Doing Better

This came from Jen Hatmaker's shop. I have ordered mine and will hang it proudly in my home. This is my new mantra.

I can't say no one should ever judge anyone, because we all must make judgments all the time, but I am saying that most of the time we judge more than we ought and we give those we are judging too little grace, too little love. I was, painfully, discussing political things with my dad last week and a particular person that neither of us likes very much (but for different reasons) came up. He expressed great frustration about this elected official, lamenting: he could do so much better. My reply was, yeah, but he could do so much worse.

We are all embodied in that exchange--we could do so much better, but we could ALSO do so much worse. And the thing is, focusing our energies on holding people accountable for unattainably lofty expectations blinds us to progress made, to how really far they (and we, for this concept works to treat ourselves gently as well) have come.

On the subject of judgments, I try to remind myself and to teach my children what our actual stewardships are. I have responsibility for my children. I am entitled to heavenly help, divine discernment, in judging how best to parent and care for them. I may, from time to time, have an additional stewardship in the church or with a job, but barring that, I have no entitlement to revelation, to eternal perspective over any one else. Where I am not entitled to heavenly help, my responsibility is to be gentle, to love first.

And truthfully, while we must all make judgments, the best judgment we can make on most days is to love first, love best, and leave the judgments to God, who has the full perspective.