How many of us have helped someone who took advantage of your kind heart? I’m sure there are some invisible hands raised, mine including.

Do it anyway, especially those who are ambassadors of Jesus. Showing love, forgiveness, mercy, and patience is not the same as letting others walk all over you, because what you give freely can’t be taken. In the past, I had many discouraging moments and felt much fatigue after people took advantage of my good intentions, but God’s been teaching me to “do it anyway”. In the beginning, I didn’t understand the importance of such advise, and I’m sure I haven’t completely grasped its benefits even today, but I have learned a few things along the way.

1. When “I did it anyway” by choosing freely (not guilted into, manipulated, or forced) to show love and mercy, since forgiveness was a lesson I would learn it later on in the midsts of the great sadness of 2014-2016 which was the worst part of illness time, what I was really doing was to train my heart, train it to be more flexible, bendable and malleable, positive properties of one’s soul which God can work with. A hard, rigid and bitter heart, shatters when help comes in a form of constructive criticism, conviction or new information.
2. When “I did it anyway” I made friends and not enemies, memories and not grievances.
3. When “I did it anyway”, I chose my action but didn’t have to worry if the outcome was not as I expected, that responsibility was not mine to shoulder.
4. When “I did it anyway”, I taught better lessons to my children.
5. When “I did it anyway” I became closer to God.
6.  When “I did it anyway”, even when it was hard, I protected my family’s hearts from anger and bitterness, a poison more deadly than most of us realize.
7. When “I did it anyway”, without realizing, I collected favors which were returned at the most opportune time,  favors such as your prayers while too weak to fight alone in my own battles, favors like encouraging words when I had no strength left to encourage myself, favors like reminding me the right way when I was too scared and confused to see that way myself, but mostly the favor of life:) So do it anyway and see what happens in the long run. Life will not be void of pain, but it the midst of pain you will not lack friends and love, something far more precious than we realize.  God Bless:)