Thanks for stopping by! I'm Cori and I'm happy you've found your way here. If you're wondering why my blog is called "Let's Eat Grandpa," it's an old grammar joke: Let's eat, grandpa! Let's eat grandpa! (Punctuation saves lives.) 
This action item may seem more vague than some of my others, but I’ve found it comes up a lot in my normal, everyday life. Now that I’m aware of it, I see all sorts of judgment crosses my mind each day. My friend Hannah quoted this verse to me a while back, “We demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ.” (2 Corinthians 10:5, emphasis mine). My goal in choosing love over judgment is to take captive every thought and turn it over to Christ who can re-make it in love.
The other day, I was driving by my office and there were two young people asking for money on the corner. The guy’s sign said, “Lost job. Homeless. Anything helps.” But his girlfriend was texting away behind her on her cell phone. My immediate thought was, “Whatever, people. If you have enough for a cell phone, you have enough.” It didn’t cross my mind to treat them in a more loving way until later that day, and by that time they were gone. I completely missed an opportunity to be Jesus in their lives because I judged them instead of loving them.
The Bible is clear I need to change my attitude. 1 John 3:17-18 says, ”If anyone has material possessions and sees his brother in need but has no pity on him, how can the love of God be in him? Dear children, let us not love with words or tongue but with actions and in truth.”
No matter the situation of those young people, my thoughts should not have immediately turned to judgment. I’m called to help the less fortunate. What they do with my help is not my responsibility. I am called to love through my actions. Sitting back in judgment isn’t helping me or them.
These judgmental thoughts are like a pandemic in my brain, infecting how I see other people. Most of the time I can keep them internalized instead of spewing them out my mouth, but that just means that I’ll have to dig deeper and pull out the weeds growing in my heart.
Here is just a sample of thoughts that I’ve had to take captive since this month began:
“Oh honey, leggings are not pants.”
“You’re driving too fast, you idiot! I hope you get pulled over.”
“It’s the pedal on the right, slow poke!”
“There is no way that working a cash register can be that difficult.”
“Really? You’re paying entirely with pennies?”
“What a mess.”
“When will this be over so I can go home and do what I want to do?”
“Is it really that difficult to put a bumper sticker on straight?”
“McDonalds? Might as well just staple those fries to your butt.”
“Your extravagant spending makes me sick.”
“Is it really that hard to tell the difference between ‘your’ and ‘you’re’?”
“Just get on with it already.”
“Well, at least I look better than her.”
“I never would have picked those colors.”
“This is boring. I’d rather be talking to someone else right now.”
“Isn’t this your job? Why can’t you do it well?”
“I wonder what choices you made that got you into this mess.”
I’m embarrassed. It’s awful. There are some worse things, but I can’t bring myself to type them here.
The first step to ridding my mind of this trash — like any solid recovery program — is to recognize and admit I have a problem. A lot of times I veil things in a cover of humor or witticism, but that doesn’t mean that my heart means well. Every time I recognize a thought that is less than loving toward someone, I check myself and ask for Jesus to help me see the person as a child of God, not as an annoyance or inconvenience. Does it matter that the woman is wearing leggings as pants? No. Not one bit. I need to look at her as God’s precious child. She is not her fashion choices. I need to treat her with the same dignity and respect as I would someone wearing actual pants.
This is very hard.
The other thing I’m trying to do is be outwardly loving to the people who are on the receiving end of my judgmental thoughts. The girl having a hard time with the cash register? I smiled, told her that it was fine and I wasn’t in a rush, and then looked her in the eye and wished her a good day with another smile. Was it so hard? No. Was it better than a dramatic sigh and a “Thanks [for nothin'].” Definitely. It doesn’t take much to treat someone like a human being.
Have you thought about your thoughts before? Do you find yourself choosing judgment over love?
