"God didn't give us life so we could suffer. He suffered to give us life. Shake off the hateful and negative people in your life. You can love and pray for them at a distance. Always choose happiness over hurt."
Those words really struck me as I've always thought the goal was to salvage relationships and hang on regardless of what people put you through. But, as I'm beginning to understand more everyday, people take advantage of that attitude. Some people don't care for your happiness, only how you can increase their happiness. Some people find gratification in your failures and live to exploit your flaws.
God didn't design us to deal with that. He didn't intend for us to allow people into our lives who emotionally drain us and leech off of our happiness. God designed friendship as a bond between people of like mind, a bond of equality, not entitlement. He didn't intend for us to utilize our friends like stepping stools to be used to rise up and then discarded. Friendship is a mutual climb, a shared quest for happiness and bettering ourselves.
Pray for the clarity to discern between happiness and hurt. Pray for the strength to separate yourself from the people in the latter category and the integrity to pray that those people will find happiness of their own.
