This week has kicked my butt

I am emotionally sick this week. I felt pretty hurt earlier this week by some of my friends...as you know I guess. I felt a lack of support from them. Somehow they associated their relationship to me, or at least to steve as being church related. Steve and I both feel, that even though we met our friends through church(sort of), that our friends we hang out with aren't our "church" friends. Almost nothing that we are involved in at church is associated with them specifically. From our small groups, to almost anything. And really any sort of statement that steve was making was about no one in paticular at church. He was only making a statement about what he feels his relationship to the church is. He is a regular attender, and wants to be called that. He wants his "title" to represent what he feels he is. I am not going to go on too much about this because this isn't really what my post is about, but the fact is, Steve started discussing these issues with pastors a few years ago, with pastors who have gone to other places since then, and pastors who are still here, and at this point finally felt he had to make a statement about it. It was a personal statement. It was not meant to hurt, but rather just to make real who he thinks he is at that church. Both he and I grew up in churches where you felt like you had millions of parents, grandparents, big sisters, and brothers, little sisters and brothers, aunts, uncles, extended family, and friends. He has taken several routes to try and make this sort of family a reality..through trying to be a part of small groups, and classes where there is a mix and variety of people...where this family need can be met. I think this is especially important, and perhaps the most difficult to create, for people who are singles, and getting to a certain age...late 20's. This is a problem at many churches. It is a group of people who often don't fit in anywhere within the social construct of the church, and are often neglected because there are not enough of them to really have a united voice. It would be a really neat thing to see, if families would build relationships with the singles, and bring them into their families almost, and thereby bring them into the church family as a whole. It can't be fake. It has to be the natural outgrowth of a relationship that is already happening. What I want to say here....is perhaps this situation is a condition of the single man or woman (and sometimes newlyweds who want to have many relationships in a church instead of being ONLY with other newlyweds., rather than something the church feels as a whole. Okay...i have much more i could say on this...but this isn't what I want to talk about.
What I want to say....this week I was sick at my stomach for at least two days of school. It hurt me excruciatingly to know that my friends were discussing this issue we were dealing with, with little understanding of it, and didn't feel like they could come to me and ask me about it directly. Instead, they were coming up with their own conclusions. It was at the point that steve saw that I was getting emotionally drained (even my student asked if I was stressed out) that he said that he would take care of it, and I didn't need to worry about it, or deal with the drama anymore. So he confronted it head on, and asked people what was going on, and not to talk about it. I keep talking about this, but i want to get to something else. The whole situation blew up in some ways, but now I think it is going to get better.
But then last night.....i got an email which sent me into tears. I was kicked out of the stringents. I was really hurt about this, and now feel sort of stabbed in the back from a friend from a different group that I have been a part of. She brought up things that happened a year ago, that I didn't even realize she took in the way she did, and seem to hang some sort of excuse on that. I was so angry and hurt, that I wanted to get back at her. Say something mean...do something to make her angry too. I felt that whatever this was about, it in some way had a direct relationship to my performance the night before.
Steve and I went to dinner, and he said...i guess you have two choices. You can get angry, and mess things up like I did this week, or you can try to reflect God's image in the situation with the way you react. He says I don't blame you if you do the first, and obviously that is the way I would react in the natural, but if you get spiteful, then you will only make her angry back at you, and where does that get you? Even though he was extremely hurt by the situation which has gone on in the last week, as we sat there talking he said that my situation has shown him how he needed to let God come in to his situation, and be reflected despite the hurt. Steve says he can let God take on the empire, and he was trying to take on the empire himself. So, anyway....at least some good has come out of this.
I wrote an email back to this girl, and told her that I was extremely hurt, but that I wished her luck, and whatnot....you know basically said i was okay with it. It didn't change the bad dreams I had last night though about it, or the fact that once again this week my stomach is sick. Or the fact that today I have to go play a wedding with her, and she is really the last person i want to see right now. That at least for today, I would rather not ever play with her again.

Today is a hard day. I just want to roll up in a ball in my bed, and come out maybe on thursday when i have fall break....I don't want to deal with anything that I have to deal with today.
Hope your life is less chaotic than mine is right now.
Depsite anything and everything I love you, and thanks to those people who support me, both in my good times and bad times.