The Truth About Uncommonly Choosing Compassion over Judgment
There was a woman in my life a few years back who made it difficult to choose compassion over judgment when she spoke to me. She had a gift for saying the wrong thing at the wrong moment. I don’t believe she did it maliciously. She just had a consistency that made every interaction feel like a small minefield. A comment about my parenting at a school event. A question about my writing career that was really a thinly veiled comparison. An observation about my home that hit exactly the way she probably didn’t intend it to.
I had quietly categorized her. Filed her under difficult and adjusted my expectations accordingly. I was civil, even warm on the surface. But internally, I had stopped extending her any real grace.
Then I found out what she was shouldering at home. And my understanding shifted.
When Compassion Over Judgment Requires New Information
Her husband had lost his job eight months earlier. They had quietly burned through their savings. She was working two part-time jobs while managing a household. Plus, her mother-in-law, with early-stage dementia, had moved into their spare bedroom. And she did all of this while telling almost no one. Why? Because she was too proud and too exhausted to explain.
A mutual friend told me over tea one Wednesday morning. I sat there holding my cup, thinking about every interaction I had mentally cataloged and judged. Every time I had failed to choose compassion over judgment.
The comment about my parenting. The question about my career. The observation about my home. None of it looked the same anymore.
What I had been reading as criticism was a woman looking at a life that seemed stable and quietly aching because hers didn’t. I had responded with a careful, managed distance when what she may have needed was someone to notice she wasn’t okay.
Romans 4:7 came back to me sitting at that coffee shop table: “Blessed are those whose transgressions are forgiven, whose sins are covered.” I had received that covering. God had seen every impatient thought, every selfish choice, every moment I had fallen short of who I wanted to be, and loved me anyway. And I had been extending this woman nothing but a polite, well-managed wall.
What Compassion Over Judgment Actually Costs
I showed up at her door the following Saturday with a pan of lasagna, a bag of groceries, and no agenda beyond letting her know someone saw her.
She stood in the doorway for a moment looking at me like she wasn’t sure what to do with what was happening. Then she stepped aside and let me in, and we sat at her kitchen table for two hours while she talked and I mostly listened.
I won’t pretend that every difficult interaction we’d had dissolved in that one conversation. Choosing compassion over judgment doesn’t rewrite history or guarantee a friction-less relationship going forward. But it does open a door that polite distance keeps permanently shut.
My Eternal Redeemer Covers You. That covering isn’t selective. It doesn’t arrive only for the people who are easy to love or who come to us already explaining their circumstances. It extends to the woman making careless comments at school events who is quietly drowning at home. And it extends to the person we’ve already filed under difficult without knowing their full story.
Compassion over judgment isn’t a feeling. It’s a choice. And sometimes that choice starts with a pan of lasagna and two hours at someone’s kitchen table.
Join the Conversation
Is there someone you’ve categorized as “difficult” who might be carrying a burden you don’t know about yet?
Spend a few minutes journaling or recording a voice memo finishing this: “Someone I’ve been keeping at a careful distance is _____, and one small way I could choose compassion over judgment this week is _____.” You don’t need the full story to take the first step toward them.
