CRAIG

Our daughter is getting married this April. Lori and I are working on the "Invitation" list. There are the easy decisions about who to invite and who to shun into outer darkness. What’s rocking my internal world are those we should invite for the sake of family harmony, for history, and world order. AHHH!!! So many things surface in me. Memories of slights, profound disappointments, wounding words or actions (Howard dismissing me in a toast at my 40th birthday, my former supervisor’s betrayal and superficial annoying presence; Aunt Laura’s hot then frigidly cold and always self-centered presumptious relationship with us). I’m caught off guard by this rogue wave of anger and disappointment. Lori and argue and in my heated passion I sober up just enough to begin to feel disappointed in myself. My reactions, my emotions. Two things quickly unfold – my desire to love like Christ, relate like Christ, live like Christ whatever the circumstances, emotions or relational grief. And, simultaneously, the shame and self-contempt of not yet being the man I’d like to be… and thought I was. I’m bouncing off the walls about to disengage and withdraw from Lori and the "List" as some true part of me cries out for God to speak.

And He does…

Craig! You have a good heart. You are a good lover. Don’t focus on their disconcerting behavior. If all you see is their behavior, their false-self, they’ll anger and repulse you.

And there’s a pause for affect here, and He continues,

If you remember their story… the wounded-ness and broken-ness the lies beneath their uncaring lives you have compassion for them.

God came for me in that moment… he spoke to my cry. He almost always does. In the following moments he reminded me of Howard’s and Aunt Laura’s wounds, and of my former supervisor’s desperate and foolish response to his own pain. So much shifted in me in those moments.

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