Be Open To People

For the past few months my youth group has been having sessions about topics from the amazing movie "To Save A Life". For those of you who have not yet seen the movie,  long story short:  Roger and Jake grew up best friends. They hung out all the time! Then, when they were out riding bikes, a car comes right for Jake,  without even a second thought, Roger pushes Jake out of the way and takes the hit himself. Ever since that day Roger has had a leg disability. When they both enter into high school they slowly grow apart; Jake being the school basketball champ gets him very popular, while Roger is known as the "uncool" kid. After Roger couldn't take the life of being bullied, he went to school and shot himself. He died instantly. Though Jake grew apart from Roger quite a bit, he wasn't let unscathed. He blamed himself for not standing up for his old pal. A few weeks after a wild party, his girlfriend finds out she's pregnant, him being the father. His girlfriend is scared and confused, and wants an abortion. After losing Roger, he is eager not to lose another life. Jake has to pick between the college he has always dreamed about, or his girlfriend and their baby.
 Tonight the topic was choosing between those you love, or your dreams, like Jake had to go through. I learned you should aways be there for everyone, you might end up losing them. For the activity, we each got two large sticky notes. On one we wrote what we  were going through, or what we didn't like about ourselves. We stuck that one on the front of our shirt. With the second one, we left it blank, and put it on our back. We got to go around and write on the blank sticky of other people encouraging words based on the front sticky. I enjoyed writing encouraging words on other's sticky because I got to comfort people. I loved to read what other people wrote on my sticky and felt encouraged.  It's funny how you can comfort other people but not the person you know the most, yourself.