For J

You are the lucky one.  You have known what it means to be different.  You have known what it means to be a stranger – even among family.  You don’t have the luxury of staying in your comfort zone.  Because of who you are, you live in a place beyond the boundaries of the familiar.  You are like the ugly duckling – born into a family that is not like you – born into a family that might not ever fully understand you.

You are the lucky one.  Because of who you are, your mind has been stretched.  Your heart is more open.  Since you have been “different,” “strange,” “abnormal,” “other,” you have a knowing and a compassion that many others lack.  Since you have moved beyond your comfort zone, and have allowed your heart to grow, you feel at home where others feel afraid.   

They are the unlucky ones.  They live in fear – fear of the unknown, fear of difference, fear of the foreign and alien.  This is a fear that they are often unaware of because they surround themselves with the familiar, the comfortable – and with others who are just like them.  What they really fear is a lack of boundaries.  Their boundaries define who they are.  They set them apart from the stranger.  They determine who is in and who is out.  They feel secure behind their protective walls.

You are the lucky one.  You can’t live where they live.  Once you know the freedom that lies beyond the walls of fear, you can’t go back.  Of course you can visit there.  You visit there because you love them.  You have known the fear they know.  You can remember what it was like when you first ventured out – beyond the known and familiar.  Remembering this you have compassion for them.

They are the lucky ones!  They are so lucky to have you in their lives.  They have someone who loves them with a love that is boundless.  They have someone who cares deeply – so deeply that it sometimes hurts.  They need you in their lives.  They need someone who can demonstrate a boundariless love.  They need someone who has gone beyond the familiar and comfortable – to show them that life can be so much more rich and beautiful.

So, you visit them.  You play with them.  You converse with them.  You show them who you are.  You show them that what is different is really not so different.  You show them that the strange is not that strange.  You show them that there really is no “other.” 

And, you pray… 

You pray for the day when they too will know the freedom, the love, the joy, that comes from a full embrace of life in all its beauty and diversity.  You pray that they too will experience life beyond labels, beyond us and them, beyond all separation.  And, you give thanks to God for the life that has allowed you to know true love – a life that is so blessed – a life abundant!  Thanks be to God!