By Kathy Craigo Harteis
A friend I’ve had for many years often said that God is a gentleman.
With that, the message was one of understanding, kindness and support.
Never was it to support a message of hate or condemnation. Nor did God force feed his message to anyone.
As a child I saw time and again my parents share their faith. Never once did I see them try to force their faith on anyone. They shared and then they prayed. They did not go back time and again to badger anyone into seeing it their way.
We were taught to share our beliefs with our actions. We were taught to respect one another.
Our parents respected the fact that we were learning good behavior from them. We were never encouraged to be belligerent or to force our views on others.
It is a sorry parent indeed who would applaud such behaviors in their children.
There are a lot of things in this world that I just don’t like.
Looking back to the teachings of my parents, I’m reminded that it is not my job to fix everything I see as broken. I may be the only one who sees it as broken. It is my job to to respect another’s beliefs enough to show them kindness.
I have a bevy of friends and family-by- choice kinds of people in my life. I do not agree with everything each of them has to say.
Over the years I have found some people need to be loved from afar. I believe that God wants us to love one another, but, He does not demand that we be best friends.
Sometimes we just have to step away from toxic behavior.
In the past few days I’ve been challenged to just keep shut my mouth.
If God can be a gentleman, I can be a lady.
Life is good today.
