blinders on for the past 3 & ½ years and the blinders began to come off this past year. I have to give praise to God for taking the blinders off because I have been walking around with my head in the sand for a long time now and finally I have confirmation as to the dead weight in my life and it stunned me because I thought it was these people and it turned out to be these other people. It pays to pray as God opens your eyes to many things that you couldn’t otherwise see. The question now becomes: how do you back away from people whom you’ve hung around with for 3 & ½ years? How do you just end an associate-ship just like that? The answer is basically this: just do it and that is what I have done and what I will do because as of 12:00 this afternoon, I have deleted numbers from my phone and will be removing rubbish from my life so I can move on.