welcoming the gray

I remember all too clearly the process that taught me of the gray character of life. Clarity was revealed to be deceptive, answers clouded. In my most self-assured moments the emptiness resounded like so many nails on so many chalkboards. In my carefully constructed world of right and wrong, in my storybook land of heroes and villains, the world could be made right by a heroic act. My failure to achieve a perfect level of heroism left me devastated emotionally and spiritually.

I am still living this process out. I am still learning to live according to gray rather than black and white. And, limited by a human nature that leaves me prone to romanticizing pain and joy alike, I will probably always live with the pain of an unwelcome ambiguity.

This ambiguity is unwelcome because it leaves me unable to place myself and others on a continuum of right to wrong. It renders me powerless, lost in a sea of partial right and wrong. Everything good is tainted by the bad, the right negated by the wrong. In my purest moment my righteousness is hopelessly sinful.

I'm learning to embrace the gray. Never because gray is good, for gray signifies a mixing of black and white; but because gray is the only way I can properly understand myself and my role in creating heartbreak in this world. Accepting my woeful position in the dance of humanity is incredibly painful, not least because the last thing I want is to hurt anyone, and I am now all too aware of the pain my sin causes. Only in embracing the gray in me, however, am I able to fully forgive the gray in those who sin against me. And, indeed, in gray there is black, but there is also white. There is bad, but there is also good.