nope, it’s not fair.

Life is unfair.

And I actually wouldn’t change that.

Huh?

I know, that’s strange. But hear me out. It’s not like I’m a misogynist. Oops, wait, that’s not what I mean. Well, I’m not a misogynist because, as it turns out, I don’t hate women. Like, at all. That’s like saying I hate people named Jessica. Although I do have this strange thing about wishing I was the only one with my name. Guess I need to still work on that whole sharing thing. Actually, my parents came close to naming me Honeysuckle, because I was born right when those wild flowers first make their summer appearance. And I know, having a name with the word suck in it would probably have given my parents just one more reason to have home schooled me, but hey! I bet I’d never meet anybody with my name, if I were Honeysuckle Latshaw. Wow, that’s a doozy.

But what I meant to say is that it’s not like I’m a masochist. And that doesn’t just mean…well that, right? It also means that you don’t want pain to be inflicted on you because you derive some sort of strange pleasure from it, right?

I’ll just assume that’s right.

But about life being unfair. A friend and I were talking about this. And we came to this conclusion: life is sometimes terribly unfair as in, what did I ever do to deserve this?; and life is also sometimes beautifully unfair as in, what did I ever do to deserve this?

And what if you took out the unfairness? ALL of it. You’d be left with death and taxes, I guess. Which are the only two things that are certain, according to Benjamin Franklin, anyway. And yes, I hate all the unfair tragedies. The randomness that makes us all wonder what God does with his omnipotence, anyway. It’s not like he sleeps. At least, not according to the Bible. And actually, I firmly believe that none of the evil that transpires around us is related to God at all. I think that it can be traced to us, to our selfishness, to living in a world that is, well, unfair; as well as living in a world in which we are not the center of the universe, that maybe a flood needs to happen or a fire needs to burn and no, that doesn’t make anyone feel any better about their house now being gone, but maybe it helps us to understand a little bit better.

Or at least keep us from building a house in a flood land or somewhere prone to fires.

And yes, it’s unfair that there are so many people who’s spouses treat them as they deserve to be treated, and yet, that didn’t happen for me. It’s unfair that many people are living in a home, when I am living in a bedroom (that is of course, in a home, but you know what I mean.) It’s unfair that I was faithful and was betrayed for my effort. Especially when that effort was spelled L-O-V-E.  But for every unfair bad thing that’s happened, I can list an unfair beautiful thing that has happened. It’s unfair that so many people have parents who don’t have time or resources to really take care of them, while my parents bend over backwards to help me, to make sure that I know I am important and loved. It’s unfair that so many people are so busy working on surviving, on eating their next meal or just making their next payment, while I am able to spend time on crafts that have nothing to do with my basic survival needs. Music. Dance. Writing. And yes, I will spend my last breath telling you that these things are absolutely essential to living, but I will not try to make that argument to someone who’s stomach is empty, someone who cannot remember the last meal that they ate.

And then there’s grace. Mercy. A way we have with God, a close connection to his heart that starts in the way he loves us and ends there too.

That is so unfair.

And I don’t understand this unfairness. Any of it. Not the bad or the good–but I guess it’s not really up to me to understand it. I guess it’s up to me to live a grateful life; to try to make life as unfair as possible for others.

In the beautiful way, that is.