We were running late for school the other morning. We have that one kid, you may have one too, who is always the slow poke. Everyone else will hustle and be totally ready, sitting in the car, and this kid is still tying shoes, staring out the window, playing with a toy one more time.... And so some mornings, not proud of how many, I will just lose my patience and start in. "You are always making everyone late! It's not fair to the others. They get everything done on time but they still get marked tardy because of you..." and on and on.

When we got to school I met one of my other children's teachers in the hallway. I took the opportunity to apologize. "I am so sorry this one was late again, it's really his brother who makes him late. This one is always ready and I'm sorry that he is tardy all the time..." and then I started going into how the other brother makes everyone late and that I had already "yelled" at him about it this morning. Well she looked at me and said, in the nicest way, "maybe you need to give that one a hug next time. Sometimes the one we feel the least like hugging is the one we need to hug the most." I stopped dead in my tracks. I realized she was completely right and so I went back to that one's classroom and called him out and gave him a hug.

But then I kept thinking about it and I decided, this is true of the whole world. I think when we look at the people that come and go in our lives, even the ones on the fringe, maybe especially the ones on the fringe, I think the ones we feel least like reaching out to are probably the ones we need to reach out to the most. I am going to try to keep this in mind every day and try to live this way every day from now on. Won't be easy, won't even be easy within my own family, but this is exactly what God's grace is for. To help us love the ones we least want to love.