I’d Rather Love a Sinner Than Someone Who Has Never been Tested By Life or Love

I truly believe in things like redemption, and pardons. If I didn’t, I probably couldn’t do my job. I probably wouldn’t have majored in psychology.

I know for a fact that people are not perfect. And most people don’t grow up in white bread, cream cheese homes like the show “Leave it to Beaver” or Ozzie and Harriet

We didn’t all grow up in communities with guards or cops patrolling, listening for kids in trouble. And we faced problems at home and in our neighbourhoods that were tough for kids to deal with. Even grown ups had trouble dealing with them.

Our first relationships were testaments to what we DIDN’T know, practice fields, and not something to brag about. At all!

Some people bottomed out in a way it’s hard for others to imagine. Some went to prison, joined gangs, were addicts, were violent…. and found a way to improve themselves. You can’t understand their path. But you can respect their change. Their herculian efforts to change. Their success. You can cheer their pride. They should be proud of themselves. It’s a new birthing for them.

Most people found a path out of that start and have improved their lives. Most people have changed.

And it boggles my mind when people still treat them as if they’re a miscreant, when they haven’t been one for decades. Today they are sober, nice, calm, full of hope and love… not the angry, hate filled person they were raised to be.

Some people tend to use someone’s past against them all their lives. Some don’t. I don’t. I look for reasons to believe they have or haven’t changed SINCE. If the behaviour their family or neighbourhood taught them continued AFTER they left. Or not.

I know that within a few years of leaving the home of an addict, I stopped drinking for eg. A few years more, and I no longer associated with my family. Because they were continuing the destructive patterns and I didn’t want my daughter exposed to that. Period.

If I were to find out today that things have changed, would I go back among them? Probably not. Too much water under the bridge. And they hurt ME, not some random person who is more of a theory than a fact. Which is where most people draw the line.

It’s far easier to deal with someone who had even the same or similar issues in their childhood and has grown above them in a way you can see, than it is someone who has never been tested. I have no idea how I’d even begin to relate to someone like the Nelsons. Do you?

Do they really exist? Is white bread, cream cheese a fantasy? Or do we have to realize that people really do survive an early bad start and become really gorgeous people?

I think they do. Why? Because I’ve seen it. Heck, I’ve been it!