Engaged ~

With people. In conversations about real stuff - thought provoking topics. Some hard things, others merely involving matters of opinion.

I've happened to experience a lot of this over the past few days.

It's got me thinking about how we tend to interact as human beings. It's kind of funny the way we are with each other. All of us to one extent or another, trying to persuade, to influence, to affect the lives and thoughts of others. Sometimes seeing the specks so clearly in one another's eyes, entirely missing our own. Either letting others live out their own processes and loving and trusting and respecting them through it, offering the benefit of the doubt that they are really thinking things through to the best of their ability, or deciding they are clearly missing something, or even entirely wrong, because we happen to not agree. Making judgements. No matter how hard we try, it seems impossible to avoid. We all have our biases. We make determinations about what we believe is right and wrong. Then, so often, in our minds, it becomes - Period.
This is the way things are. Period.

I hate those Periods. As if I am certain about much of anything. Because I'm really not. Opinions I held a couple of years or even weeks ago about something may be entirely different than what I believe to be true today. But without drawing those hard lines, sometimes I feel wishy washy, unresolved, unsure, critical - critiquing all positions. Finally making some sort of once and for all stance about a subject comes with a nice, ample dose of security. Even if it's an illusion, a sense of security is a pretty excellent feeling to have.

I've been on both sides of different arguments recently.
Feeling judged. Knowing I am judging. Evaluating. Drawing quick conclusions. Wondering how someone could possibly hold the convictions they do. Having others ask that very question about me.

Petrified of blind spots, I'm always asking friends to point mine out. Although, I'm relatively convinced they're impossible to completely abolish. I can't take the me out of me.

The longer I live, the more I begin to think that there are so very few hard, fast, immovable, absolute lines that must be drawn. That the vast majority of life is somewhere in the middle - people being free to do the best they can with what they've got to work with in any given moment. What they do today may not be what they would have done yesterday or what they will do tomorrow. What resonates with one, moves them to the depth of their being unto good works, may drive another in the exact opposite direction.

As we seek His face, surely God is big enough to work with us all where we are. Only He is intimately acquainted with every detail of our past journey. Only He sees precisely where each of us is headed in the future.

We're all on our way somewhere....
Maybe we should allow each other traveling mercies.