Brokenness/On Being Judgmental

Last week I was commenting on a post originally with the intent to be snarky and judgmental of people’s parenting. In the midst of my post I stopped myself and shared the following instead. As I described my own struggles to parent my son, I used the hashtags #brokenpeopleraisingbrokenkids and #letsbreakthecycle. It was easy for me to point my finger at the struggling middle schoolers and their parents when my teacher friend shared her frustration about her school, but thanks be to God for reminding me that not too long ago my own son was struggling. We had these stats: his dad and I divorced when he was 5/he spent equal time with us but with no real stability/me struggling financially to meet our needs. It was awful. Many days I cried in frustration. His response was to act out and to eventually choose the wrong friends. In my self-absorption and blindness, I blamed his dad, his friends, and even him for his problems, and I rarely looked at my role in his behavior and trouble in school. I’m sharing this because I fear that many people feel isolated by the judgement of others, and I am guilty of being a part of the problem of being judgmental. Struggling and broken people see what they think are people who have it all together and people who can’t possibly relate to them when the reality is in all of our homes there are problems. Every single one. For the broken, you are not alone. For the judges, please look back over your life and identify the times when you didn’t always get it right. I was surprised that what I thought was going to be a condemnation of other people turned around to a comment that recognized my own poor parenting and the fact that I was more judgmental than I thought. I thank God for His grace and mercy towards me, which is my nudge to extend the same to other people.