Relationships Part 3

 

When you stop expecting people to be perfect, you can like them for who they are. Donald Miller

 

Sometimes punctuation matters.  That is the case with the above quote.  It is really two different, distinct thoughts held lightly and loosely together by a comma.  The first part is to stop expecting people to be perfect.

 

Okay, wait.  Because really the first step – implied in the above quote - is stop expecting YOURSELF to be perfect.  If the constant chatter and color commentary in your mind is pointing out all the ways you fumble and stumble, then that pain (energy and chemical composition) is going to be passed along to others.  If you interact with people who seem to always be simmering with anger; that energy is radiating off them onto you.  Others can draw you in with the warmth of welcome, inclusivity, and earnestness.  Others seem bored…others discouraged.  There are some people who drain your energy and others who give you energy.  That is the chemical reaction Jung pointed to in the first post this week.  We are not perfect…and perhaps when we accept that we are accepted, we can extend that grace and love to others.  We are just featherless biped animated by energy trying to navigate life.  When we cease to believe that the destination is perfection and instead accept that we are travelers on a road, there is a shift.  This is what Richard Rohr would call, “the first half of life”.  We spend a lot of time and energy trying to fix/advise/save ourselves and others.  Only to realize that we can’t really accomplish this.  We are saved by grace… and grace is a gift of God’s presence that infuses and inspires us.  Daily we are generously given God’s unconditional and unceasing love.  Not because we “earned” that love…or “deserve” that love, but because love is who God is…and who we are called to be.  So we stop longing for perfection and seek to embody a love that has never, will never, let us go.

 

Then comes the comma in Miller’s quote.  Oh, that comma is where we spend our lifetime.  The holy pause of really trying to point toward a different destination.  We can mentally say, “I totally don’t expect perfection.”  Only to grumble and mumble about that person who did that thing ~ the nerve of that person.  Or can you believe that person said that thing?  Or just being around that person can cause your blood pressure to raise.  We can nod at church to love all, only on Monday morning to say all kinds of hurtful things on social media.  We can talk about people in ways that we would never talk to a person’s face.  Re-read that last sentence, because that is the work of the comma…the pause.  Healthy relationships means that how I talk about someone is how I talk to someone.  I can’t complain and criticize behind the back…only to smile to the person’s face.  Now, we all do this, which is why the comma is the work of the lifetime…and where we struggle. 

 

And by grace and prayer and persistent openness we begin to find ways to meet people where they are rather than where and who we want them to be.

 

I pray that the words today would stir within our soul and guide you toward new ways of inhabiting this world in such a time as this.  Amen.