dealing with difficult people

Posted by Fidelity in creative writing, insightful, inspired, my life, optimistic

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code red::

crisis management

       Intricate precision; detailed comprehensiveness; pure individuality

there are innumerable verses that lay out the simple fact -- our maker is not one of assimilation but one who sees the beauty in creativity.

see: Psalm 139:13-16; Jeremiah 1:5; Genesis 1:26-27 

or my personal favorite...

Yes, the body has many different parts, not just one part. If the foot says, “I am not a part of the body because I am not a hand,” that does not make it any less a part of the body.  And if the ear says, “I am not part of the body because I am not an eye,” would that make it any less a part of the body? If the whole body were an eye, how would you hear? Or if your whole body were an ear, how would you smell anything?

But our bodies have many parts, and God has put each part just where he wants it. How strange a body would be if it had only one part! 

Yes, there are many parts, but only one body.

1 Corinthians 12:14-20 

That being said, I'm a huge advocate of the (nonexistent yet highly present in the life of one) blend out/ matching=overrated campaigns.

So yet, why is it that when I come across someone who varies

ever so slightly

& challenges my dogma,

tests my patience,

colors outside the lines …

wait,

who's lines? oh, MY lines.

That I… why yes… absolutely loathe it.

And that, my friends, is p r e c i s e l y the current forecast of my life.  

Now, not that it's uncommon to do life with people who see things different than me.  Why in fact, I would be worried by the lack of tension because it's in that tug-of-war with life and the people in it -- which I subsequently grow.

And my friends, right now I am growing faster than I can keep up.  It’s not the kind of subtle growth that happens overnight when you exert too-little enough energy to notice.  The kind that happens when you’re in middle school and one Monday morning you grab your pop-tart and jet to school just to find your three (3) years younger sister is now a head taller than you.  Ya that kind of growth, that leaves you in the average category for the rest of your 5’6” measely existence ;)

However, my friends: this is not that kind of growth. This is the growing pains kind of growth.  “I will grow through the pain; through the pain I will grow”

“When pains rush hits you, like the wind do, think – we have something angels look into” __ a derivative of Romans 8:23 that we are at the mercy of God’s sovereignty for the Glory of the Lord as we eagerly wait to become his kin.

So I’m writing because although I may not be growing outwardly, in height per-se, I am growing in the matters of my heart. In the matters of compassion, understanding, patience, gentleness, wisdom.  And that my friends you can’t learn in a book.  So phew, am I tired of the tug of war, boy am I excited for the sweet muscles… heart muscles will you, that I will have afterword.

I’m not defeated.  Because defeat (outside the scope of a competitive game) doesn’t claim defeat without my own consent.  Therefore, persistence is key, my friends. Measure your greatness not by what hurdles come your way, and you so unathletically trip and walk away bruised knee and raspberry’d from; but by what it takes to discourage you. 

So I say bring it on world.

 My heart vessels are geared up and ready to go. 

Oh yes, you shaped me first inside, then out;
    you formed me in my mother’s womb.
I thank you, High God—you’re breathtaking!
    Body and soul, I am marvelously made!
    I worship in adoration—what a creation!
You know me inside and out,    you know every bone in my body;
You know exactly how I was made, bit by bit,    how I was sculpted from nothing into something.
Like an open book, you watched me grow from conception to birth;    all the stages of my life were spread out before you,
The days of my life all prepared    before I’d even lived one day.

psalm 139:13-16, msg

inspired from Pastor Tom's message during the oikos series.  Full length sermon can be found here