Merci

"I'm just a soul whose intentions are good. Oh, Lord, please don't let me be misunderstood." 

The other evening, I was talking to a professor friend of mine and listened as she described a student who had been treating her really horribly.

As she spoke, I had a pit feeling that it was a student of mine.

It was.

Had she known, she probably would not have been so candid.

A few days later, I came across this student and saw him lash out at another professor.

Of course they struggle to love him. Of course they struggle for grace.
He comes across as a terrible person.

But they weren't there on his tour, when I heard his father verbally tear him down for two hours.
They weren't there for the emails, the phone calls, the personal interactions where I saw the light in this kid doused over and again with darkness.

They see the result.
They don't see the context.

There's nobody you couldn't love if you knew their story.

The moment I figured out the student, my heart was burned with mercy because I know him. I know his heart, and I know how much he wants to be good and how much he desperately just wants to be enough.

Over and over in my head, I heard, "He doesn't know. He just doesn't know what he's doing."

Maybe that is how the Lord finds enough grace for us every morning. He knows our stories. He knows our deficiencies. He knows how desperately we just want to be loved and to know that we are enough and to know that who we are is good.

When we are cruel, when we are unreasonable, when we are abrasive, he knows our hearts and he knows that we do not know what we do.

I am not always merciful. I try to be, but I'm not.
What I do know is that I have seen good people let themselves become bad people because there were defining moments when they desperately needed someone to speak truth into them and there was no mercy to be had.
I do know that I have seen bad people grasp fast onto extended mercy and allowed the Lord to revolutionize their hearts.
I know that I have needed that person many times.
And I know that I am called to be that person time and time again.