Exploring Your Options

What name pops into your brain when you read the term “complicated people”? Maybe it’s a family member who knows how to push your buttons and seems to love doing it. Or it’s a neighbor who plays their stereo so loud you can’t sleep at night—and they have terrible taste in music. Or it could be a boss who thinks you have nothing better to do on weekends than text back and forth about what they want you to do on Monday, if not sooner.

Complicated people are everywhere. You work with them, live next door to them, go to school with them, and are related to at least a few of them. But the complicated person you may often ignore the most is the one looking at you every time you stare in the mirror.

If you want to deal effectively with complicated people, start by acknowledging that you are complicated too. That can be a hard pill to swallow, but have no worries—we are all complicated. We all have different paces, preferences, and personalities that can be deemed complicated by somebody else. We all have a smorgasbord of quirks and idiosyncrasies because to be human is to be messy, and messy turns into complicated very quickly.

Today, just like every day, you’re going to bump into a few of these prickly, pokey people, and you need to be ready for it. What will you do? One option is to avoid them, but that’s not a sustainable long-term strategy. Another option is to change them, but honestly that’s impossible. We have a hard enough time changing ourselves, much less other people. A third option is to cancel them. That’s a lousy strategy as well. We don’t want to be canceled when we mess up, so why should we treat others that way?

Here's a better option: understand them. Try to figure out what they value, what they fear, what they need, what they mean. This is about choosing humility over judgment, curiosity over assumptions, and openness over rejection.

That’s God’s way, and he’s been dealing with complicated folks since he created the human race. Jesus told his disciples, “Do not judge, and you will not be judged. Do not condemn, and you will not be condemned. Forgive, and you will be forgiven” (Luke 6:37).

Treating others with curiosity and understanding is a choice. It’s a mindset and attitude you decide to adopt. I love how Paul puts this in Philippians 2:2. “Make my joy complete by being like-minded, having the same love, being one in spirit and of one mind." Rather than turning differences into reasons to reject each other, we need to turn them into ways to connect with each other.

That starts by asking yourself with humility and curiosity, how can I understand this person better?

Prayer

Lord, when I deal with complicated people today, help me choose understanding over anger or judgment. I want to remember that I am complicated too, and I want to be humble and curious enough to learn about the people you put in my path. In Jesus’ name, amen.