Toss the Paint Brush!
Don’t paint people with the paint brush you’ve been handed. It’s very easy to go with the flow but doing so can cause us to miss out on some great relationships. I walked into a situation that had existed for years. No one really understood why things were the way they were, but they noted it, accepted it, and went with the flow: disregarding, ignoring, disrespecting, sidelining, etc. I questioned the situation internally and observed, observed, observed. That wasn’t how I was “raised” spiritually so I just couldn’t feel at ease with the whole thing. Eventually, it reached the magnitude of becoming a burden. In small ways, I started trying to reach out and be more inclusive. That’s not really all that important in the whole scheme of things. The most important and productive thing I did was to pray. I sat in my office one morning praying about the situation and a wave of deep pain and sorrow swept over me. Uncontrollable gut-wrenchin...