An open letter to people I love to hate...

Every single day, I just love to hate you. I feel that I have reason to. I don’t like your behavior. I don’t like your attitude. I don’t like the direction you combed their hair. I don't like your dog... or your friend's dog. Whatevs. I don’t need a particular reason, because you’ve stomped on my very last nerve until it is fried and frayed and hanging on by a teensy tiny thread.

Sometimes you stomp heavily on said nerve through your thoughtless and selfish antics. You open your mouth too much and say mean things… or you don’t say anything at all at times when politeness would be a blessing. Or you drive past my truck and don’t mention the scratch that you quite apathetically made on my already beat up bumper. And you saunter around as if your metaphorical car’s better than mine, because it isn’t as damaged. Or you place blame in the wrong direction. Or you post hatefulness instead of trying to lift peeps up. 

But then I'm reminded that I am just like you. 

I am apathetic to people's needs. 

I run my mouth when I shouldn't.  

I've judged when it's just not my place. 

I don't look at people like God does. 

And you present to me a choice each and every day. 

Allow the pain of your actions to hurt me… or not. 

Allow the damage already done on my heart to continue hurting me and others… or not. 

Treat you in a mean way, like the world would tell me to do… or not. 

Chose revenge... or not.

To be like Jesus and love you… or not. 

And I begin to understand love in a deeper manner. Loving someone doesn’t mean to love all of their actions. I don’t have to like or agree with you in order to love you. I can choose to try to understand why hitting my truck wasn’t worth an apology and love you because you had a bad day. I can choose to see that you hurt me, because maybe you thought I was the luckier one and you lashed out.  Or maybe it wasn’t about me at all, and I can chose to love you for that too. 

Instead of reveling in your misfortune, I’ll pray for your heart and keep trying to love you as a child of God.

I can choose to wake up and spend the day being more like my Creator that made my beautiful life… and gave me free will… and allowed me to make a mess of things. The One that picks me up and calls my His. And makes me beautifully broken. 

I can’t love you quite like that. 

But I can choose to try.  

Because you are worth it.

You are beautifully broken too.

“Above all, love each other deeply, because love covers over a multitude of sins.”

1 Peter 4:8 NIV