Perception is a mighty thing

What does water taste like?

You'd assume there was only one correct answer. All other water had a funny taste.

But what I've come to realize is that identifying "normal" water is purely subjective.

I didn't learn that lesson until my husband and I vacationing and eating at a Cracker Barrel early in our marriage.

"This water is horrible," I complained.

"No, it's not," he replied while looking at me quizzically. "It tastes fine."

"It tastes like it came out of a ditch," I persisted.

"That's because you prefer your water with a lot of chlorination in it."

He'd said that before, drinking tap rather than my preferred Dasani bottles, but I always thought he didn't know what he was talking about. Dasani wasn't chlorinated; it was just normal water.

Like I grew up with.

But sitting in that Cracker Barrel, I realized for the first time that the normal taste of water for people is usually based on what the water tasted like where they grew up. All other water tastes different.

For some reason, this was profound to me.

Something as simple as water couldn't even have an absolute truth. No man can say, "THIS is the true taste of water."

It is all in our perception.

It took me a couple of years ministering on the streets before I realized that what I considered normal wasn't necessarily what others saw as normal. I knew I leaned toward the feminine romanticism a little more than most. For me, aprons and white picket fences and refrigerator drawings and roses for no reason were indicative of a life well lived. But if experiences were a Venn diagram, the things in the middle would be loving families, guidance, education, goals...

I didn't realize my perception was skewed by an upbringing that was only normal in my rose-colored world. Many people have led lives that we could never diagram because the shared experiences portion would remain blank.

But for them it was normal.

Going to jail wasn't an eye-opening experience. It was following in the family footsteps.

Drinking and drugging weren't done with the hopes you wouldn't be caught and grounded, they were done openly at home. Some were even forced to participate as young children, an amusing sight for wasted grown-ups.

Their normal was different from mine and their dreams were altered because of it.

I think this is the part that surprised me the most.

I knew that not everyone grew up the same way I did. I know some people had it rough. I just didn't consider that this changed what they wanted out of life. I thought that regardless of where everyone came from, they wanted to get to the same place.

And that's simply not true.

Some people just want to ride out their lives without any goals, dreams, or joy. They want lust, not love, and peace attained by a 6-pack is just as good as the peace God gives.

It is a different tasting water.

I've gained enough wisdom in this ministry to no longer try to get someone to accept my version of normal water as the only way. A job, a home, restored families...that's not necessarily the way for everyone.

But Jesus?

Well, that's one absolute truth in which there is no variance. James 1:17