YOU DON'T WANT TO READ THIS!!! PLEASE BELIEVE ME!!!

Two horrible things you don't want to read--PLEASE BELIEVE ME!!!--go watch something on U-Tube, call your sister, read a good book...anything, just don't read this....

OK, I'm not responsible.


The other day I was with a person who makes me totally and absolutely irrational. This person brings out the very worst in me and my 'worst' is pretty bad. I don't know why it is so, but it is. I can't be around this person without being a crazy person.

I could blame their opinions--which do make me homicidal. I could blame their demeanor, which is (to me) smug and superior. I could blame their personality, which totally conflicts with mine: I tend, in my first approach, to joke about almost everything. But when I run into someone who seems devoid of humor as I understand it, I revert to my reptilian personality and strike out.

And all that happened the other day. I was an ass-hole in front of people I genuinely admired and like. I lashed out like a madman and said things I deeply regret--not because I didn't mean them, but because they were so inappropriate in a social setting.

And what I've come to realize is I've met my Samaritan.

Jesus' story of the Good Samaritan drove good Jews over the edge. Samaritans, didn't Jesus know, were 'the other', the 'evil ones', those to be shunned. What right did he have to make them look at a Samaritan that was not only 'good' but better than the three moral Jews in the story?

What I've come to see is that the next time I'm with the person who makes me a maniac, I have to realized God sent them to me to find the nobility in them I am unable, unwilling, reluctant to see.

First, I will apologize to them. Sincerely. And share with them my epiphany that they are God's gift to me to make me a better person, to find the 'noble' and 'good' in them. To 'appreciate' them.

I will do that and apologize to the others who were there.

And, believe this beloved, this is one of the hardest things I've ever written. I told you not to read it and hope you didn't.

I am humiliated by recognizing my 'Samaritan' and acknowledging why God sent them to me--and how much I need, for my own soul, to embrace and welcome them.....