Loving Outside of Comfort

I heard something over the pulpit at church yesterday that hit me in a way I don’t know if I’ll even be able to explain but here we go.

I’m paraphrasing but the words were something like this, “It’s easy to love people who are like us, but the real test is when we are encouraged to love people who are very, very different from us.”

I’ve bragged about my loving capacities to you before. I’ve always told myself (and others) that loving people is my super power.

But these words brought tears to my eyes because I realized something in that moment.

I am really good at loving white, Christian, church going, moms. Gah, it feels yucky just coming out of my mouth. But it’s true, those are the people its so so so comfortable for me to love. And I love them so easily, so fully.

But what about everybody else?

My narrow mind catches up with me. It likes to keep me living small sometimes so when I have these realizations my world gets a whole whole lot bigger. And I love it.

When I was in church listening to these words I was picturing me at park with a bunch of my mom friends. We were yapping, laughing, talking so easily. There were moms all around us that we didn’t take notice of, that we overlooked because we we’re so comfortable with each other.

Men and women from different cultures, different religions, different political views, and different marital status even different financial statuses.

When I think about my friends you’ll notice we are all pretty similar. Same sizes in family, same pet status, same religion, same political views, same size houses, similar incomes, we live very similar lives. That’s no accident.

It’s easy to love people who are like you. There is much comfort that comes from that. You know how the conversations are going to go, you know what to expect, you all have the same standards and values so you know your “safe” and can talk openly.

Yes, that’s very comforting. It’s very easy. But that’s not what we were sent to earth to do.

Now I know I’m not the only one who does this. It’s no accident that there are Asian communities, Jewish communities, so on and so forth. We all love to be surrounded by people who are like us. People we don’t have to explain our culture, religion etc to.

But I want to follow this idea of loving the people who are the most unlike me. I want to challenge my capacity to love. I want to be incredibly uncomfortable, I want too increase my loving abilities.

Why? Because that is what God has asked us to do. And because I know I am capable of so much more.

If I truly am a God loving woman, and know his words to be true then I will heed them.

I will be uncomfortable and learn to love EVERYONE. I will show compassion, kindness, gentleness, meekness to those that are very different from me.

But It will be uncomfortable. I am willing to be uncomfortable to fulfill my journey on this earth.

I want to be the minority. (I bet you haven’t heard that said to much) I want to break down my own walls so I can be challenged and learn to find comfort in discomfort.

I want to do it so much that it becomes comfortable to sit with the sick, broken and different.

I want to say one more thing. I want my children to have these opportunities as well. I want them to be exposed to all of Gods children, I want them to see culture, and color, and just different. We live in a predominantly white, Christian community (that I love of course) but I want every opportunity for them to see me serving and loving EVERYONE.

If we are Christians and believe that we are all God children here on earth, there is a different sense of unity. There is a sense of openness and goodness. With the world in turmoil, vengeance and wars I choose to spend my energy thinking about connection, love and opportunities to do good. My motto comes to my mind, “See good and Do Good” 5 of my most favorite words. I want to add “see different and be different.”

Here’s to learning to love, ESPECIALLY when It’s hard.