Today’s guest poster wishes to remain anonymous which is always a fair choice. I loved her response about judging at face value in part because I got to know her so much better in it. We’re friends on social media, but unfortunately don’t know each other as well in real life, not yet anyway. I push the like button on her posts a lot because she’s passionate about workplace equality for women. The piece of her story that she shares today helps me understand some of what fuels that passion.

I appreciate her thoughts on judging others and what it is like to be on the receiving end of those judgments. Just this morning I was listening to a Podcast and was so struck by this statement, “Our egos need enemies.” When we place our identity in our correctness or our goodness, then it’s necessary that someone be wrong or bad.  Our ego, our identity, depends on it. But when we discover the truth that before we are or do anything, we are loved, our ego no longer needs enemies. In the Christian tradition, we just celebrated the resurrection of Jesus, who when he looks down from the cross says, “Father, forgive them for they know not what they do.” And when the resurrected Jesus meets the disciples, most of whom scattered and betrayed him at his arrest, he breathes peace on them, not judgment or scolding. That’s a picture of an identity grounded in love.

So, appreciate my friend’s story and try to think about who you would be in it. If we were all grounded in love, how would this story change?

Something I feel strongly about: Judgments at Face Value

I attended three different elementary schools and never went to third grade. My parents, both well-intentioned people, were divorced when I was 4 and my older sister was 8. They married too young and fell out of love. My mother was from a devout, conservative Christian background where divorce was neither condoned nor forgiven. You should have tried harder. You should have smiled brighter. And if you found happiness after a turbulent marriage, you were definitely going to hell because you were an adulterer by your audacity to find happiness through your second marriage. You might as well light yourself on fire and do the world a favor.

Yes, I grew up in a world where things could change at the drop of a hat and people’s quick assessments of your destiny were often catapulted at you out of the sheer amusement or insecurity of others.   It was a telling preview into adulthood. So judge the book by the cover. The strong, terrified woman who just got divorced, two young kids, and consumed with working to provide for a family that she created with a role to nurture and be provided for. She worked three jobs and fell in love again with one of the jobs that led to her tireless career. The other moms talked about her, especially when I attended a private school, about how she never made it to the first day of school or cheerleading events. She was always late. She probably abused carpool privileges on occasion. On the surface, I am sure she looked like a mess that needed to be put on a prayer list. But I think about how things actually were rather than how things were perceived by people who knew nothing about what they spoke about, and somehow never seemed to quit talking about “that” mom who never fit in, who didn’t find her kids or husband to be a priority because she worked outside the home even after she married a doctor on the second time around. What a selfish, arrogant fiasco of a “Christian” woman. I can only imagine their thoughts.

What they didn’t know is that she found an identity through her career and that particular identity was the only singular possession that she ever really has possessed because she literally gave everything, to her own health’s detriment, to both nurturing and providing for a family that she loved even when she probably didn’t want to. Those weren’t supposed to be the cards in her life, but she played a hell of a hand. That’s the reality, neutral or not. Go, Mom.

Thanks so much for sharing your story of watching your mom grow and come through such a difficult challenge. The judgment that comes in our brokenness hits close to home for a lot of us. But the truth of the Gospel is that when we were nothing, we were loved and rescued and welcomed home. Grace is hard to receive, and it’s hard to give, isn’t it?

I got a little behind with the Easter holiday, so if anyone else would like to respond to last week’s prompt (or any of the previous prompts), I’d be glad to share another response this week.  A new prompt will be up on Monday.  Email me shannon@lifeprompted.com 

Also, if you’d like to listen to the podcast I referenced here is the link. I have to give credit to Rob Bell because it’s the right thing to do, but I also hesitate to share this link because I know a lot of people have decided he’s a heretic. I don’t want you to decide I am one, also. Ironic, maybe, given the topic of this post? His thoughts on Saul’s conversion in Acts is worth a listen, heretic or not.

Happy Easter, my friends!  Thank you for reading! And thank you again, so much, to today’s guest author.