A friend asked for some suggestions on her paper, so I printed it out and tucked it into my backpack. Once settled on the train, I read through it, occasionally scribbling my comments.

It was a great paper. It contained many of the transformative events of her life, yet something didn't make sense. As I tried to pinpoint this, I realized that my copy jumped from page 3 to page 5. I was missing an entire page of her life story! Unfortunately, time was of the essence, and I had to work with what I had.

Doesn't this happen all the time? We find ourselves working with others whom we simply don't understand. We're missing pages or even chapters of their lives.

What if we acknowledged that we don't know the brokenness of those we find most difficult to deal with? Perhaps we'd become more patient, compassionate, and forgiving people.