Tam’s Trench Truth

Welcome to Coffee Hour with Chicklit Power and Tam’s Trench Truth with Trench Classes United. Today, John brings us face to face with a reality that truly needs to be looked upon! Come on in.

This last week I had an incident on social media that roped me in. I can see so much hate being thrown around these days like it's become a socially accepted attitude. This hatred expressed the other day incited a desire to defend the people that were being attacked online. I was outnumbered, of course, and although I kept it respectful and didn't get mad. I was called a Nazi, a bigot, to name a couple of the hateful things.

Hatred has become so evident on so many mediums that it has all but seemed to kill the idea of compromise and talking in an effort to understand one another.

I have really been trying to live a more calm and peaceful lifestyle this last year for a couple reasons: physically, my body just can’t endure the stress, and emotionally, it’s just better…not always easier but definitely better. I consistently pray for God to calm my nerves and help me with the things I am going through not only physically but emotionally.

Last year, I determined in my soul that I would try and avoid getting roped into types of conversations that are vulgar, full of hatred and accusations. These conversations, arguments/fights never seem to go anywhere than to leave me feeling high levels of stress. I have done better for the most part; however, not so this last time. It really got to me as one of the people on the other side was a friend I had grown up with.

To see how politics take people and divide them against each other... well, I just couldn’t be quiet about that.

I can't support hate groups, or violence; I can't support people who run over other people because they hate them and want to cause them physical harm or punitive harm. But I also know I can't support this part of social media that seems to increase all this hatred and evil. So once again I move to keep myself from being roped in.

It's so hard because I care so much about the world we live in. I want people to find compromise and help one another. We will always have people different than us but that makes the world just more interesting. Can you imagine if we all were the same? If we looked, acted, loved all the same? 

I know one thing about the world and what it's missing more and more every day: It's missing compromise. It is missing ears that listen to hear instead of ears that listen to defend and react.

If love really is the answer it's because it carries one thing we all constantly need more of: Compromise. I started not only asking God for strength to get through these things that really affect me, but to also grant me the wisdom and mindset to try and understand and feel what others feel that are different than me.

Please join me in prayer this evening and pray for the world; pray for those different than us; pray for amazing compromise. Please pray for those who do hate and want to cause other people physical harm. Pray that we take more notice in the beauty out there instead of the drama unfolding on social media and the news at ever corner and intersection of our lives. Find something beautiful, like this sunflower, and get completely lost in it. :)

May God inspire us to let the Holy Spirit fill people with good things, the most of which I'd like to think is love for unconditional love is a form of compromise.

~John