reflection on the past weekend

I spent a good majority of this past weekend alone house sitting for the Colegroves, quasi moving in, slowly. I was able to really process some things that have been going on lately and came to a few interesting conclusions.

The first of which goes back to the idea of grace that I wrote about a while back. This seems to be an interesting topic, as it keeps coming up. Most recently I have discovered that my definition was incomplete. Grace is giving someone something they don't deserve, Mercy is not giving someone something they do deserve, and Forbearance is waiting with someone until they do get what they deserve.

Most recently my situation I had confused was regarding money. This person demanded my grace in this situation and I expressed that I could not possibly extend that grace because I had been relying on that money to come in. In this situation, grace would be for me to give that person as much as they owe me. Mercy would be to cancel the debt. Forbearance is waiting with that person until they can pay the debt.

This got me thinking about mercy in particular. Most recently I have been rather merciless with Jon because I want him to learn from his mistakes, take responsibility for his actions, heighten his awareness of how his decisions affect the people around him. The most basic way to do that in my mind is to set down some rules and consequences and when those rules are broken, enforce the consequences.

This can get a little difficult when working with a quadriplegic. It brings me back to my original concern that I want to be here to help him with his personal needs, but don't want to enable irresponsibility.

So I would point out all the good things I saw as well as all the bad things I saw. Except heres the thing. I have the ability to pull my emotions out of a situation and just look and the facts of that situation. By taking only the facts, it strips the situation of any good intentions or miscommunication and forces the person to look at the basic thing they have done. Unfortunately for me, this is a rather merciless way of going about it.

The Bible says speak the truth in love. I was very able to speak the truth, but by pulling out all emotions was not speaking the truth in love. This is just another exercise that emphasizes that love is more than just a feeling, its a choice. I was choosing to speak the truth, but not in love, and as consequence that truth wasn't taken properly. Jon couldn't see the meaning of my words because my words were yes very truthful, but also very harsh.

This now brings me to my next point. Sometimes mercy is not telling a person what they have done wrong. Sometimes if you can't speak the truth in love then its best not to speak. Sometimes the right thing to do is wait until you can speak the truth in love.
And thats hard.

To look at things objectively sometimes we do need to try and take our emotions out of the situation to decide right and wrong. I think its important once we have decided right or wrong to them put our emotions back into the situation to see how it plays out now with the added human element.

I have to admit, in much of my talks with Jon, I fooled myself into thinking that I pulled out all my emotions from the situation, but really there was always this undertone of pain that I wasn't fully paying attention to that was evident in my vitriolic vocabulary. It was because of this that the truth wasn't taken properly. For if it wasn't said in love, it might as well have not been said at all.