March 25, 2010

confession

Posted in Prayers, Stories at 8:52 am by Tara

Lord, I pray you forgive me for my judgments and help me to see what you can see in others!

Tonight I took a taxi home, when I usually take the train.  It was late and Sarah-Anne was falling asleep so I opted for the door to door service.

Unfortunately the taxidriver seemingly has an inability to control certain motor skills such as language and continuously uttered all his thoughts and was flipping his hands around.  He yelled out his irritation at other drivers and turned to glare at a man that couldnt change out of the lane within 2 seconds.  One of the many times that he honked was at a man at a fair distance (nowhere near being hit by us), removing a pylon from the road.

The whole time, I prayed for God to protect us and thought about what a maniac this man was, and feared for my life and Sarah-Anne’s all the way. 

Then, he spoke to me in the gentlest of manners.  He asked nicely where to drop me off and gave me time to carry S-A out of the car.  He made sure to minimize the effort it would take me to carry S-A home.

Then my thoughts returned to a child I once knew who also had an impulse disorder, and how he was so sadly stigmatized, when he was absolutely safe to be around.  His only problem was that he lacked the ability to hold back his thoughts.  But how often do we yell at people on the road in thought?  We just have the ability to control it.  As for the flailing hands… well, I realized that because I was being judgmental of the utterings, I concluded that his shaking out of his tired wrists was also some sort of psychopathic action.

Sigh.  Lord, you have opened my eyes once again, to how judgmental I can be when I am here trying to spread the word on how judgmental we are of the marginalized.  Thank you Lord, for reminding me of how “different” doesn’t mean “dangerous” or “bad” or “wrong”, it just means different.  What if we lived in a culture where it was ok to just say what we thought?

Mold me, God and take away my judgments.  Have mercy and grace upon my inequities and teach me to have mercy and grace upon others also!

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