Going Gray

Gray areas. They make me uncomfortable. Make it sharp, clear, definitive, so I can understand whatever it is and move on to the next thing. It's not that I'm a black or white gal (though, speak with any of my friends from college when I was new in the faith and they would remember me as such - hopefully I've grown), it's just that I want a firm place to stand, not a shifting sand dune. I always want to know where I'm at, that it's safe to go forward.
Well. I have a few friends who are friends with Gray People - people who are sometimes nice and sometimes mean. And for my part, I'm not sure where I'm supposed to stand with my friends when they talk about the Mean Moments of their Gray friends. Should I balk? Should I say something in defense of the Gray People? Hard to know. But then I started thinking. Gray People are all there is. Some people are just better at controlling the inner-meanies, or at least hiding them under lock and triple bolted key.
All that to say, I admire my friends' flexibility in this area. They are neither soiled nor vindicated by their Gray friends' grayness - they just continue to love them and don't seem to take too much offense, or get bent out of shape by the Gray peoples' fickleness. This takes patience, and an ability to see the forest - not just the trees. It also assumes the position in regards to human beings that we're all kind of a mixed bag. So true. And you take the good pieces, and you pick them up and dust them off, and set them up on the shelf one at a time. It's what good friends do for one another.