I’m having yet another sick day. My poor immune system is struggling to keep up with the onslaught of germs it meets on any given day. I can normally keep going on pure stubbornness then the wall is hit and I’m out for the count. That’s what happened this weekend.

I had a glorious week. I met some fantastic new friends. Work was amazing. Slowly I started to get more tired, my throat started to ache, my head felt like the inside of a ringing church bell and then I just had to stop. I slept a lot over the last two days with many NyQuil induced dreams.

I woke up this morning thinking about life in general. The thoughts are swarming me, circling my head like annoying mosquitoes.

When I’m sick, my thoughts usually go back to my childhood. Not a great time for me but the time my consciousness began. My childhood was not as bad as it could have been but it was hard on me. It created for me the fragile, small world I lived in for decades to come.

I was always full of fear and anger. I had no idea as to a sense of self. I didn’t know what I wanted to do, except to just go away and hide. Then at the age of 16, my best friend’s father introduced me to Jesus.

My thoughts were how could any being love me. I was already damaged and there was not a lot of hope on the horizon.

As I got older, I dabbled with Christianity. But my guilt over really bad past decisions haunted me. But His love was in the back of my mind. As time progressed, I started to learn more about this religious stuff. Many a dark night was spent rocking in a corner, saying a prayer.

Fast forward many years and I have come a long way. My faith is getting stronger. But today, being a Christian is a bad thing. We are told that all Christians are closed minded, bigoted ignorant people who cannot think for themselves.

Some Christians are like that. But so are some people from every sector of life. Most Christians I know are similar to me. Once broken, on the way to wholeness. Most Christians I know hate what’s happening in the world today.

I just read a Facebook post about Christians and it was extremely negative. And I started thinking was I like that… Full of hate and bigotry.

Here’s my self-analysis.

I do hate. I hate when the weak are exploited. I hate arrogance and pride. I hate ignorance. I hate closed mind thinking. I hate rudeness and inconsiderate behavior. I hate greed most of all. I guess I do hate a lot but I don’t feel bad about this type of hate. It teaches me how not to act.

I also love a lot. I love beauty and tranquility. I love kind and compassionate people! I love rainstorms and tulips and butterflies. I love words of encouragement and words of wisdom. I love the gentleness of sloths. I love so many more things.

Just like so many things today, it is easy to lump all into the same bag of crap. It’s easy to say that all Christians are self-righteous and pompous. It’s far too easy to simply write off Christians as all freaks and fringy. I say go ahead and do that while you promote the one thing you claim us to be… Closed minded.

I have skirted the issue in this blog for fear of alienating readers. But I am a Christian, not a perfect one, and I’m proud of it. If that offends you, then I am sorry and feel free to unfollow me.

I do not think that myself and any of the Christians I know are what is being portrayed in the media. Yes, some are but most just want peace and civility. We want the wrongs righted.

I am really not in a position to speak for anyone other than myself. I am still searching the wilderness for my voice and my truth. So many of us are. But, don’t you think, if we stopped yelling at each other and started listening to each other or, at the very least, try to understand each other a little more that life might stop spiraling downward the way it is now. I think, and this might just be too juvenile, that if we could all put away the labels on people, take away the unnecessary offenses, and look at the soul of people, the world would start to heal. Civilization has a weak immune system and all the negativity is keeping it sick. Let’s all take a theoretical sick day and start the healing process. If the person to person hate isn’t cured, we are all doomed. Hate creates sickness in all of us. Let’s start to heal.

That’s just my opinion.