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"I don't wanna!" I thought, resisting the urge to stamp my feet. Sometimes I really resent the things I preach when the time arises for practicing them.

Nobody else was around, no one would know. I could respond to this person the way I really wanted to respond. Proof of their idiocy and meanness was readily apparent, and I would really enjoy removing that smug expression trying to dismiss me.

Instead, I summoned my better angels, took a deep breath, and asked a curious question. Within a few heartbeats, the man before me realized his mistake and the smug expression dissolved into one of humble contrition.

I had been having "one of those mornings" and this was another drop of rain on my parade. As it turns out, so was the man in front of me, who was now becoming a friend.

This happened years ago, but I still think about it often, because it reminds me how close I always am to the easier road.

The low road is paved. It’s smooth. It’s instinctual and well-traveled. It’s the quick satisfaction of saying what I really think and walking away feeling justified.

The high road is unpaved.

It asks for something slower. Something steadier. It asks for restraint when my nervous system is already overloaded. It asks me to remember that the person in front of me is more than this moment, and so am I.

And, if I’m honest, sometimes I really hate that.

Kindness is one of the most countercultural things we can do. In a world that rewards power and winning, kindness is a refusal to let the worst part of the moment take the lead.

And to be clear, kindness does not ask us to be a doormat. Kindness is not silent in the face of harm. Kindness does not pretend something didn’t hurt.

Kindness is strength under control.

Kindness chooses to not weaponize your power, even when you could. It is resists the urge to scorch the earth just because you’re tired, or wounded, or right.

Kindness is subversive.

It interrupts the script. It disarms the expected escalation. It creates a small opening where something human can still happen. It is one of the few tools we have that can soften what has hardened, not through force, but through presence.

Most of the time, the world tells us to match energy. To return what we are given. To protect ourselves with sharp edges. It cheers us on when we think, "You're mean to me, I'll give it right back. You like to be rude, well let's have at it!"

The way of Jesus is foolish to those who don't understand the wisdom in it.

It's strength that looks like gentleness. It's courage that refuses cruelty. It's love that does not need to win in order to be real.

I don’t always want to live that way. It's hard. It doesn't satisfy that urge in me that sometimes wants to unleash my anger and tamp down idiocy and mean-spiritedness.

But I want to want to.

That's the quiet miracle of it. Kindness rarely feels dramatic in the moment. Most of the time it simply looks like a breath taken instead of a blow delivered. Those small choices are not small at all. They're how we keep our hearts from hardening and how we refuse to become what has wounded us. They're how the world changes: through people who keep choosing love when it would be easier to choose something else.

The high road is unmarked and rarely traveled, and often feels less like a smooth highway, and more like a refiner’s fire. It burns, but it also purifies, shaping us into people who can carry love without becoming consumed by bitterness.

My wish for you this week, Reader, is that when you find yourself standing at the edge of the easier road, you will give yourself the grace to choose the unpaved one. May kindness rise in you as holy resistance. May it protect what is tender in you, and may it make room for something new in the world around you. That’s the fiLLLed life.

Live a fiLLLed life, Melissa ​

P.O. Box 414, Illiopolis, IL 62539
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