Joy needs to be the theme.

I've been pretty upset over the past couple of days because I got rejected by a guy who I thought was going to be different than the other ones that I've been interested in. This has left a huge knot of anger in my stomach because of bottling up my emotions. I knew that I needed to cry about it today or it was going to end up being damaging to my health.

I was having trouble thinking of anything that could make me cry until I remembered the book that Emily had given to me for Christmas one year. She gave me "Chicken Soup for Jenna's Soul" and filled it with stories that various loved ones had written about things they had learned during their lives. My favorite story in there is the one that my dad had written called, "My First Daughter." I've read that one often and it's pretty much guaranteed to make me cry. I read through the majority of it and I still wasn't crying until I read the last paragraph when he wrote, "Every night, I pray for Jenna and her sister, that their relationships with God would be so good and close that nothing could steal their joy and hope." Joy and hope are the two things that I've been thinking about the most since this happened on Tuesday night. I don't have a lot of hope right now because I did think that things were going to be different with this guy and it's hard to think that I will have to look for someone else again.

The other part of the joy theme is that I was reading through old journal entries on Tuesday afternoon and I came across one where I had written down a quote from Ben Patterson. He said, "Joy is what you experience when you're grateful for the grace that God has given to you." I remember hearing him say that during a sermon at St. Andrew's and completely agreeing with him because he was saying that none of our circumstances in life matter if we're thinking about what Jesus did by dying on the cross. Then I realized that some sort of bad circumstance was going to happen soon and that God was giving me that quote to lean on when the time came.

The next day, Hunter called to tell me that he was moving back to Dallas. I just remember feeling so heartbroken because we had been on that missions trip to Blaine, KY the week before and it had seemed like there was something between the two of us while we were there. Plus, the kids in the youth group kept saying that we should be together. My point is that God prepared me on that Sunday night for some bad news and I'm certain that he prepared me again for this past Tuesday night.

Now I just need to cry a little bit more and actually feel something. After that, I'm completely ready to return to having joy and hope.