I have a gift. I realized that this morning. It's going to sound arrogant and pretentious to write it out, but I don't care. My gift is that I love people at what I feel is a divine level. I think it's a type of loving that normally takes your whole life to learn, but God blessed me with it early. I think it's the type of loving that you usually, if you DO learn it, learn it right before you die. You can see this type of loving in some elderly people -- they look at you with that glazed look and just smile, teary-eyed. (There are also the grouchy old people that obviously don't learn it.) The only downfall in having this gift is that I am always disappointed because I hardly ever get that level of love back from people. I always feel as though I love people more than they love me. And this is truly a fault of mine because we should NEVER love people and want them to love us back. We should just love people for the sheer act of it, for the sheer reward you get from giving so much of yourself to people, and never ask for anything in return. That is something I need to work on. Jessica gave me her book Conversations with God to read. I've been somewhat skeptical of it, but I started reading it today, and I think it's going to be a very good experience for me. Things happen for a reason. This book has changed people -- maybe God is letting Jessica give me this book to benefit me and my life in some way. Neale Donald Walsch, who wrote the book, is saying that God spoke to him. When you say stuff like that nowadays, people either get really angry at you and call you a blasphemer or just call you a looney. But maybe you have to be a little looney to actually have the GUTS to share these insights you get from God. I think God wants me to open people up to loving each other deeply. It brings a tear to my eye the amazing transformation that has occurred in my family. When I first gave them their binders last night, they were kind of late to react. I think they were overwhelmed. Danny felt really bad for not having taken more time to write everyone more meaningful letters. But today, everyone has been calling each other and crying to each other! And they've called over here and told mom how happy they are (I was asleep still). I am SO happy. I feel this overwhelming contentment and closeness with everyone. While everyone was looking at their binders, I was standing and watching them, and Chris was standing by me. And he was crying. I'm so close with Chris and Matt, too. These deep, loving relationships are the types I desire all the time and rarely get...and I'm getting them now! The family is different already, in that quick of time! This makes me think that we all have the capacity to love maybe almost as deeply as God loves us. And maybe I'm sent here to help people to do that. Even though I plan on continuing with Psychology, I really think I'm meant to be a writer, too. It's obvious how obsessive I am with sharing what's on my mind by how often I write on here. So I'm going to keep reading this Conversations with God book and see what happens. I'm so excited. I think we're all here to be missionaries of some sort. It's good to realize what I'm here to be a missionary about. Another thing I think this book is going to help me do is stop worrying about having to know every little detail about God and religion and Jesus and Buddha and what's "true" about our life. Worrying about this constantly causes me to not want to talk to God because I get bitter at now being able to know. I think God is less about words and explanations and more about a feeling and a thought, as the CWG dude said. So we'll see!

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