Take me out of the box!
We reconnected with a person we knew years ago. Actually, he was a student of ours some 30 years ago. He was part of the junior high-class Jim and I taught. We called it the year from hell. It was a year of struggle to be good teachers to teenagers. Good teachers are a special breed. Anyway, we briefly connected years ago, and we rekindled our relationship. Recently, he returned to our lives, and we had time to visit and connect more deeply. It was so delightful to hear about his life journey, his family, his kids, the work he is doing, how his faith is growing, how he is raising his children, and how his business is
growing. It was so refreshing and fun that it made me think of all the encounters over the years with people we have known, how most people have grown, made life decisions, and are now in a different spot than they were years ago.
That made me think about how easy it is to keep people in their boxes, you know, the initial encounter
you had that shaped your opinion about the person, and put them in a box in your brain, and that is all you see about the person. But we all change, we all learn, grow, develop, struggle through things, and become better people.
What if the greatest Christmas gift we can give to each other this year is to open up the boxes of our
minds and let people be the people they are becoming, not the people they once were? What if we withhold judgment and let people be? What if we give each other chances and opportunities to grow? I know it is safer to keep people at arm's length, especially if they have disappointed you, but what grace could we extend to people if we were more open? Would we be surprised? Would we be encouraged? Would we be amazed at how a person has changed? As we go into the holiday season, know that I want
to open up the box that I put you in and let you grow and become the person you want to be, not the person I had in my mind.