Who is this person who stands in front of you? You try and read and make sense of them as you form your reply. They disagreed with you and challenged your thoughts and ideas and have raised up all sorts of feelings inside you and you don't know whether to laugh or cry or shout or walk away. They stand in front of you sharing words that divide in a space more public than you'd have liked.
Who is this person who stands in front of you and irritates you to the core with their very presence? They make you angry and you know they shouldn't but they talk and exhibit an identity you cannot identify with. They make choices that go against your moral code and your shackles are up because you don't understand or tolerate.
Who is this person who stands in front of you and talks of their own lives with no interest in yours or your thoughts on what they might do. They speak in a language you don't understand and can't engage with but want you to know what they mean. They appear to hate you and choose to confront you on every little thing without letting you speak.
Who is this person who stands in front of you find really difficult to manage to love? Why do they make you feel this way and why are they the way they are?
Who is this person who stands in front of you?
First and foremost a human, with a story, with a life of brokenness and pain. A person with tales of love and of joy, and of sorrow and of loss. A person with a voice who remembers moments where their voice was taken as someone else spoke for them without being asked.
It's someone who who might have seen something that you haven't noticed and before you shout back their presence is calling you to shift your eyes. If you look beyond your irritation there is something in this person that is good and that connects to you in surprising ways.
It's someone who has struggled coming to terms with their own identity and is hoping you might not struggle quite as much as they are as they share their story with you. They came to your space as a safe space because they had nowhere else to go. It's someone who is never really listened to and is hoping that you might be the one who hears.
It's someone who has thought carefully about their choices, who has studied and wrestled and found a settled place for themselves, and is hoping you might just sit with them for a while. Their story is far too difficult to tell and they need sanctuary in a place that feels further from home than far can be. They struggle to articulate themselves and know that it always comes out wrong (but its better than it used to be).
It's someone who doesn't know how to be loved, so your difficulties are theirs too, and you journey together. As they choose to learn how to react to and receive love, you choose to follow the rocky path of learning how to love.
It's a someone, a person, a human, a life, a reflection in a mirror, a story of shadow and of light.
It's someone who reminds you that you're so caught up in the struggle that you've forgotten how to choose love. You've forgotten the love languages of listening and of patience, of kindness and of pausing, of hearing, of being, of taking down of walls. They remind us that we can choose to live in the tension of difference and forget that our opinions only matter as much as theirs.
It's someone who is lovable just like you, with potential, just like you, worth listening to, just like you.
Just like you.
"So God created humankind in his own image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them...... God saw all he had made, and it was very good" Genesis 1:27, 31a
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