have you ever noticed when you move into a new place...after a few months...the quirks start to show...perhaps it is one of the burners on the stove not working on the low setting...or a piece of tile on the counter top not glued in all the way...maybe you find that the outlets in one of the rooms is wired wrong...which means sometimes the electricity in that room works...and sometimes it doesn't...perhap sometimes...if someone turns the water on in the upstairs bathroom...there is a high-pitched squealing noise in the pipes of the downstairs bathroom...hopefuly this does not happen in the middle of the night...jolting you out of a deep sleep... =)
i remember when i first moved into my home...i was so ready to get out of the old apartment...i wanted to get into the new one so i could get away from the old quirks...the faucet in the kitchen sink that didn't work quite right...the place in the floor where the linoleum had buckled by the door...the neighbors that were loud...when i first moved into this apartment...i thought i had escaped all of those annoying traits...and i had...i just hadn't counted on all the new ones that would pop up in the new apartment...i had counted on perfection on the other side of the fence...forgetting for a moment that we live in an imperfect world...a place where quirks abound...
the thing about quirks is that they usually aren't evident on the surface...you usually have to spend quite a bit of time...digging deeply to unearth the quirkiness of a person...place or thing...i didn't see all the quirks at the new apartment before i moved in...it took living here for several weeks before they became evident...
the same is true with people...you usually have to spend day in and day out together before they let their guard down enough to show you their quirks...before they trust you enough to let you see who they really are...the trick is to keep on loving them after you get that glimpse...seeing their faults and failures...their insecurities and idiosyncrasies...
i mean...am i sticking a sign in the yard of my apartment because i see some problems? not at all...i realize that my apartment is bound to have quirks...some i can work through and some i will just have to live with...
the other night i went to the movies with an old friend who knows me...quirks and all...she and i have had moments of struggle as we have learned to accept each other's quirks...through the years...we have learned to laugh about most of them and talk about the ones that we just don't get...as we sat together in the movies...i thought about how freeing it is to know and be known...to truly love someone is to embrace who they are...quirks and all...as we dig deeper and see what lies beneath the surface...we can choose to walk away or we can choose to stay...no matter what...
while this might be hard at times...it is what God requires of us...why? because it is the kind of love He has showed each of us...as 1 john 4:19 states..."we love because He first loved us." if He loves us...quirks and all...then He must want us to do the same...extending love in the same way we have received it...
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