Choosing Grace

You know that feeling you get when you see a person in the grocery store parking lot that just decides to leave their cart in the middle of a parking space and drive off? Or how about the one who drives all of the way past the line of cars just to get to the front and merge over?

Why? Why is it that for as long as I can remember I have been bothered by those things? For years I have instantly defined people by one action that they take. I immediately think that they don't value other people's time and that they think that they are more important than all of the other people around them. It wasn't until recently that I had an experience that changed my perspective.

It's easy to judge a situation from the outside. It flies out of our mouth so quickly that "we would never" or "how could someone do something like that?". Well, chances are we have in fact done something exactly like that. And this is where grace comes in.

If you are anything like me, you realize you left your child's back pack at home 10 minutes after leaving the house. Of course there are signed papers or something that is due that day in that bag and in that moment you have to make a choice. You either rush or your child suffers the consequences.

How about when you've already been late to work once this week because one of the kids is sick and you are flying by the seat of your pants knowing that you can't be late again or there will be consequences.

Or maybe it's worse. Maybe you have a family member that is sick and you are rushing to get to where they are to be sure that you can be there to support them.

Maybe you've had a child that has a stomach virus and is sick as a dog in the back seat.

How about the panic attack that hits you out of nowhere. You feel like at any moment you will just burst if you don't get out of that car.

Or of course there is the doctor's appointment. If you are more than 10 minutes late to some appointments they will either put you to the back of the line or reschedule your appointment. You've requested off of work, scheduled your replacements and all of that may have been for nothing because you happened to get behind a school bus that morning and you are running late.

How about the working mom who has to take her sick child to the doctor? She has to rush to leave work, her coworkers are stressed because they are picking up the slack, and meanwhile she is trying to tend to her sick child in the back of the car who is crying and miserable.

More often than we realize pregnant women have something to be worried about. Maybe there is something wrong with the baby. Maybe her husband is deployed. Maybe she's a single mother who has no idea how she will pay the bills. Don't you think that might make her a little careless when she is so distracted by these very heavy problems?

How about the woman who just found out her husband filed for divorce? Or the man who just found out his wife has cancer? God forbid you find out that your child has an illness that can't be cured.These are all real things. They happen to people every single day.

This week has been rough. A complete disaster. I was rushed one morning with 2 crying babies and a grumpy 4 year old in the car at 6:35 am. A miserable crying fest. Before I knew it, I found myself merging into a lane after passing everyone up. I literally had no idea that the lane that I was in was closing ahead.

Wait, this is what I hate. I can't stand when people do this and I literally catch myself doing it. What a humbling moment. To realize that we actually take time out of our day to fuss about how someone is doing something the "wrong way" when it's really only a matter of time before we do something similar.

Just like me, most of the people who make these mistakes are just caught up in a moment. They are struggling. They are distracted. They are not personally attacking you by cutting you off in traffic or cutting the line in the grocery store. It has nothing to do with you and everything to do with them.

It's not our job to allow people to manipulate us with recurrent careless actions but I do think it is our job to give people the grace that they deserve. The grace that I so desperately need sometimes. We all need it sometimes. He so freely gives it to us. If we really want to be like Him we will do the same.

So is this easy? No. But the more rough patches you go through the more you realize that in the trenches people are just trying to survive. They have to take energy from somewhere and sometimes it just comes from the "be aware of others" category.

I am making a choice to think differently. When someone is rude to me, I'll picture what she may be going through.

The bottom line is this: People are trying their best. It may not be what you envision to be the best, but it may be all that they are capable of in that moment. If we expect others to give us grace, we should be giving it out as much as we can. Smile at strangers. Pray for them. Stop saying what you would or wouldn't do and just stay in your lane. God will handle the rest.

xoxo

Mary-Ellen