Judgement feedback

Well hello Friday friends,

How are you all doing on this fabulous Friday afternoon? Ready for the weekend? I am. I get to spend tomorrow with my amazing friend Susan. Not sure if I’ll be quilting, cross-stitching or diamond art-ing. I have so much of all of the above, it’s just deciding where to start.

What about you guys, what are your plans for this cooler February weekend? I’d love to hear from you, so shoot me a text or drop me a comment and feel free to share some photos. I love our chat time.

I wanted to give a big shout out to everyone who took the time to comment on my blog post, ‘Am I Judging. You for sure gave me lots to think about.

One of my dear friends Mary K. Doyle over at Midwest Mary ( https://midwestmary.com/ ) gave me my first Hmmmm moment when she said “in my opinion, we do have to make judgements for our own safety.” I never thought of that, or at least, I didn’t take that into consideration.

Sometimes we do have to judge a person and situation and determine if having the person or being in a situation is not only safe for our overall well being, but for our own mental health. As Mary went onto say, “they saw me as an easy target.”

Isn’t it sad to think people in the world prey on the kindness, love and compassion of others? So here I go again, judging. I abhor people who take advantage of others. We see this sort of behavior especially against older folks who are alone. People target those whom they see as weak when in all reality, much of the time, it’s not that someone is weak, it’s they have the heart of Christ. They look for the good in others. They give others their all because they are genuine people. Those that take advantage of people like this, they are deplorable and I won’t say they can’t change, however, they would need to do an awful lot of work to regain a trust, at least with me.

Am I judging? I suppose you could say yes. Sometimes we do need to judge and when those times arise, I believe whole heartedly that we need to do so with love and compassion and with the intention of keeping ourselves and our loved ones safe, either physically, mentally, verbally and emotionally. We matter too and it’s not okay to treat someone with total disregard and I believe this is what Mary was pointing out in her comment and I truly appreciate her insight on needing to judge at times. Thank you Mary.

“The best index to a person’s character is how he treats people who can’t do him any good and how he treats people who can’t fight back.”-Abigail Van Buren.

Another amazing reader commented and she kindly reminded me that there is a difference between judging another human being and setting boundaries. Kimberly Vargas Agnese over at http://bucketsonabarefootbeach.com/ made an excellent point in a comment to me. She said, “without boundaries the world would lack definition. The skin in which we live, in and of itself is a boundary, stating to everything around us, you may come this close and no further, you many not visit my bones or heart. Every single day we make subtle judgements about what we want or don’t want to add to our lives.”

Putting judgement into this context is something I didn’t think about or take into consideration. We get to make the choice in our life of who we want in our world. Who we get close to and who we call friend. Family is a little different because we’re always going to be related, at least to blood line family. Anyway, we do make judgement calls all the time on who we want to add into our life and who we don’t and who we keep at a safe distance.

Kimberly went onto say, “we must judge whether or not something is beneficial to us, because what we accept near us can also become part of what ends up defining us.. our skin.

Isn’t there a scripture or saying that goes something like, “you are who you associate with?” If we hang out or have in our circles of life negative folks, we will generally tend to become more negative. If we associate with people who are less then kind, we could wind up becoming hardened to such behaviors. Who we hang out with generally says a lot about who we are as individuals. Now this isn’t to say that we shouldn’t look for the good in folks or that we should shy away from everyone because of popular opinion, perhaps this is where the compassion and giving someone the benefit of the doubt comes in? Thoughts? At any rate, when these types of people come into our presence, maybe we tread with caution and keep them at a safe distance until we can form our own opinion. Our own judgement on how their character lines with ours.

Without judgement calls and judging whether or not someone or something is going to bring something positive to our life, we would end up with a lot less boundaries and as Kimberly said, “anarchy.”

If we don’t take the time to judge what we bring into our inner circle, how much harder our lives would become.

I’m sure we’ve all been fooled by someone and we’ve most likely paid some sort of price for allowing certain people into our life. Maybe we have endured lack of peace or perhaps we’ve been walked all over and treated no better then the dirt on the bottom of someone’s shoe. Maybe we’ve trusted too much even though we didn’t listen to our gut instinct and we’ve lost money to someone who preyed on our generosity. Whatever the case may be, our judgement radar didn’t go off or we ignored it and we paid in some way.

“No matter how badly people treat you, never drop down to their level, just know you’re better and walk away.”-Unknown

My thoughts on judging have been refined a bit. While it’s not easy to judge, I will agree, we need to make judgement calls on what is acceptable and not acceptable in our lives. We need to judge whether or not we want certain people in our lives and just because we judge a person for not being compatible with our own core values doesn’t mean we judge them outside of our own personal space. We don’t gossip about them. We don’t shy others from them, unless we know beyond any shadow of a doubt they could cause harm to someone, especially a child, but that’s an entirely different subject matter for a later blog.

Just because we don’t jive with a particular person or we don’t like something about them, it’s not for us to make a blanket judgement call about them to others, it simply means, we set our own personal boundaries for ourselves and perhaps our spouse and children, but everyone should be given their own opportunities to have others judge them without our tossing some nuts into the batter. Just my opinion.

Judging is or can be a slippery slope. It’s a much bigger topic then I even began to think about. I appreciate all of your comments and I look forward to more. What are your thoughts about today’s post? Did I miss the point of two wonderful ladies who chimed in? Gosh I hope not.

I think we could go on and on about judging, but for now, I think I’ll end it for today.

All I can say is thank you from the bottom of my heart for all the feedback and I truly appreciate everyone’s take on the different subject matters. You opinions help me to grow in thinking and it helps me look at things in a much broader way. Keep those comments coming, all of them please.

I loved our time together today. Thank you for taking time to stop by and join me with today’s blog.

Don’t forget, until next time, Love Life++ Hugs.