Love and other stuff

For those of you who read my blog consistently you will know that I am sometimes fairly sporadic in my blog post publishing. In the past this has been to do with being horrendously busy and not having time to process thoughts, but recently that has not been the case at all. 

If anything over the last few weeks I have probably had more time and opportunity to think deeply than I have in a long time. It has been wonderful! There are a number of reasons for this:

• At work I have been told that we are aiming to "ruthlessly eliminate the hurry from our lives" - this has been taken from a book that we are reading called "Soul Keeping" by John Ortberg. I would seriously recommend this book - I am being made to only read a chapter a week and it is incredible how much more I am taking in. 
• I have had to cut down how much I am working. For a while I have been working more than I should have been in terms of my contract, but this year I've been told to sort it out and bring it down to what it should be. It's pretty crazy how just doing that has freed up A LOT of time.
• I have spoken to a number of wise people who have really helped to balance my thoughts and have asked the right questions.
• For a long time I haven't valued time by myself, but I seem to be in a new season where I am becoming more ok with not being with people 24/7. Means a lot more thinking happens. 

So one of the reasons I haven't blogged in a while is that I have been thinking a lot and not sure if my thinking is fully thought out enough to put something down in words. I'm very much still in that place but I figured I'd catch you guys up a bit so you know where my heads been. 

I've been asking the question:

How far should you love someone?

I guess I have always been quite a people person and as such have made a number of friends. As is inevitable some have hurt me. Now my natural response is to want to tell them to piss off, retreat, build a wall and keep myself safe. But as a Christian that doesn't sit well with me. I mean you don't see Jesus blanking Peter after the denial do you. 

But on the flip side I am also reticent to put myself out there to be hurt over and over - how far is too far? As a Christian is there ever a too far?

I have had a number of conversations with people about this and would appreciate further input because I don't have any answers yet. I am inclined to think that there must be a middle ground to retreating or being hurt repeatedly. But trying to work out what that is and what it looks like is taking a while and I think I'm on a journey of self discovery as I'm working it out. 

I've been recommended a couple of books to read so as and when I learn something or make any progress on knowing any answers I'll be back.

In the mean time I'm enjoying taking life at a slightly slower pace - it's good for the soul.