Understanding

Sometimes, when I was younger, I would get frustrated (IKR? Y'all thought I was a perfect child! *not*) when people would do things that didn't make sense to me. My Daddy would encourage me to look at the situation through the other person's perspective or to "put myself in there shoes." This concept was very hard for me (and still is sometimes). I couldn't fathom that not everyone saw things the way that I did.

God has been working in my life over the last couple years, teaching me that you have to have understanding for people who don't think the same way you do or who do/say things that don't make sense to you.

There's two examples to this that I've been learning to deal with: Pet Peeves (of which I have *way* too many) and things people do/say that don't necessarily annoy you, but don't make sense to you or you think it's a silly thing to say or do.) 

One example of the latter is piano lessons. Sometimes my former piano teacher would tell us students to do things that would frustrate us because they didn't make any sense. Now that I'm a piano teacher, I find myself doing the *exact* things that I questioned the reasoning of "back in the day". Now that I'm "in their shoes" I totally understand why they did that. I have a feeling it will be the exact same way with marriage and parenting. The things that I think I will not do or say will probably make sense one day when I understand what it's really like to truly love someone like Christ loves us.

When it comes to pet peeves you have to learn to be a servant. Pet peeves are extremely self-centered. I have had to learn that not everyone likes their room to look neat and orderly, or their closet to be organized by type of clothing and then by sleeve length and then by color, or their choir music to be in alphabetical order. Not everyone cares enough to replace the toilet paper roll with a fresh one when they use up the last one. They just leave it for the person that uses the restroom next. I've had to learn, that instead of letting it frustrate me, it was better for everyone if I just quietly replaced it myself.

The point of this post is to encourage you to have understanding and grace for people who make decisions that possibly affect your life, but that don't make sense to you. (I'm mostly charging younger people who are dealing with "older" people.) Give them the benefit of the doubt and humbly assume that at this time you just don't understand all their reasoning. Assume they have a wisdom that reaches higher than yours. Assume you don't know it all! (Imagine that! ;) Have grace for people who aren't as neat as you or who like to do things differently than you. God didn't make us all the same (thankfully!)...there's going to be quite a bit of differences among us. Embrace those and enjoy the differences you find in other people, instead of letting them annoy you!

I've been wanting to do a post on understanding/grace/and putting-yourself-in-other-people's-shoes for a long time, but couldn't figure out quite how to say what I wanted to say. I still feel like this post is kind of choppy and doesn't flow very well, but hopefully some of it made sense. If you have questions about what I meant by what I said feel free to ask and I'll do my best to answer! :)