Hi, friends! I (Jennifer) have the privilege of introducing you to my good friend, Hyacynth Worth. You should know that her heart is precious to me. She blesses me with wisdom and her friendship. If you want to know more about her and her beautiful family, please visit her blog HERE. She is a wealth of relational and parenting wisdom (especially for adoptive families)! I hope you enjoy her thoughts this week.

What do you do when you have a giant turkey in your life?

If it gobbles like a turkey, struts like a turkey, and acts like a turkey—chances are it’s a turkey.

I asked my ten year old son, who hunts turkeys, if that’s true. He looked at me like I was having a moment and said, “Well, yeah. Pretty much, Mom.”

I think we have a tendency to feel this way about our relationships, too; we understand the obvious turkeys in our lives, as they tend to be the birds who cause us to inwardly cringe at their outward displays of foolishness.

Note: if you feel like you need some extra turkey identification work in the area of relationships {not the field}, the book of Proverbs details the actions of the obvious turkeys in our lives. They are the people who don’t know what they don’t know, and you can tell by the way they gobble— errrr—talk and walk in ways of obvious foolishness.

“Fools think their own way is right, but the wise listen to others.” Proverbs 12:15 NLT

“The wise don’t make a show of their knowledge, but fools broadcast their foolishness.” Proverbs 12:23

But what about when it doesn’t talk or walk like a turkey because it has all the right words and so many of the right moves of a bird of another feather … and yet we’re still left with the keen sense that what we’re staring at what has got to be a turkey disguised as a well-adjusted bird because dude’s acting like a fool in some specific area or areas of life and doesn’t even seem to know it?

That’s where relationships get even trickier — when we’re trying to love well and interact well with the not-so-easily identifiable turkeys in our lives and wondering why the interactions don’t seem to be going so well.

The turkeys disguised as a well-adjusted bird with all the right moves and all the right words but mismatching lives are the ones who say the right things and seem to have a pretty stately walk, yet act in ways that would point to the contrary. I’ve heard them referred to as biblical fools. Mostly, though, when I think of these kinds of turkeys, I think of the Pharisees with whom Jesus had so many words about their hard hearts.

The Pharisees.

The most learned men of their time with a deep understanding of the scriptures and the most knowledge of God.

Men who opposed the healing of suffering people because no work was to be done on the rest day.

Men ready to cast stones on a woman caught in adultery as though they had no sin of their own.

Men who valued the rules over the restoration of relationships.

Men whose hearts are often a lot like my own.

It’s tempting to look at the pharisees and under our breaths think, “Idiots. Of course, relationship and restoration of relationship is more important than the rules.”

But these men likely knew full well the stories of their ancestors who did things like step out to brace the falling ark of the covenant and then were immediately killed for violating the law of God concerning the transportation of the ark.

These are the men who play by the book because the Book was what they knew.

They didn’t understand the depth of relationship God seeks with us; neither did their previous generations, which is why the nation of Israel needed prophet after prophet to speak God’s truth and then eventually Jesus to come and show them God’s heart.

They are a bunch of turkeys in disguise. And as believers in Jesus, haven’t each of us been, too?

If we’re each committing to honesty, I think we can all say we’ve all been turkeys in disguise.

Have you ever caught yourself reacting to a circumstance in a way that completely confuses you? For me, it’s when I’m counseling one of my kids in a direction of life and then I find myself struggling to take my own advice.

At one point during his ministry Jesus says that we ought to be more aware of the planks in our own eyes than the specks in our brothers’ and sisters’ eyes. In my house, we call this, “you do you.” Meaning, if you see a speck in your brother’s eye, first check your own to make sure you don’t have a huge log blocking your vision.

Why? Because none of us can change another person’s heart through lectures or force or punishment or shaming. Our hearts are truly changed toward God’s heart of love only in response to one thing: unconditional love that’s full of truth and grace.

Jesus remarks that the most important of all the law and commandments is to love:

“One of them, an expert in religious law, tried to trap him with this question: “Teacher, which is the most important commandment in the law of Moses?”

Jesus replied, “‘You must love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, and all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment. A second is equally important: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ The entire law and all the demands of the prophets are based on these two commandments.” Matthew 22:25-40

That second equally important commandment is often misunderstood, so let’s break it down: we are to love our neighbors as we love our selves — as in we are to love them as an extension of our own bodies.

So … how do we want to be treated when we are (knowingly or unknowingly) stuck strutting around like giant turkeys?

We see it in Jesus’ response to the woman caught in an act of adultery (John 8):

“Teacher,” they said to Jesus, “this woman was caught in the act of adultery. The law of Moses says to stone her. What do you say?”

They were trying to trap him into saying something they could use against him, but Jesus stooped down and wrote in the dust with his finger. They kept demanding an answer, so he stood up again and said, “All right, but let the one who has never sinned throw the first stone!”

It’s as if Jesus is saying, we don’t beat down others, we build them up. We call them to a higher living, a higher purpose, a higher way of living more in harmony with how God created us.

So what do we do with a giant turkey in our life?

We resist the urge to roast them and instead tread with them in equal parts truth and grace, much in the way Jesus shows us time and time again. Let’s pick up with Jesus and the woman the crowd wanted to stone after he boldly welcomes he who was without sin to throw the first one.

“Then he stooped down again and wrote in the dust.

When the accusers heard this, they slipped away one by one, beginning with the oldest, until only Jesus was left in the middle of the crowd with the woman. Then Jesus stood up again and said to the woman, “Where are your accusers? Didn’t even one of them condemn you?”

“No, Lord,” she said.

And Jesus said, “Neither do I. Go and sin no more.”