Where Should Love Go?

(Photo Credit: www.imfunny.net via Pinterest)

True Story #1:

My neighbor Mary told me during one of our monthly visits that she was disappointed in Jenny––another neighbor in her late fifties. Mary said she didn’t know Jenny was so vain that she would have a breast implant.

“I’m just disgusted by her decision, you know? Like, who’s she trying to impress? She’s a grandma for god’s sake!”

True Story #2:

Joy asked her neighbor across the street, Jill, if she ever left her house. Jill laughed at the question and said of course. 

With all seriousness Joy snapped, “Then why do you have a weed garden in front of your house? Didn’t you know it brings down the image of the neighborhood?”

True Story #3:

Four-year-old Justin and his family were visiting his grandma, and went to church on Sunday in his grandma’s ward.

Justin got out of his seat in the children’s Sunday School class while other kids sang merrily with the teachers. He wandered off to a corner of the classroom and started humming loudly a made-up tune. Then he climbed up the windowsill, jumped off, turned off the lights in the room, summersaulted, and knocked over the floor easel.

When a teacher approached him, Justin ran out of the classroom, screaming down the hall with hands in the air, and breaking into the chapel where another ward was holding the sacrament meeting. Justin dashed straight up to the pulpit, pushed the obviously shocked speaker aside, and yelled, “Testimony! I say testimony!”

There were unhappy people at church that day, wondering out loud why Justin’s parents hadn’t taught him to be reverent.

***

These are true stories. But we all know there are always, at least, two sides of a story, so let’s find out the other side of each story.

The other True Story #1:

Jenny, a very quiet and private grandmother in her late fifties, had recently undergone double mastectomy due to breast cancer. What Mary heard about Jenny’s implant was the breast reconstruction.

The other True Story #2:

Jill suffers from severe allergies: pollen, dust, grass, most trees, furry animals. She’s miserable practically all year around, but especially in the spring and summer. When she’s outside long enough, she starts to get congested and that leads to a sinus headache, which turns into a migraine headache that sends her to bed in a dark room for hours.

The other True Story #3:

Justin is autistic.

Most people don’t know it because he doesn’t look any different from the other four-year-old next to him. Justin doesn’t know he’s being disruptive in class or in church. Even if he’s told he is, he doesn’t know how not to be.

In our world there are many imperfections. There are also people who choose to see what they want to see, hear what they want to hear, think what they want to think, and say what they want to say. Which is fine. We all have our God-given agency. But it’s precisely because of that agency, we are capable of, with our free will and choice, making or breaking the world––sometimes with something as insignificant as a thought or a spoken sentence.

Truth is more complicated than the surface we see––the breast implant, the weed garden, the rowdy child. Truth is that we don’t need to come up with an immediate, affirmative conclusion to everything we see, because sometimes our eyes could be blinded and our hearts could be deceived.

And when our hearts are filled with untruth, where should love go?


Allison

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