You Never Know

 My aunt Susan spoke in Sacrament Meeting on Sunday and mentioned that the message of Music & the Spoken Word on Sunday, February 2^nd was about how we can never know the whole story of an individual’s life. We might know bits and pieces, parts of a person’s situation, but never the whole story. We may never know what someone is hiding beneath the surface.

I received a text last Thursday morning letting me know that my cousin Jonathan Twiggs had died. It would appear to be a drug overdose. We will never know the turmoil that went on inside Jonny. We will never know the demons he fought every single day. Instead we will love him without judgment and know that he is now at peace. We will try to give what little comfort we can to his family as they live through the pain and anguish of losing a vital part of their life.

It is so easy to judge other people. It’s easy to label the person who is always a little late to work in the morning. But did you know she is a single mother with 3 young kids and a sick mother she is up taking care of all night long? That no matter how early she gets up she still has 100 things to do before she can walk out the door in the morning, but her income is all she has to get by on so she does the best she can.

In a blog post Iceberg Within Us that I wrote back in 2009 I briefly touched on this same idea. My cousin Natalie made the following comment regarding that post: “This is so true and I loved the quote and your insight. I've heard it said, "Always be kind, for everyone is fighting a very tough and unseen battle." I try to remember that when people frustrate me--you never know what people have been through. Some days it's a struggle just to get out of bed and get dressed and we never know how our kindness (or lack thereof) can affect a person.”

It’s amazing what you find out about other people when you are going through something. When you have a miscarriage you find out that some of the people closest to you have been through the same thing and you had no idea. When my sister was diagnosed with thyroid cancer it was amazing the amount of people who were survivors of the same thing. People I thought had been happily married forever have shared stories of divorce and how they got through it and found happiness in a 2^nd marriage. There is just no way to know everything about a person.

“Each life is an unfolding story—a story of growth and learning and change, a story of happiness and heartbreak, a story of success and sorrow. So perhaps we ought to be a little more patient, a little more forgiving. Perhaps we ought to be slower to judge and quicker to love... Never forget that every life and every occasion is unfolding in a unique and distinctive way. We may know some, but never all, of the story; so err on the side of compassion. Hold off on criticism and sarcasm, and never withhold kindness and mercy. And then, someday, when the whole story is finally written, we’ll be thankful that we were able to contribute—at least in some small way—to a happy ending." –Lloyd D. Newell.