Rant of the Exiles

Pastor, how do you handle the emotional weight of carrying people’s burdens? Stories are bullets Tearing through flesh, rending bone It’s my job to catch them And when hit, the kevlar takes the brunt Yet when people shoot stories And I emerge unscathed The gap between us remains A chasm of comfort divides I take off the vest, I put it down Bullets strike Loneliness, anxiety, and depression Stories of pain enter and stop I carry the weight of the sadness The slugs slacken my steps Exhaustion overwhelms I cannot contain this leaden load LORD, let the stories pass through me Let them penetrate my walls Let my borders be porous Let the stories enter and come out Let me be wounded twice  Hurt when I catch the story Hurt when I let it go Let m e feel the exit wound Stories begin with you Stories end with you In the middle, they may go through me But you hold and tell them all For you catch all the bullets...

I totally judge people. I’ve tried really hard most of my life not to judge people. I mean, Jesus said not to do it.  I've also seen so much unintentionally damaging effects of criticism and negative judgment. I’ve done it often myself. I know when I offer feedback I'm not setting out to condemn but that’s exactly how it’s experienced by the recipient.  Therefore, I want to share five steps I’ve learned to steer my observations and interpretations away from condemnation and criticism and towards encouragement and support. 1) Acknowledge your judgmental attitude and thoughts: After all these years of trying to suppress my feelings of judgment and condemnation, I now recognize it doesn’t work. Simply repeating “Stop judging” to myself doesn’t help. My judgmental thoughts don’t go away simply because I want them to. So I have learned to own them, acknowledge them, and confess them before God and it helps move beyond just hearing and being paralyzed by these negative and...