You Just Don't Know...

On this journey forward this year, many ideas are finally coming into focus for me. This one I'm sharing today is one that has actually been forming in me for many years and through many life situations.  And it is a particularly hard one for me to embrace as a woman who prides herself on her intelligence, but that makes it no less true.  Here it is...

You don't know.  

Really.

You. Don't. Know.

Oh, we think we know.  We are more than happy to share with everyone we know exactly what we know. We are convinced that we completely understand all there is to it.  

But we don't know.

You can't look at me, for example, and understand how enormous the knee pain is that I work through on a daily basis.  You may see me limp from time to time.  And you perhaps have talked about it with me and know that the surgery that gives me hope for a better quality of life is 15 days away.  But you have no way of knowing that every step I take on my right leg feels like a knife is stabbing me, but that I keep on taking those steps because I am deathly afraid that the moment I intentionally stop taking them will be the day that I no longer can and that haunts me.

You don't know.

I'm not saying that you SHOULD know.  I'm not even saying that you CAN know, not fully anyway. What I'm saying is that you DON'T.  You hear me.  You pray for me.  You may even love me.  But you don't know.

Why is that important?  For this reason:  because you don't know, you don't get to judge.  

You don't get to see me sitting down at my desk instead of roaming my classroom like I might have in the past and make a judgment that I'm a lazy teacher.  You don't get to look at the dust piled high on nearly every surface of my house and deem me a horrible housekeeper.  You don't get to see the weight I worked so hard to lose come piling back on me and think I've given up and don't care anymore.  

You don't know.

Make no mistake...people DO make those judgments.  A few are even brave enough to own them...confront me about them and share their unsolicited wisdom...but you don't get to.  Because you don't know.

I know that I've been given this lesson in my life because I'm one who doesn't know, too.  And I've learned this lesson the hard way.  By assuming that I do know...when in reality, I don't.

I don't know that the marriage that looks so much better than mine from the outside is actually struggling to hold on and may not make it.

I don't know that the mom who looks to me like she's doing everything right is shaming herself daily for sins only she knows and is desperate for someone to help her.

I don't know that the kiddo who looks to me like she's highly intelligent and capable is dreadfully afraid of finding the subject she knows nothing about because then everyone will see how stupid she really is, so she stays up very late every night and makes sure that she knows as much as she can about everything she can.

I THINK I know these things.  I am a very keen observer of people.  I pay attention. But I don't know.

I. Don't. Know.

And because I don't know, I need to stop judging.  I need to stop believing I know what I can't possibly know.  And I need to just love people and offer them grace instead of judgment.  

I need to ask...and listen.  And then listen some more.  

I need to pray...and forgive.  And then forgive some more.

Perhaps more than anything, I need to remember always that I don't know.

This world is full of critics.  What it's decidedly short on is people who are willing to love. 

My move forward today...and hopefully every day hereafter...is to be one of those people.  It's better not to know and just to love.  It gets us much farther in the end, doesn't it?

Moving Forward....

Angie

:-)