Judgement

Anyone who knows me, knows that I can be quite hard on people.  I expect a lot from them and get disappointed when they don't live up to my expectations.  This isn't something that I am proud of and I would generally say that it can be a pretty big flaw for myself.  Now, don't get me wrong, I'm just as hard on myself  which makes living up to my own expectations pretty tough and I can be known to put myself through the ringer every now and then.  And while I like to put a nicer spin on it by saying that I'm just expect a lot from people, the reality is, which is tough to say, is that I am judgmental.  Now that I have become more aware of my personality flaw, it's amazing how often thoughts of judgement pop up throughout the day. In the past week, there have been tons of stories on the news where I have judgements on the people are the centers of the stories/scandals.  How could he say that she was his girlfriend without ever meeting her?  How could he spend years lying and feeling ok accepting medal after medal knowing he was a cheat?  How could his wife know that he was cheating and not turn him in?  Question and question is just really a bunch of judgements.  I like to think that I would know what I would do in these situations.  We all hope that we would do the "right" thing, but who is to say what is the "right" thing.  As I have spent more time over the past couple of months joining and becoming part of our new church, I am also trying to look at situations a little differently.  Looking at situations/people without judgement, knowing that it isn't my place to judge, and realizing that my judgment doesn't matter.  No one, other than myself, cares how I judge a situation.  How I see it can be very different than how someone else sees it.  What I would do may be very different than what someone else would do-and who am I to say what is right and what is wrong.  It's tough to change my perspective on how I view things as thoughts of judgement often pop into my mind, but I have also found comfort in this change of thought pattern.  I don't have to waste time or energy over analyzing a situation, and I don't have to be disappointed because someone didn't live up to my expectations.  I find comfort in something that a much older and wiser lady from my bible study group once said, "It's not my place to judge anyone. Only God knows the path that each of us is on, and only he can know if we haven't followed the path that he has laid for us."