Making Peace with Middle Places

Black-and-white thinking led Natalie Hanemann to sit in judgment instead of modeling Christian love. Through prayer, she learned to make peace with gray areas.

Middle spaces make me uncomfortable. During a family trip to Rock City, Tennessee, the mountain path led through two cliffs just wide enough for a standard-sized person to shimmy through sideways. There was no go-around route. After making some headway through the 20-yard crevasse, I looked behind me to see how far I’d come. Halfway. I could stay here and regulate my breathing, assess my surroundings, try to find something beautiful about the rocks to distract me. Instead, I hyper-focused on taking one step in front of the other. I put on blinders to any stray thoughts. Just get to safety, I told myself. 

I’ve found myself caught in the middle of many situations. In fact, while thinking of examples to share, I came up with so many, I wondered if it wouldn’t be easier to list out what I’m unequivocal about. That list would be shorter.  

1. God is real. 
2. He loves me. 
3. Jesus is His Son and redeemed us. 

Some of my middle spaces include: 

• Knowing when to hold my role as disciplinarian with my teenager and when to let my guard down and share something personal I know they’ll relate to. 

• Holding firm on my pricing when clients come to me with a fantastic story idea they want to hire me to help them with, when I know they can’t pay my standard rates. 

• Knowing when to speak and when to be quiet in the face of an injustice that could result in serious damage to a relationship. 

On a spiritual level, I’ve grappled to make peace with the stories I’ve heard about missionaries who overreached their evangelism efforts and wiped away the cultural practices of entire indigenous groups. I experienced the ramifications of this first-hand while on a recent trip to Hawaii. 

I’ve struggled to know how best to teach my daughters to proudly proclaim their Catholic faith while also being okay identifying as a feminist. (I’m still working on how to hold the tension on that rope!) 

Loving two opposing forces at the same time 

Then during my prayer time with God, I felt a nudge to stop avoiding the middle places. Instead of seeing situations as either-or, what if they were both-and? What would that look like in real time?  

The root of my inclination to be “for this” and “against that” comes naturally. I’m a rule-follower. I feel safe when ideas are black and white. Something is either right or it’s wrong. But entering midlife, I wanted to better understand this tendency in myself. When I looked back at those tough places where conflict and frustration made me defensive of what I knew to be true, I realized I sometimes used truth as a weapon that hurt people. I let my pride of being right misrepresent a merciful, loving God. I let rules act as a sentencing to those around me who were different than me. Standing squarely in a black square or a white square kept me from loving others well. 

I wrestled during my prayer time until I reached this conclusion:  

Accept that it is instead of judging why it is. 

Were there times when the missionaries acted in ways that caused more harm than good? Yes. Can I still love the missionaries and be entirely devoted to the Church? Yes. Do I need to be defensive when people criticize the actions of the Church, specifically when the Church did wrong? No, I can admit, “Yes, there were some bad decisions made” and then in the next breath, thank Jesus for the Church He established. 

You see, I don’t need to convince anyone to agree with my middle stance. I don’t need their approval; I don’t need to categorize others into “right” and “wrong.” I just need to listen so they feel heard (not in a condescending way, but genuinely). I need to show them that I respect their right to express an opinion. I don’t need to legislate or litigate. As an aside, how amazing would it be if our American political system adopted this behavior?  

Resting in uncertainty isn’t accepting sin 

Jesus modeled this “middle way” many times during His time on earth. In His encounters with sinners, He loved them. He didn’t condone their sinful behavior. He didn’t ask them to provide their side of the story. Those details didn’t seem to matter to Him. His concern was being available to the person, listening, and loving them. “Sin no more” wasn’t about keeping them in line with the law; it was about freeing them from the shackles that sin imposes. Sin prevents us from realizing the person God made us to be. Sin keeps us from being fully ourselves.    

It’s a fine line to walk. In my prayer time, I let Jesus tell me who I am and what He wants from me. He isn’t asking me to admonish sinners. He’s asking me to be present to the people around me. He’s asking me not to judge them. He wants me to be at peace with contradictions and inconsistencies. Because I, too, am inconsistent; my behaviors can be contradictory. He isn’t standing on the sidelines shaking His head at me. For those of us with fathers who did this, know that God doesn’t do this. Only the Father of Lies uses shame. 

I can find peace in the middle because Jesus doesn’t expect me to have it all figured out. I’m not the referee. He doesn’t need me to defend Him to the world. He just desires that I love others in the way He modeled.   

So now when I’m in between a rock and a hard place, I don’t get anxious. I smile because I know God has put me there and trusts me to pause, find the beauty, take a breath ... and be at peace. 

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Copyright 2024 Natalie Hanemann
Images: (top, bottom) iStockPhoto.com, licensed by the author; (center) Canva