Everyone Has a Story

Last month the husband and I participated in Off Meat October and it was an indeed an interesting experience. Last year when we did No Meat November our biggest side steps were our birthdays and Thanksgiving, but other than that it was a relatively easy experience.  This year has by far been more of a learning experience. For one reason or another, we have gone out to eat at friends houses or restaurants more this past month than previously. Now generally, we are quite easy to appease when it comes to the culinary world and can always ensure our companions have their specific needs met first. For the first time, we became the ones everyone was catering to. And quite frankly, it was weird. At first I felt like some snobby princess that had to be catered to simply because I had chosen to abstain from meat, forcing everyone else to bend to my “needs”.  I was judging myself because I assumed everyone else was. But as we ran into issues with restaurants not having any meatless options that would even begin to constitute a meal, and that most places price items with meat on pastas and salads to begin with and would refuse to lower the prices that don’t contain these proteins or even offer that as an option, I began to look deeper.

Yes, we made a choice to cut out meat from our diet, but what about those individuals that don’t have that choice? What about those individuals who have allergies or other heath issues that prevent them from consuming certain items? Is it really fair to pass judgement or frustration on a person when we don’t know the whole story? When we have no idea the “why” and only see the perceived inconvenience, we forget to love the person in front of us. Everyone has a story. I mentioned this in my last post when I was speaking about The Perks of Being a Wallflower and couldn’t help but expand a bit on those thoughts. When situations arise we immediately think we know everything driving a person’s actions.  We label them by their response and place them in a category. What we fail to do, however, is contemplate the possibility that perhaps they have something going on in their life that is effecting thier behaviors that we know nothing about. A lost job. A bad breakup. A death of a friend. A tragic diagnosis. Abuse. Failure. Brokenness…

And yet we continue to snap our opinion. We are called to love our neighbors. To pray for our enemies. To embody the grace and mercy of our Father and emulate compassion…without question or condition. To assume the best in people and trust first. To smile when we don’t feel like it. To give of our time when we don’t feel like it. Because we never what is happening behind the scenes, and what kind of impact our words, and especially our actions, can have.

This message is something that really hit me for the first time on the receiving end a few months ago while recovering from surgery, but it hadn’t really come to fruition until now on the giving end.  During the summer I was always covered in some sort of scarf to hide my scar regardless of the weather and I got a lot of funny looks. When I wouldn’t wear a scarf, generally only while out for a run with the husband, people would not only look they would stare, and worst of all they would whisper. I could only imagine the stories they created for my ghastly wound, none of which could live up to the emotional experience that had transpired. And that planted the seed of understanding much more firmly to not judge a book based on its cover. Recently my experiences not being at work every day has broken those stereotypic views of unemployment, stay at home moms, Starbucks baristas, Target cashiers and the like. You never know what someone has experienced or is currently going through. As I continue to embrace the lessons He is teaching me daily, this is one that I hope to practice often. To not only speak my faith, but live it out and be His hands and feet to those around me. For His love and generosity to shine through me.