Unintentionally Offending

Some people offend people on purpose. I am guilty of offending people completely by accident. I am also guilty of taking offense when none was intended.

Yesterday a couple of things happened that make me think about how easy it is to offend people unintentionally. One, I wrote a blog post saying that every year I celebrate being married longer than my divorced parents. When my marriage surpassed the length of my parents' marriage, it proved to me that my marriage wasn't doomed to fail just because I was a child of divorce. A couple of friends said that they are divorced and do not feel like failures. I didn't intend to suggest that people who divorce are failures. But because I want to have a strong marriage, it was very important to me to not repeat the mistakes my parents made.

Our life experiences color our perspectives so much that we don't always get where someone else is coming from. We don't always stop to consider the impact of our words. You can drive yourself crazy trying to please everyone. I censor myself so much already that if I worried even more about saying the wrong thing, I would never say anything at all. So I have to take the chance that I won't get it completely right.

It is easy to make blanket judgments about people when you don't know what they have been through.

A few days ago, I chatted with a woman from church who is going through a long, painful divorce. When she first told me about it a year ago, she explained that her husband is an attorney and he litigates everything. He questioned every single decision she made. Life with him was a daily battle over insignificant things. It was emotionally exhausting. When their kids were grown, she decided it wasn't worth it to stay in an unhappy marriage. And now, even though the divorce is dragging on, she feels like a huge weight has been lifted off her shoulders. She is much stronger and has a much better outlook on life. I get this. If I were in her shoes, I would do the same thing.

Yesterday I read a friend's social media post asking that people stop complaining about pregnancy symptoms because it is insensitive to people who would give anything to be in their shoes. By the time I read the post, the woman who complained about being pregnant deleted her comments. I don't know anything about her so I can't judge her intentions. But I get the pain of insensitive comments and I know what is like to be attacked when you meant no harm.

But in reading the comments, I was reminded of Mother's Day and how a day of joy and celebration for most people is a day of sorrow and mourning for others - those who have lost a child or a parent or who struggle with infertility. I get it.

Not everything is black and white. Not everything is either all good or all bad. And even bad things are redeemable. Mistakes and failures are learning opportunities. One person's joy is another person's sorrow.