This week I breathed easy

A short one. The other side of learning not to take the bait.

A person you love can inherit challenges they are not responsible for.

For a long time I did not understand that, and the way I failed to understand has cost me more than it has ever cost them.

Proverbs 18:13 says that answering a matter before you hear it is folly and shame. I always read that as a warning about conversations. It is a warning about people.

What is hard is still hard. None of that changed. What changed is that I understand now, and understanding made me culpable, and the culpability turned out to be the thing I had been missing the whole time.

And they were easier to be around this week. I know why. I noticed the beauty. I did not spend the week waiting for the default criticism the way I always have. Now I just wait. I noticed the laughter, and the small chuckles at nothing, and I dodged the defaults.

I wrote a while back about learning to stop taking the bait. This is what was waiting on the other side of it.

This week I breathed easy with this person.

This week I saw joy in them.

This week I appreciated the moments, because I finally understood something I had not understood in a long, long time.

This week I saw a glow in their face that I had stopped noticing.

That glow is beautiful.

That is all. I did not want the week to pass without saying so.

אחיכם במשיח

Achichem baMashiach

Sergio